Scarlett Emberheart's Arc

Chapter 9 of 14

Scarlett woke the next morning with her legs under her again, though the strength in them was not what it had been. Talon slept in the chair by the door, gray around the mouth. Aldric was gone from the wall. A marshal's runner came at first light with the bracket sheet. She was to fight before noon. She dressed in her plate slowly, buckle by buckle, and walked to the arena on her own feet. She would not be carried in. They brought her opponent out to the sand and named him. Cedric Falterblade. He was young and thin under the plate, brown hair stuck up in points, and he held his sword like a man holding a snake. In his first bout he had split another knight's leg clean through the thigh. The man's shin and foot had not fallen with the rest of him. They had simply not been there anymore. Scarlett had watched it from the hospital window and felt cold under the sheet. Now he stood ten paces off and would not meet her eyes. He said, quietly, that he was sorry she had drawn him. Then he said he did not mean that the way it sounded. The horn went. Scarlett moved before fear could hold her feet. She stepped inside his guard on the second beat and drove her shoulder into his chest. He was lighter than she expected. He went down on his back in the sand. His helm rang. He tried to push up on the flat of his sword like a crutch, blade set point-down in the dirt. His elbow gave. He fell again. The marshal's arm came up and the horn sounded and her name was called. She stood over him and breathed. She had won a bout in under six seconds. She almost laughed. The sword shivered where its point sat buried in the sand. The air above the pommel split. A thin bright seam opened, no wider than a finger, and grew. Cold poured out of it. Cedric saw it and rolled away on his shoulder, shouting something she did not catch. The seam widened toward her, not him. Scarlett tried to step back. Her tired legs answered a half-beat slow. The crack reached her boot. It took the boot. It took her leg to the knee without sound or pain, only absence. She looked down once at where her shin should have been and saw stars. Then the rift swallowed the rest of her. The sand where she had stood was empty. The marshal's raised arm was still raised. Cedric sat on the ground and stared at his sword and did not move.