Her head spun. The screams and shouts of battle wobbled in and out. The giant kicked her in the side, angering her broken rib. She curled into a ball, hands protectively covering her head, and gasped for breath. She couldn’t withstand another kick like that. Her ribs would snap, she would break in half.

She looked up in time to see three women launch themselves at the mountainous soldier, their voices raised in a banshee cry. They had no weapons but their ragged fingernails and their desperate strength. She didn’t recognize them—their faces and hair were streaked with blood.

Serina scrambled to her feet, ignoring the fire in her cheekbone and the flames in her side. When she was sure the women had the large soldier in hand, she helped Mirror fight off another man, this one more reasonably sized but still deadly, with a firearm in one hand and a short sword in the other.

Mirror slammed him in the head with a heavy iron platter she’d found somewhere, and Serina finished the job with a knife to the throat.

“What are you doing, Mirror?” Serina hissed. “You should be hanging back with the other injured women.”

Mirror showed her teeth. Grimace or feral smile, Serina couldn’t tell.

“I will not cower,” the girl said. Then she yanked the firearm from the fallen soldier’s hand and fired it at a man running at them. He sank to his knees, blood blooming across his chest.

More bodies fell: both men and women. Gunshots cracked through the night. The lights swung wildly above them. It was difficult to make sense of the jumble of movement and blood.

Serina used her knife and her fist and her knees. At some point, Val pushed through to her side. He discharged the firearm he held and tore another one from his waistband, firing again.

There were more women than soldiers, but more men kept appearing, called to the battle by the sound of gunshots. In the haze and confusion, Serina looked for a way to get out, to get to Asa, but never saw an opening.

A large, wide-shouldered man with an air of authority appeared and started shouting orders to the soldiers. They made an attempt to regroup, but Serina and her forces didn’t give them a chance. These women were the survivors, the ones who’d won battles in the ring—they knew how to divide, debilitate, distract.

Serina spared a thought for Renzo; she hoped he was staying out of the way as she’d told him to. She couldn’t let herself search the melee for him. Her own survival was constantly in question with every soldier who raised his weapon or his fist to strike her.

She and Anika went for the big man, the one trying to take charge.