fish—but Jeran slices wounds into its side, forcing it to focus its attention on him. They say Ghosts don’t have much capacity for higher thought, but I think this one recognizes Jeran’s scent from our last visit to its cell. It narrows its eyes at him in a sense of familiarity, then snarls and crouches, clawing at the dirt. The Ghost tries to bite him again and again. Each time Jeran spins away, the Deathdancer in his flawless state, expertly guiding it around the ring so that it never attempts to attack the audience.
Then Adena darts forward and injects the Ghost with a serum she created using Red’s blood. The Ghost whirls, shrieking, and shakes its head, licking its lips as if tasting the poison.
At first, it continues to lunge for Jeran, now freshly enraged. Jeran dances away each time, his eyes narrowed in concentration. I lower my eyes, unable to bear the disappointment. Something must have gone wrong in our testing yesterday.
Adena is shaking her head beside me. “Maybe I diluted it too much,” she mutters to herself under her breath. “The serum worked yesterday.”
Then the Ghost shudders. It turns to Jeran with a bewildered snarl, sniffing at him, tilting its head this way and that. The Senate murmurs, shifting their feet.
And as I look on with disbelieving eyes, the Ghost growls low at Jeran and turns its head away from him. It stares around the ring, growling, twitching its head as if it doesn’t understand why its appetite for us had suddenly vanished.
“Oh hells,” Adena breathes beside me. There’s a glossy sheen in her eyes. Her words tremble. “It’s not attacking. Hells. It’s not attacking.”
I can only stare. My hands feel numb from the shock.
The Ghost has been subdued, by nothing more than a serum made from Red’s blood.
In my numbness, my gaze turns to Aramin. He’s watching Jeran stand unmoving beside the Ghost, who now seems to want nothing to do with him. Who now seems to have lost its purpose. The Firstblade and Jeran lock eyes, exchanging some unspoken realization between them. In Aramin, I see a glint of fire that mirrors the hope stirring in my own chest.
I thought I knew what kind of weapon Red could be for us. A vicious killing machine, exactly what the Federation wanted him to be. But instead, it is this gift that he has given us. The key to the Federation’s downfall.
Beside me, Red is frozen like a statue. When I reach out to him through our link, I feel a wave of … something.
Not joy. Not relief. Not even vengeance.
Only anguish. Because all this Ghost reminds him of is the moment when he had to stop his own family’s suffering by ending their lives.
* * *
I don’t know where Red goes after we’re dismissed.
For a while, he trains in the arena, where maybe he wants to be alone after the demonstration. I think about following him to make sure that he’s okay—but the hollow, haunted look that was on his face stays with me. It’s the kind of expression that begs to be left alone. After all, it won’t be long now until the Federation shows up at the front of the Inner City’s gate. Our training arena will be theirs soon. Might as well use it while we still can.
So I return to the apartment without him, the distance between us making our bond fade until we can no longer send our words back and forth. Even though I miss his constant presence at my side, I decide to head out to the baths. The stench of the Ghost’s blood from the Grid’s yard seems to still hover in the air, as if the strands of my hair had absorbed the smell and made it part of me.
I make my way down the spiral of marble steps that leads to the baths. Newage had been built near a cluster of hot springs; a circle of Early Ones ruins told us that those ancient people had also used this place as a bathhouse. This particular spring is reserved for the Strikers, and whenever I’m exhausted after a particularly hard rotation at the warfront, I’ll come down here amid a sprinkling of other Strikers to wash away the memories of blood and battle.
The baths are empty today. I’m not surprised. Most of the other Strikers went to the mess hall for lunch. I reach the bottom of the steps and head into the hazy, steam-tinted air. Archways made