too small and innocuous to have caused such damage. But small blade or no, the only reason I was still alive was that Helena hadn’t gotten the chance to twist the knife. A heart pierced with silver would weaken me for a few hours. A heart destroyed by silver would’ve killed me.
No need to guess why Helena hadn’t made that final, lethal twist. An arrow through her right eye pinned her to the back wall of Phanes’s private alcove.
“Nice shot,” I murmured, still feeling dazed.
Ian’s flash of teeth was too fierce to be a smile. “I know. What I don’t know is why she tried to kill you. Any ideas?”
I let out a puff of laughter. “Guess she really didn’t like me clapping my hands at her.”
“. . . ’s not why,” Helena hissed, her single eye opening. Good gods, she was still alive? “Can’t let you—”
Phanes’s wing shot out sideways. Helena’s body dropped from the neck down, arms flailing for a second before her headless body collapsed over the same bench that I sat on. Her head stayed pinned to the wall, mouth opening and closing as if she were still trying to speak.
I saw the flash of metal before Phanes’s wing folded back up and his outer feathers concealed it. Razors? I wasn’t sure, but he had something very sharp lining his wings, turning the gold-colored feathers into multiple deadly weapons.
Clever, my other half noted coolly.
“Why the bloody hell did you do that?” Ian snapped.
“Because she tried to slaughter my intended,” Phanes thundered back. “Had you not saved her, you would be next, for your impertinence in questioning how I punish traitors.”
His wrath frightened the people nearest our alcove. They quit staring back and forth between us and the hole that marked Naxos’s reentry into the arena and started to leave.
“I believe I earned safe passage in your lands,” Ian replied with an edge to his tone.
Phanes’s chest swelled as he took a step forward. “Technically, you did not complete the trials—”
Before I knew it, Ian had ripped the arrow out of Helena’s eye and hurled it at the dangling pomegranate. The fruit exploded, and the arrow kept going until it drove into the stadium’s uppermost stone rim so deeply, only the end feathers remained visible.
Phanes looked like he’d swallowed something foul.
I stared at the arrow before looking back at Ian. He’d hardly glanced at the target before hurling that arrow with sniperlike accuracy. He’d also barely had time to aim before drilling Helena’s eye at fifty meters. Had Ian been holding back his true abilities the entire time I’d known him? Or was something else going on?
“There.” Ian’s tone was light, but his gaze told a different story. A neon sign flashing “Danger!” would’ve been less threatening. “Trials complete.”
Applause swelled across the stadium. It grew until all the onlookers were whooping, clapping, and chanting a new name.
Ian . . . Ian . . . Ian!
Ian’s gaze slanted to the crowd before returning to Phanes. His brow arched as if to say, Hear that?
Phanes’s mouth curled into a sardonic smile. Then, he spread his arms and wings in a gesture that was both magnanimous and commanding as he turned and faced the crowd.
“The challenger has triumphed!”
Ian took the crescendo of applause as his due. He even descended a few steps and stripped the last of his shredded garb from his torso. He tossed it to the spectators at his right, who snatched up the torn remnants as if they were jewels.
I didn’t realize I was smiling until I caught Phanes’s contemplative look. “I can see why you’re taken with him,” he murmured. “He is . . . surprising.”
He didn’t know the half of it. Then again, maybe I didn’t, either. Ian had surprised both of us tonight.
“I have to talk to him. Alone,” I stressed.
Phanes gave me a hard look. “Unless you’re breaking our agreement, allow me to arrange the proper cover for it first.”
Stalling me again? I didn’t think so. “Fine, as long as you arrange for that cover now.”
Ian came back up the private staircase. “She sounds testy. Best to acquiesce. Happy wife, happy life, right, mate?”
Dear gods, I needed to speak to Ian now!
“Impertinent mortal,” Phanes muttered, but louder, he said, “You are welcome in my lands by right of combat, Sir Ian! More importantly, you are welcome in my home for saving my intended. As for the rest of you”—Phanes shouted so everyone could hear—“if there’s a drop of wine or morsel of food