The door closed behind the King, and the hallway felt ten degrees warmer.
Sumit did not move.
He stood exactly where the King had left him, one hand still pressed against the half-healed scar on his chest, and replayed the last few minutes in his head. He could not seem to stop.
It had started with a simple question. Are you connected to the black trees? The owl-man had asked it softly, almost kindly, the way a doctor asks where it hurts. Then the room had changed.
There had been no shout, no flash of light, and no killing intent like the kind in the jungle. The King had simply let a little of himself out.
And Sumit had understood.
He had stood in front of Avin and felt the air turn to stone. He had thought, this is what the top looks like. He had been wrong. Avin had been a mountain. The King was the sky above it. The pressure did not push on Sumit's body, it pressed on the idea of him, as if the world had quietly decided that his chest did not need to rise anymore. His knees had hit the floor before he knew he was falling. His aura had crawled deep into his bones and curled up like a frightened animal.
A hundred times, he had thought, numbly. He's a hundred times Avin. Maybe more.
He had not thought about his sword, or about the Cat-man's lessons, or about the energy drain. The idea of fighting back never even arrived. There had been only one thought, small and clear and repeating: how do I survive this monster?
So he had told the truth. He had said he did not know what the black trees were, that he had only run from one, and that he had never seen the people who made them. His voice had come out thin and scratchy. He did not remember choosing the words.
The crow-man, Simi, had listened with his head tilted and his black eyes unblinking. Then he had given the King a single nod.
And the weight had lifted. Just like that. The King had apologized, and Sumit had barely heard it over the sound of his own lungs.
Now, in the quiet hallway, Sumit looked at the door the two of them had walked through. The wood was plain and the handle was brass. He stared at it for what felt like a minute.
It was ten, by the clock on the wall.
"Okay," he said to the empty hallway. His voice cracked on the second syllable. "Okay. We're alive. That's… good. That's a good start."
He tried to take a step. His legs shook so badly that he had to put a hand against the wall.
Really? Now? After the lion cut me open, you're doing this now?
He breathed in, breathed out, and walked, one shaking step at a time, until the shaking had turned into a stiff, ordinary limp. By the time he pushed through the doors at the end of the medical wing, the evening light made him squint.
...
The arena looked different from outside, the evening before the finals.
Workers were hanging red and gold banners along the upper wall. A cart full of extra benches rattled through the gates. Guards in the capital's green coats stood at every entrance, checking every face. It looked like a city preparing for a festival, and nobody seemed to notice that it was also preparing for a war.
Sumit noticed it only because he had spent the last hour thinking about death.
"Sumit!"
Ishita was coming down the steps two at a time, her bandaged arm tucked against her ribs. Leo was a few steps behind her, still in his guard coat, a roll of papers under one arm and a very tired look on his face.
"You're walking," Ishita said, and stopped short to look him up and down. "Good. Hurts?"
"Only when I breathe," Sumit said. "Or think. Or stand."
"Then you're fine." She did not smile. That was what bothered him. Ishita always found something to be annoyed at, and she was not annoyed now. "Have you seen Jack?"
Sumit's stomach dropped a little. "Not since yesterday. Leo asked me last night, too."
"I know." Her tail flicked once, sharply. "He still hasn't shown up. He's never done this. Not once. He sat through the match where I broke my nose, and he was late to that, too, but he came." She swallowed. "He wasn't there for my fight, Sumit. He wasn't there."
Leo cleared his throat. "I've checked the barracks twice, and the gates. I've asked every guard in the capital." He lifted the roll of papers helplessly. "And tomorrow is the finals. The whole capital will be in those seats, every clan, every noble. The King himself is going to be there. I have to be in the arena all night, going over the patrols, or somebody will get hurt."
He turned to Sumit, and his ears flattened.
"I hate asking this. You're hurt, and you should be resting. But you're outside the tournament now, and she can't search the whole city alone. Would you help her?"
Sumit did not hesitate. "Of course."
Ishita looked at him for a moment. Then, awkwardly, she nodded. "Thanks."
"Don't get sentimental," Sumit said. "I'm only doing it because he owes me a drink."
That got half a smile out of her, and then it was gone.
...
They split up to cover more ground.
Sumit took the markets first, because Jack could always be found near food. He pushed through the evening crowds, past the stalls selling roasted corn and honeyed dates, asking every vendor the same question. Tall, grey wolf-man, big grin, talks too much. Seen him?
The answers were a nearly identical tapestry of shrugs and "maybe yesterday" and "try the Roaring Bull."
The Roaring Bull was a cramped pub off the main road, with sticky tables and a barkeep who had a face like a boiled egg. Jack was a regular. The barkeep wiped a mug and looked sad. "He owes me for a whole barrel," he said. "I'd have thrown him out by now. But he hasn't been in for two days, and I'm starting to think I'd like him back."
The bathhouse was next. Then the rooftop behind the barracks where, Ishita had said, Jack liked to nap on the tiles. Then the practice yard, the stables, and the little bridge over the canal where he supposedly fed stray cats.
Nothing. There were no pawprints, no stories, and no trace.
By the time the sky had turned from orange to purple, Sumit's legs were screaming. He stopped at a crossroads and found himself facing the Temple of Life.
It rose over the end of the road, white and calm, with a thousand little windows glowing gold. A pair of priests were sweeping the steps. One of them looked up and smiled at him politely, and Sumit nodded back, feeling stupid for even thinking about it.
Jack wouldn't go to a temple. Jack would rather eat a sword.
He turned away. Behind him, deep under the stones he had not given a second look, the ground gave a very faint hum.
He did not notice.
...
In the cavern beneath the Temple, the blue-black lanterns had been lit for the last time.
Brother Kabir walked slowly down the long row of stone pillars, one hand trailing across the carved symbols. Each one was warm now, glowing steadily, like a heartbeat that had finally found its rhythm. Behind him, the cultists waited in a silent line, hoods up, their hands folded.
"Report," Kabir said.
A tall man stepped forward and bowed. "The seeds are in place, Brother. Forty-two around the arena walls, beneath the stands and in the sand. Six more inside the tunnel mouths. The renovation crews believed they were laying drainage."
"And the roots?"
"Already spreading. By dawn they will have reached the pillars." The man hesitated. "The seeds need a great deal of feeding. The crowd will help. But the Elders and the clan champions…"
"Will be inside the circle with everyone else," Kabir said calmly. "We have prepared for that."
At the center of the cavern, the little black tree pulsed in its basin of cracked stone, its sick blue gem glowing with every beat. And beside it, on the cold floor, stood a statue of a wolf, his jaw locked in a snarl, his claws half-drawn.
Kabir paused in front of it. He studied the stone face for a moment, almost fondly.
"And the royal box?"
The tall man swallowed. "As you ordered, Brother. We buried more there than anywhere else. Three times the number. And the old ones, the ones we saved from the western marsh, are planted right beneath his seat."
"Good." Kabir's gentle face did not change. "Do not misunderstand, my friend. Every other seed in this arena is a cage for a bird. The ones beneath the King are a cage for a storm. Forty-two will drain the crowd. They will not drain him, not alone, not for long. We know him too well." He smiled thinly. "We have all stood in a room with that man. We all remember what it felt like."
Nobody in the line said a word.
"Tomorrow," Kabir said, "the whole capital will sit down in one place to watch a tournament. And when the barrier closes, they will feed the seed, and the seed will feed our lord."
He laid his palm on the statue's cold shoulder, the way a man might pat a horse before a long journey.
"Sleep well, Captain," he murmured. "You will not have to wait much longer."
Above them, the city went on with its evening. Far above, on the road outside the Temple, a boy with a limp turned toward the arena and kept looking.
He did not find Jack that night.
And in the morning, the finals would begin.