to think through the pain of being jabbed a million different times.
Then again, the pain is nothing compared to losing Jaxon and losing my parents, nothing compared to the guilt I feel over Xavier’s death or not believing Hudson sooner about his father.
It’s nothing, I remind myself, even as every inch of my skin stings. Nothing that matters and nothing that I can’t handle. I just need to hold on and breathe.
Finally—finally—I start to experience the weird surfacing-through-water feeling that comes with the beginning and end of a portal, and I brace myself to be emptied onto the field.
I manage to land on my feet this time, but I’m still disoriented, because in the small amount of time I was in the portal, the arena has gone dark. Like really, really dark.
The stands are so dark, I can barely see the audience, which makes their shouts and cheers and gasps feel completely disembodied. Even the lights on either end of the field seem to be darker than they were just a few minutes ago.
I tell myself I’m imagining things, but when I look around, I can no longer see all of the field. I can only see the portion around me—at least in my human form—which can only mean Cyrus did this on purpose.
Of course he did.
It’s a huge advantage for my opponents, because the wolves, dragons, and vampires can see perfectly in the dark, while I’m stuck squinting and trying to figure out which way I’m supposed to go.
The portal let me out about twenty yards from my goal line, so now I’ve got one hundred thirty left to go to get across theirs. The stone is burning red-hot in my hands, though, so I do the only thing I can do—I throw the ball as high into the air as I can, then shift on the run and launch myself into the air after it.
The wolves and witches can’t get me up here, and the dragons are all the way down the field, blocking their goal line, so it works. I snatch the ball out of the air and start to fly as fast as I can toward the goal, thankful that my gargoyle eyes work slightly better than my human ones do.
I know I’ll have to go low eventually—the dragons are racing straight at me as fast as they can, and while their magic doesn’t work on me, they can still knock me right out of the sky. They’re massive, and the fall is a lot from up here—I’ll end up shattered, in human or gargoyle form, for sure.
But as they get closer, I realize one is going low—they obviously learned from the trick I pulled during the Ludares tournament—and the avenue of escape I had planned is cut off from me. The clock on the side of the field says I’ve got fifteen more seconds before the ball starts to become untouchable again, which means I have to figure this out now.
I think about voluntarily turning the ball over to one of them—desperate times and all that—but I can’t bring myself to do it. So at the last minute, just when they start a pincher movement to squeeze me in, I shoot straight up, up, up into the air.
The dragons come chasing after me and I let them, bringing them in closer and closer the higher we get. I’m counting on the fact that Joaquin and Delphina have much bigger wings than I do—and are much heavier than I am—which means I should be able to turn around faster than they can. Or, here’s hoping, anyway…
Which is why, just as they’re about to get me—and just as the ball starts to turn superhot and vibrate—I drop it.
And then, as the crowd gasps and murmurs in surprise, I roll straight into a half somersault and go full-on diving after the ball.
The dragons bellow in rage, and blasts of fire and ice come shooting down after me. But I’m in my gargoyle form, so I barely notice as I race for the ball.
On the ground below me, one of the witches, Violet, tries to cast down the ball, but I get there before she manages to pull it to her. I swoop through her spell, causing her to shout—whether in rage or pain, I don’t know—and I scoop the ball up right out of the air again. Then I’m racing, racing, racing for the goal line with the dragons coming up fast behind me.