Then a horn sounds, and a gate rises on the opposite side of the carnage.

General Marchess stalks toward us, clapping slowly. The spectators immediately start to cheer, their eagerness for spectacle seeming to draw the very air from the arena. This man has promised them so much, I think. He’s their hope, not completely unlike how Tabrol is ours.

“Well,” says General Marchess. “You surprise me. But you haven’t proved anything except that you don’t like to kill your own.”

He raises a hand, and a dozen soldiers swarm the lowest level of the stands, brandishing guns that are different from those I’ve seen before. The townsfolk cry out in surprise, their shouts rippling from one end of the arena to the next. The guns the soldiers carry are longer, but the humans hold them to their eyes for aim like Leonodai archers do with their bows. Excellent, I think bleakly. A longer range.

Marchess raises and lowers his hand. A gunshot fires in response, and I flinch, reaching for Rowan, but none of us fall to our deaths. At our feet, the lioness’s body shakes as it takes the bullet. Rowan lets out a horrified gasp and, in the next breath, draws one of her knives and throws it. Marchess screams.

“Bitch,” he spits, drawing the knife out of the same hand that gave the order to shoot the lioness. “Even death is too good for your kind.”

Rowan looks at me.

“I love you,” I whisper.

We wait for the shots.

Instead, there’s a loud grunt from above. One of the soldiers falls into the arena like a discarded doll. Two more collapse in quick succession as Marchess’s head swivels in confusion, and the crowd screams as they dive for cover. The other soldiers look around in bewilderment as another pair of arrows find their marks. I’d know the blue of the fletching anywhere.

A Leonodai shout cuts through the air as a pair of warriors bursts from one of the arena’s stairwells. The archer moves with unmatched speed, taking out the soldiers beyond a sword’s reach while the other shoves past fleeing spectators to the front of the stands. The figure leaps down into the arena, throwing back the hood of her cloak as she does.

“Io!” Sethran cries in a mixture of relief and amazement. “Skies alive.”

Warrior Io smiles and cocks her head toward the holding cell that we came from. “Let’s save the talk for after we save your skins, yeah?”

A bullet cuts the air between us, and Io ducks. “This way!” she yells. I lurch forward, grabbing my axe as the others retrieve their own weapons. Marchess barks orders, clutching his bleeding hand to his chest, but his words are lost as the fleeing crowds jostle frantically past the soldiers.