Storm of Ash by Michelle Kenney

Author:Michelle Kenney
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2019-11-12T17:00:00+00:00

Chapter 16

The world returned as though inflated from the tiniest telescopic pinprick. Like the moment of its own birth. Only this birth had the weight of all the ages on its shoulders.

I was conscious of a rushing, a drawing feeling in the pit of my stomach and then of a tourniquet being applied swiftly. A familiar voice. Aelia. Rushing. Pulling.

‘It’s OK … you’re concussed … your left arm has a claw wound … will need cleaning later. But you’re OK.’

Her voice was rushed, and kept fading before it disappeared altogether.

I lifted my aching head to see the arena awash with people, and blinked hard but they were still there. People I knew. And they were all fighting. Therry dived past followed by Saba, an Arafel friend I thought lost in the fires.

My chest throbbed as I tried to croak her name, before spotting the collapsed sabre-tooth. It was less than five paces away, lying very still, a Diasord rammed in its chest up to the hilt. An acrid nausea threatened to climb my throat. Such a beautiful creature deserved a nobler death than as sport in a circus where all the real monsters were watching.

I stifled a moan as reality returned.

I was half-crushed and everything radiated pain. I sucked in a wheezy breath.

‘Max?’

Forcing myself onto my elbow, I tried to ignore the way the arena folded in on itself, and scanned the chaos. Max was nowhere to be seen.

‘Aelia?’ I yelled fearfully, my vision swimming.

She appeared at a run, her dark hair matted with fresh blood, wiping a short knife on her scarlet charioteer tunic as she knelt beside me.

‘I’m here, I’m here …’ she panted, ‘you’re OK … nothing punctured, not like last time. You’ll be bruised, but you’re OK.’

‘What happened? Where’s Max?’ I forced myself up to sitting, lifting my hand firstly to a roughly bound arm, and then my tight chest.

Miraculously, the little dart tube seemed to have survived intact.

She shook her head. ‘He’s OK … took off, a moment ago … Tal, you know Max can take care of himself. We have to get out of here now, for everyone’s sake.’

I stared around in abject wonder, so aware the colour of the arena had completely changed in the last few minutes. It was awash with a myriad of Outsider faces and Prolets, challenging the might of Pantheon together.

Hunters, Komodo, Lynx. There was a veritable blaze of outside scoring the bleached interior of the circus. Every cell of my body was convinced I’d awoken in some twisted parallel universe, but my heart soared all the same. And there were more Prolets scaling the wire mesh all the time. Joining us. No wonder I’d detected a mood among the crowd. Had they been waiting for some kind of signal all along?

I shot a dazed look at Cassius’s balcony. He was still there, leering furiously, his face pale and violent as he gesticulated to the guards surrounding him.

And I knew then without a doubt. This was no act of spontaneity triggered by events in the arena.

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