Elle’s voice cuts cold through the room: “You can wait in the corridor, Raimondis.” No preamble, no option, just the command. Gai tracks the faintest pause as Raimondis weighs how much drama to wring from the order. The blond’s mouth quirks, half-disgust and half-smug satisfaction, but he only bows—painfully shallow, the kind that’s worse than open insubordination—and closes the door behind him with a little more force than necessary.

  The silence after is thick enough to knead. Gai watches moisture bead along Elle’s jaw, a slow trickle darkening the embroidered collar of her new gown. She doesn’t shake off the wet; she just stands there until the droplets run off her chin, like she's daring the rain to keep up. The room smells of damp cloth, cheap plaster, and the lingering spice of her perfume—sharp, astringent, almost medicinal over the funk of coliseum air.

  She doesn’t look at him to start. Instead she paces a short vector, three steps and reverse, then more abruptly than he expects, perches on the edge of the plank bed with her hands braced behind her. She gestures him over with a flick of the fingers—imperious, but not unkind. Her eyes are flat and shining, a colour somewhere between copper and gold. He obeys, crossing the few feet between wall and cot. When he sits, the bed frame’s so stiff it tries to launch him upright.

  “You ever wonder what it’s like?” she says. She doesn’t elaborate. The question hangs between them, more smoke than sound.

  Gai glances at her, unsure what she wants. “What what’s like?”

  She tilts her head, water streaking from a pale lock of hair at her temple. “Power. Real power. Not the games, not the titles or the seats at council. The kind that starts fires with a thought, that calls down wind, or—” Her shoulders flick, dismissing the rest. “The kind that changes things.”

  He shrugs. “I guess I always figured it would feel good. Like… control?” He fumbles, feeling the clumsiness of his own answer. “Or maybe like nothing at all. Empty. I wouldn’t know.”

  Elle’s mouth lifts at one corner, not quite a smile. “Anyone ever teach you how it works? I mean, really teach you—where it comes from?”

  Gai picks at the seam of his glove, stalling. “They tried. When I was little, the tutors said affinity was a kind of well. Some people had deeper ones, some shallow, some dry.”

  She snorts, not exactly a laugh. “That’s a metaphor for children.” She shifts her weight forward, the cot groaning under her. “The real part is, everyone has a well. But you don’t draw water from nowhere—it has to come from somewhere. And if you don’t know the source, you’re just drinking from the surface. You ever seen someone run out?”

  Gai shakes his head, slow. “No. I mean—the way the tutors told it, you’d fall over, maybe pass out if you used too much. Nobody ever ran dry, not for real.”

  Elle’s lips crease, just a little. She turns her hands up, palms bare, the cold leaving them stiff and trembling slightly. “The gnomes call it a battery.” She says it softer, like she’s quoting someone. “Not a well. They think of it as storage, made up by years of habits and building—something you can charge or drain, repair or destroy.” She looks at Gai, the lamplight scraping a sharp line over the bridge of her nose. “They say the mountain folk—gnomes, dwarves—don’t have wells at all. Or if they do, they’re bone dry.” She holds his gaze, unblinking. “It’s why they invent. Why they build. They have to make power, rather than just…be born with it.”

  Gai leans forward, elbows on knees. “That wasn’t in any of my classes,” he says, aware of how stupid it sounds the second it’s out of his mouth.

  “It wouldn’t be.” Elle shrugs, then shivers, just once.

  He tries to imagine the world that way: some people with a taproot sunk straight into lightning, others forced to build their own scaffolds, brick by brick. He never liked the idea of power as a birthright—the way kids with the brightest sparks got pulled out of the line, fast-tracked to the best schools, the best positions. He remembers the day he learned he had none, the way the old examiner frowned at the chart, then at Gai’s hands, as if he’d tracked mud into a holy place.

  She’s watching him. Not judging, just—watching. “You remind me of them,” Elle says. “The mountain folk. You’re practical. You fix things. You try to build something out of whatever’s left.”

  He shrugs. “That’s all I know how to do.” What else is there, when you start out broken?

  Elle’s eyes glint as she leans back, then she’s reaching into the folds of her robe—no ceremony, not even a warning. She pulls out a parcel, rough-wrapped in oilcloth and tied with an ugly knot of twine. The thing thunks onto the cot between them with a weight that speaks of hidden metal. She cuts the knot loose with her thumbnail and unfolds the cloth to reveal two bracers—dull gunmetal, inlaid with lines of dull blue, not quite glowing but alive even in the shadowed light.

  Gai stares: they’re nothing like the battered parade armour he’s worn the last few weeks, nor even the finer pieces he’s seen on the city’s noble birth guards. These are art, but brutal—the work of someone who values bones and function over ornament. The lines are crisp, every inch of the inside layered with something like black felt—so soft it looks expensive, so dense it looks safe. Along the outer face, the blue inlays form a lattice, six-sided and fractal, branching out from a vented cap at the wrist.

  He looks from the gear to Elle, question plain on his face.

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  “They’re Dwarven,” she says. “A gift, for you.” She rolls the word ‘gift’ slowly, like she isn’t sure whether to mean it as generosity or insult. “You’ll need them. I haven’t seen the draw, but if the Council’s involved, you won’t get a fair match. Someone will want to see if the ‘squid’ makes a better stain than a story.”

  He doesn’t reach for the bracers immediately. “They’re for me?”

  She nods. “I had them them fitted to your measure," she says, not meeting his eye. "The smith put up a fuss about your wrists being so narrow, said it was a waste, but I threatened his left thumb and he saw reason." She picks up one of the bracers, holds it out for him to take. "Try it."

  Gai lifts the bracer from its velvet cradle, surprised by its heft—heavier than it looks. The metal is cool against his palm, its surface etched with runes that seem to shift in the light, neither quite silver nor blue but something between.

  "The Dwarves have no Wells," Elle says, watching him turn the piece in his hands. "No internal source of elemental power. So they learned to make their own." Her fingers brush the inlays. "These can absorb a single elemental attack—fire, ice, lightning, whatever strikes you—and either return it as pure concussive force or expend it as a barrier."

  The lining draws his attention—a felt so dense it could be animal hide or something grown only in the deep mines, cool and dry despite the morning's humidity. Gai rolls up his sleeve, noting how Elle's eyes follow the movement, and slides the bracer on.

  A soft, intentional click as the mechanism locks to his forearm.

  He glances at the second one, then at Elle, silently asking permission. She nods, softer now, so he straps it on. The twin pulses synchronize, a double heartbeat. For a second, Gai feels a weight in his chest—not burden, exactly, but possibility, a sense of something coiled beneath the skin. He remembers the stories about Dwarven gear: how they don't just smith, they build with intent, the metal remembering every hammer and curse from its own creation. These must've cost a fortune or a favour, probably both.

  He turns his hands over, watching the blue filaments catch in the lamplight. "Why give them to me?" he asks, voice close to cracking.

  Elle’s eyes are on the bracers, not his face. Her fingers work the knot of the oilcloth as if she’s retying it in her mind, undoing and repeating the gesture because it’s easier than meeting his question straight on.

  “Because if you’re going to get trampled,” she says, “I’d rather you were trampled in tact.” Her mouth quirks, and the joke’s in the corner of it, but she isn’t smiling. “I can’t have you dying before you finish your favour to me. The business with Zephyrian. The book.”

  Elle’s next words are so soft he almost asks her to repeat them. “And because you’re going to need every advantage you can get, Gai. This next part, today—” She drags her thumbnail over the seam of the band, as if to test its edge. “They want to see what you’re made of. The council. Zephyrian. All of them.” She manages to look up, eyes shining wet at the corners, breath held as if she’s expecting the next words to sting. “No one’s ever fought fair in this city. Don’t give them the satisfaction of watching you break.”

  He tries a laugh, but it’s a nervous, gutted thing. “I wasn’t planning on it. But if I come back with fewer fingers, you’ll owe me a new set.”

  She gives a short bark that might have been a laugh in another life. “You’re not coming back with fewer fingers. If you do, I’ll have a surgeon attach your nose to your hand for the rest of your life.”

  He grins, despite himself, and flexes both wrists in the bracers.

  He can feel Elle watching as he flexes, the weight and cleverness of the bracers settling into the shape of his arms. She’s trying not to show anything, but her eyes have a hard, holding shine that reminds him of the city at night—unbreakable, but still breakable, if you know where to look. He wants to say something. Something about gratitude, about how, if he’s being honest, he never thought she’d spend the coin or risk the lecture for someone like him. But if he starts he won’t stop, and she’s already moving—collecting the oilcloth, smoothing it, the movement a wall between them.

  “Thank you,” he manages.

  “Don’t thank me yet. They won’t make it easy for you,” she says, and her voice is a little more air than usual, just enough to show the cost. “Just… remember, it’s a spectacle. Give them what they want, but don’t let them see you sweat.”

  He nods. The mechanism at his right wrist catches with a soft, promising click. He wonders if the Dwarves engineered it that way on purpose—a secret handshake for the desperate.

  She stands, abrupt, as if the cot’s springs rebounded under her. For a moment she towers over him, even though he’s sitting and she’s not much taller to begin with. The gold in her eyes is brighter now, and in the small, ugly room she feels both alien and familiar, like he’s seeing a version of her from the dreams he never says out loud.

  “You’ll be fine,” she says. “Just don’t die.” She hesitates, then steps forward, and he’s sure she’s going to do something—hug him, maybe, or punch him, or just pat his shoulder with a princess’s ceremonial awkwardness. Instead, she leans down, careful, and for a breath he can smell the ozone of her hair, the medicine of her skin. She tucks a stray lock behind his ear, her palm cold but steady, and says: “If you win, meet me by the west gate. If you lose, I’ll find you myself.”

  He snorts, tries to turn it into a smile, and she lets her hand fall to her side.

  Then the door shudders open, and an attendant in a too-short jacket peers in, nervous. “They’re ready for you,” he says, not to Elle, but to Gai. “It’s time.”

  Elle takes a step back, the curtain falling. Gai stands, feeling the bracers drag his arms down a fraction, then lifts his chin. The world outside the little room is a tunnel of wet stone, torchlight, and the sound of a thousand voices roaring through the bones of the coliseum. The attendant leads him down a cramped corridor, past two guards who don’t look at him, past a row of doors where other competitors might be sharpening swords or just waiting for the moment to break.

  The tunnel darkens, then widens. Ahead, a ramp opens onto the sand. The air is thicker here—alive with sweat, blood, the hot-cold stink of the crowd overhead. Gai feels the ground vibrate with the noise in his chest before he hears it in his ears: the crowd, an animal thing, baying for violence or spectacle or maybe just something better than the weather. The attendant steers him up the ramp, then melts away, leaving Gai at the mouth of the arch. He stands for a second, pulse hammering, the scent of wet limestone and old blood making his teeth ache.

  A bell rings. That’s the cue.

  He steps out. The coliseum is a crater walled with thousands of faces, a smear of umbrellas and scarves and upturned mouths. The field is not a true circle but a ragged expanse of mud and sand, spattered with pools of standing water and the occasional dragline where something heavy got dragged out in a hurry. At the far end, a scaffolding of boulders and logs forms a kind of half-hearted barricade. In the centre, the ground rises in a low, uneven mound, probably meant to be a tactical advantage for whoever claims it first.

  As he walks, the bracers feel heavier, more obvious, but also weirdly comforting. The stadium noise rises in waves, cresting and spitting out syllables from the far stands. He can’t make sense of any of them, but every now and then a chant breaks through, syllables hammered into his name, or something like it: “Gai! Gai! Gai!” Not affection. Not even recognition. Just hunger, wanting to see what happens to someone with nothing to lose.

  Gai moves out onto the sand, each step slow and steady, boots scraping the grit as he walks. The sunlight is sharp and throws long shadows over the churned ground—water pooled in shallow pits, rocks jutting up at odd angles. The crowd’s noise presses in on him, too much to make out words, more force than sound. Beneath it all, his heartbeat thuds loud enough to drown out everything else.

  In the centre stands the Sergeant of Games, wrapped in ceremonial armour with green edges that don’t move even when the wind stirs his cloak. He’s motionless, face unreadable under his helmet, but Gai can feel the weight of his stare: someone who’s seen a hundred of these walkouts and knows how most of them end.

  Gai doesn’t linger on him. Beyond the sergeant is Mack.

  Mack waits—feet planted like he means to stay there until next winter. No jokes, no sideways comments. His face is set, jaw clenched, eyes clear but unfamiliar; Gai’s never seen him wear that kind of seriousness before. The sweat already slicking Mack’s hair might be nerves or just the heat—it’s impossible to tell.

  The crowd noise recedes, turning thin and distant. The bracers on Gai’s arms are heavier than ever; he can feel their strange power humming against his skin. Up in the royal box somewhere are all the eyes that matter—Elle’s, Raimondis’s, his father’s—but he doesn’t look up. Won’t let himself.

  The sergeant lifts one metal-clad hand. Instantly, the crowd goes silent.