Chapter 24 · The Married Pair, First Round

The arena did not let them leave.

The emergency release had blown open three gates, shattered half the execution bureau’s blockade, and sent a rain of sparks across the lower tiers. It had not, however, released the three contestants from the tournament’s binding field.

Nora discovered that when the floor vanished beneath her boots.

One moment she was dragging Beckett through a corridor of smoke, Kane’s hand locked around hers. The next, brass plates split apart under them with a shriek of tortured metal. Wind punched upward from the darkness below. Nora’s stomach lurched into her throat.

“Not again,” Beckett yelled.

They dropped through a circular shaft lined with glowing runes.

Kane twisted in midair. Blue-white lightning crawled over his shoulders, weak and ragged after the arena array had drained him. He reached for Nora, but the force between them tore their joined hands apart.

“Kane!”

“I see you!”

Nora saw him, too—falling through a cyclone of golden symbols, black coat snapping around him, his face caught between fury and calculation. Below, hundreds of floating platforms unfolded from the arena’s central core. Their edges gleamed with blade-like stabilizers.