Page 14 of Wolf Trial

Actually, I did get into one fight in high school. Angie Ripon called my then-bestie a toad-faced cretin, and I ripped her cheap extensions out. But I stood no chance of beating someone trained to be a slayer, even if they were at the bottom of the list. Then again, Reed had said nothing about a clean fight.

I tried to keep light on my feet like a boxer,4 and watched Suri evaluate me. She probably knew what she was looking for. Her stare dragged down my body, finding every strength, every weakness, and I narrowed my eyes at her calculation.

Alright, enough foreplay.

I flung myself across the arena at her, swallowing a squeal when the ashes made me skid. It gave me a little extra pizazz as I threw my fist at her side, managing a messy feint she really ought to have seen right through. I wasn’t subtle.

I grabbed her braid and yanked hard, Suri’s scream equally of rage and hurt as strands pulled from her scalp, and I wrapped the long braid around my wrist.

“I will not be beaten by a slug,” she snarled with so much force that spittle flung from her mouth.

“Hey,” I complained, balling my fist5 and driving it into her ribs. Motherfucker, that hurt. Fire blazed across my knuckles, and only my ego kept me from shaking out my hand in front of an audience of fifty skilled killers. “Who are you calling slug?”

“You,” Suri hissed, and drove her elbow into my gut. With a grunt, I folded over, but my hand tightened instead of loosening. By happy accident, I yanked so hard that Suri was forced to the ground. Not one to look a gift assassin in the mouth, I threw myself down on top of her, using my grip on her braid to drive her head into the ground, once, then twice to daze her.

“End it, Sadie, or free yourself, Suri,” Reed barked from the side line.

“I’m not killing someone,” I argued, more shrieking than I planned. “Wolves are one thing, but a humanish woman is something else.”

“Humanish?” Suri bucked under me, and I sucked in a wounded breath when a punch hit my ribs, first on the left, then the right. Tears stabbed into my eyes; one escaped and trickled down my cheek as pure, white-hot fire ripped through my body. The pain was so startling and sudden that I could only process it as heat. “I am a twin, you fucking slug.”

Clearly that was a slur.

“Yeah, well, I’m an only child,” I threw back, as if that meant anything. It meant about as much to me as twin.

“You’re nothing more than shit under my shoe,” Suri seethed, but I saw it in her eyes as she fought to unseat me. She was terrified. She might not even mean what she said; under different circumstances, we might even be cordial. We might even be friends. But this was not a place for friends; it was a school for killers.

A pathetic little moan came from me when Suri hammered blows on my ribs, my chest, and my stomach. A particularly brutal one knocked all the air from my lungs, and I frantically tightened my grip on her hair, sure this was the moment she’d overpower me, get her hands around my throat, and choke me to death.

Instead, she changed tactics, first attempting to push me off her with all her strength. She was trained, and knew how to punch, but I must have been twice her weight, and I wasn’t going anywhere. I drove a sad attempt at a punch into her stomach, wanting her to feel the spiky pain I did. My lungs were tight, pained, and still hadn’t recovered. There was no part of my upper body that didn’t burn, scream, or howl with pain. The shock of it had begun to wear off, or maybe I’d burned through my adrenaline supply, because I was starting to feel it now: the agony. The sharp, grinding bite of excruciating pain.

Was something broken? There was no way this was just bruising, surely. I could hardly breathe, and it hurt to hit her, to ball my fist and slam it into her toned stomach.

“I am a trained slayer,” Suri snapped, seemingly to herself.

“A shit one,” I input, fighting the heaviness of my arms as pain raged to punch her again. It was weak, clumsy.6

“I will not be killed by a slug.”

“How about a snail?” I snarked, wasting valuable breath. It kept me sane, grounded me in the moment, and gave me enough strength to hit her again. “I’ve always liked snails.”

By sheer luck, my mouth had closed when she grabbed a fistful of ashes from the arena floor and threw them into my eyes. Positive: I wasn’t choking on ash. Negative: I couldn’t fucking see.

My eyes streamed, burning, gritty, and with a throaty growl, I wrenched hard on her braid until something snapped. The pain clearly debilitated Suri because she allowed me to climb off her, rubbing at my eyes even though it only made the scratching, scalding, knifing sensation worse.

“We have a victor,” Reed’s powerful voice boomed over the murmur of the crowd. “Sadie has won a place at Lunatic Academy.”

“By sheer dumb luck,” a woman sneered, her voice beautiful but the tone pure ugliness. I could guess who had spoken, and I bet she wore a brown leather jacket.

“And here I thought eating the damn pudding had won me a place,” I muttered, tears flowing, helping to clear some of the grit from my eyes. I still didn’t dare open them.

“Rogue, assist Sadie out of the arena,” Reed ordered. “Elix, you’re next; choose an arena. Fritz, I want you fighting her.”

“Why do I have to fight the mute weirdo?” a guy complained in a thin, reedy voice.

“Say that again, I fucking dare you,” I snapped, opening my eyes even though that was a dumbass thing to do. Ashes scraped my eyeballs, but I could see.

Through a blurry haze, I saw the silver-haired, sculpted-face prick who’d insulted my friend. I saw Elix where she walked, resigned, into the arena in front of mine. I saw the curvaceous, drop-dead-beautiful redhead I’d spied at breakfast stepping over the boundary of the ashen arena, her hands raised to help me.