The Sun Dwellers

“Tristan!” my father yells. “You’re not trying hard enough. You could have killed your servant eight times already. Don’t be so arrogant to think I didn’t notice. If the next round is the same, I’ll order my guard to slit her throat.”

Before this started, I was beaten. My father holds all the stones, and all I have is an ignorant child’s hope that perhaps we can get out of this alive. If I don’t fight, she dies. If I do fight, Roc dies. Either way, he’ll probably kill us all eventually anyway. So why am I fighting my best friend? The answer finally comes to me and I almost bang my head with my fist for being so stupid. I shouldn’t be fighting Roc. My father is going to win no matter what, but I can at least deny him the pleasure of pulling his puppet strings and making us all dance for him. I have two choices: kill myself or let one of Roc’s blows sneak through my defenses to kill me. Maybe it won’t save them, but it will at least give them a chance. And I can’t let Roc kill me—he’ll never forgive himself. So that means falling on my own sword.

A sense of peace washes over me as I know I’ve made my decision. My lips curl into a slight smile. That’s when I realize: Roc felt the same peace, had the same content expression just before we started to fight. He came to the same conclusion, except for himself. To kill himself.

I look at him. He’s watching me curiously, but then something changes in his expression. I could never hide anything from him, and I can’t now. He knows what I’m thinking.

A flash of concern narrows his eyebrows, and before I know what’s happening, he raises his sword—there’s a sharp shout from the seats—turns it back on himself—another meaningless shout—and plunges it into his gut.

Adele

Tristan and Roc are just watching each other, perhaps waiting for the other to make a move, when Tawni’s voice enters my ears. It sounds different than usual, all sweetness and caring sucked out of it, leaving only a black grit that is still somehow recognizable as her voice. “Stop this or you die,” she says.

I turn sharply, hearing one of the guards shout an alarm, but it’s too late for anyone to do anything. Tawni’s on her feet, which are still shackled together, her arms outstretched, holding a gun. No, not a gun. My gun. The one my mother gave me, shiny and new and deadly. The one I used to kill my father’s murderer, the gun that should be used to kill my father’s real murderer: President Nailin. The gun I gave her because I couldn’t bear to have it near me. From her wrists dangle the ropes, now unknotted, that once bound her hands together. She’s managed to get them undone. But how’d she get the gun off the guard?

I remember: the guard getting frisky with her, groping her instead of properly searching her, not worried about her because she was throwing metal balls—clearly weaponless. Wrong. She bore his roving hands, not fighting back, not crying out, hoping he wouldn’t find it. The gun. Tucked safely under her dress in the small of her back, held hidden in the holster I gave her. She could have used it when we were fighting before but didn’t, either because she’s not used to having a gun at all, or because she was scared of the killing. Either way, I don’t blame her. She has it out now and looks ready to use it.

The gun, now aimed at the head of President Nailin, just a few feet away. Too close to miss.

“Stop this or you die,” she repeats.

“No, Roc, no!” Tristan yells from below.

I want to turn to see what’s happening, but my eyes are transfixed on my nonviolent friend with the gun, a steely determination in her eyes that makes me think she might actually follow through with her death threat. A new Tawni.

“It’s already over,” the President says, smiling down the barrel of the gun.

Tristan’s cries rise up again. “Help me! Someone!” he screams.

I finally turn away from my friend, see the carnage in the arena. What the hell? Did Tristan stab Roc? Distracted by Tawni’s little surprise, I didn’t see what happened, but now Roc has a sword in his stomach, and Tristan’s kneeling over him, looking up at us, pleading with his torn expression and words. “Please! Someone help me! He’s dying!”

My heart beating wildly, I swing back to Tawni. Do it! I say with my eyes, not wanting to give her a verbal command for fear that the advance warning will give the President and his guards a chance to make a move.

Tawni’s nod is almost imperceptible, more like a twitch; her finger tightens on the trigger; she closes her eyes.

Boom! The gun explodes through my ears and flashes across my vision, but the President was already moving, sensing the attack, diving for the floor. A cry of pain erupts from the seats behind him—one of the guards most likely.

President Nailin rises up, reaches for Tawni, whose eyes are wide, her mouth agape. She bobbles the gun, her fingers turning to jelly, and Nailin manages to swipe at the weapon, knocking it back and between his outstretched legs. It clatters past the guard sitting between us and settles at my feet.

The guard lunges and I know this is it. The moment. The reason my mother sent me on this mission. Because she thought I was the one who could do it.

I sweep my still tied together feet upward, kicking the diving guard in the head. The guy to my right tries to grab me, but I thrust my knees as high up as they’ll go, catching him hard under the chin, hearing an awful cracking sound and a roar of anguish. There are yells and screams and voices shouting indecipherable things from behind me and in the pit—Tristan’s voice is louder than them all—and from the President, but I block them out, concentrate on one thing: getting my hands free.

As I pull with all my strength, the ropes rip my skin to ribbons, bite my wrists, send searing pain and shock through my whole body in a series of tremors. “Arrrr!” I yell, trying to relieve the agony through my vocal chords. Whoever tied my ropes did a better job than Tawni’s because they won’t give, won’t break, won’t untie.

The presence of those who are seeking to stop me is all around, pressing and scrabbling and distorting the air—I have no time to fight at my bonds any longer. Raising my tethered hands high over my back, I strain to get them over my head. I scream again, feeling my joints and muscles and tendons and whatever else is hidden beneath my skin, stretching and contorting and trying to move in such a way that should not be possible. Then I feel it: a massive pop in my left shoulder; splinters of pressure, sharp and brutal, ru

The pain is nothing. My friends are dying, so the pain is nothing.

I grab the gun off the floor, feeling clawed fingers scratching at me from behind, lift it up, whirl to face the man who—by his orders—killed Cole, killed my father, killed Trevor, maimed my sister, who is the object of my mission, of my revenge. Perhaps the fulfillment of my entire purpose for being born into the hell that is the Tri-Realms.

Even now, his face is unrepentant, a grizzled collection of black eyes, stretched and wrinkled skin, and bared teeth. Death and the Devil combined in human form.

“You don’t have the guts!” he spits out, his lips gnarled and red.

I don’t respond. Words are meaningless now; action is everything.

Death—meet death. I fire, seeing a coin of red appear on his forehead instantaneously, drizzling down his gnarled face in an understated trickle of blood.

He falls back.

Tristan

Roc’s dying and I’m pleading to those who will never listen. Something’s happening in the stands but I can’t understand it through my clouded vision and blubbering lips. A commotion of some sort. Tawni standing up, pointing at my father. A noise, loud, but not as loud as the beat of my heart. My father striking Tawni. A scuffle of some sort. Adele screaming, an awful keening that seems to shatter my heart into a thousand fragments, which roll around in my chest, scratching and tearing me apart from the inside.