Chapter 11: The Final Trial

Forty thousand people filled the royal arena at noon, and every one of them had come to see Corvin Leland win.

I sat in the royal box beside Lysander, in a white gown with short sleeves.

I had chosen it that morning.

My brand showed from wrist to forearm, dark against my skin, and I let the crowd look.

The first people in the nearest rows stared, and whispered, and looked away.

Lysander's hand slid along the rail until it covered the back of mine.

His thumb pressed once against the ring of letters.

"Still want to do this?" he asked quietly.

"I've wanted to do it for fifteen years."

"Then I'll stop the oath," he said. "The moment he kneels, I'll stop it."

"Not before."

Across the arena, in the Thornwell box, my father sat with a rug over his knees and did not lift his head.

Rosamund sat beside him in white, gripping her fan.

She was looking at me.

She had been looking at me since the box filled.

Five finalists stood on the sand, and the last of them was Corvin.

He fought three bouts that afternoon, and he won the first two clean.

He was good, I had to admit.

He had always been quick, and the academy had given him a trained, easy grace.

The crowd shouted his name between every exchange.

Aldous Pellam sat on the Selection bench below us, beaming.

In the third bout, Corvin faced a broad young man in the Crown's gray, the last finalist who was not from a rich pack.

The young man was stronger, and he drove Corvin back across the sand with three heavy blows.

Corvin stumbled and fell to one knee, and the whole crowd groaned.

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