I crashed into the rough stone. Rock, shaken loose from the force of the blow, rained down. Sharp pain at my brow followed, then the first trickle of warmth seeped down my face..

I pushed off the wall, coming in low with my blades raised, though the darkness and the sting of blood in my eyes blinded me. I struck and something, or someone, parried. Steel kissed, the ring muffled by the heavy curtain of spider silk above. A large hand wrapped around my throat, thrusting my head back against the stone with enough force to rattle my teeth.

“I should end you now,” Varian hissed, close enough that a fine spray of spittle hit my cheek.

I forced a smirk as I delved deep for my magic and found my reserves pitifully depleted. “Should? Is that doubt I hear, General Prince?”

Something flashed across his features. His grip loosened a fraction.

I lifted a hand, brushing his spit from my cheek and forcing him to break his hold on my throat. “Not so sure I’m the guilty party now, are you? Not after you’ve seen daddy dearest,” I crooned. “He looks suddenly well for a male who was already half a step in his grave.”

Varian growled, white teeth flashing in the dark.

“Soren was strong, was he not? Powerful and so very young. Only just entering his prime.”

“My father would never—”

“Wouldn’t he? Did he not do something similar to your mother? He stole her life—murdered her to save his own neck.”

His arm shook where it braced against me. “You’ve waited years for this chance,” I said. “So, what are you waiting for?” I pressed myself closer until flesh split and hot blood ran down my throat. I gritted my teeth. “End it. Prove to dear old dad that you can. You’ll never have a better chance.”

Varian’s eyes narrowed, but the pressure of Deimos remained steady. “Did you kill Leda? Did you have anything to do with Soren’s death?”

“No,” I growled.

“And yet you had enough strength to kill one of my men. Even with that iron around your wrists. How do I know that cell even held you? How do I know you didn’t Shadow Walk free?”

I laughed. Perhaps it was exhaustion. It was certainly foolish, but I couldn’t help myself. “Maybe you’re right. But I wouldn’t have wasted my freedom on that Solna male. No, I would have used my time for someone far more diverting . . . My future bride, for instance—”

I sensed his rage, saw the Bloodlust take over his gaze. His muscles tensed, ready to draw the blade across my throat. I hurled a wall of darkness and death—the absolute last drop of my power—toward him. It would have ended a human. Varian fell breathless to his knees.

That’s when I saw her.

She might have been beautiful, once.

The creature before me clung to the apex of the opposite wall. From belly up, she was humanlike, with a slender stomach, youthful bare breasts, and curtains of glistening black hair. But, like her children, that was where any trace of humanity ended.

A swollen, coarse-haired abdomen hung behind her, where her eight deadly sharp legs stood braced against the stone. Each was tipped with tined, keen-edged claws, but the two front legs were shorter, each one trailing lines of fine webbing from hidden spinnerets. She was larger than her children, who’d been little bigger than the humans they’d been. Even with her legs crouched beneath her, she was tall as a stallion. And unlike her smaller children, who had two black eyes gazing from each socket, Arachne had six, another pair centered on her forehead. And all were trained with deadly fascination on the two males who’d dared to enter her lair.

“Shit,” I said on a loosed breath.

Varian tensed, but he didn’t dare move. “Behind me, isn’t it?”

My silence was answer enough.

“Can you . . . can you do that again?”

Arachne’s head cocked to the side as she listened.

I reached deep. There was nothing. Not even a flicker of icy darkness. His chains had done their work well. I shook my head.

“Shit,” he echoed.

I had dropped my blades when Varian crashed into me, my right hand still slick with blood, the other knocked free from the impact. The twin knives were both on the rock-strewn ground, feet away. With Arachne poised to strike, it may as well have been miles.

I bent ever so slightly, my fingers reaching for the nearest blade.

She charged.

A liquid hiss filled the air as she leapt from the wall. Varian rolled to the side, barely avoiding her deadly claws. She skittered over the stone after him with unnatural speed.

I grabbed my blades, swinging in a low arch as I skidded across the gravel. One curved blade caught the claw-tipped end of her front leg and severed the limb. The appendage flew with a spray of gray-green blood.

She cried out, the shrill shriek, and whirled away from Varian and toward me. Her once talented hands—now turned to ugly, long-fingered talons—swiped for my head, whirring through the air as I ducked and swerved in the darkness.

I avoided her many legs long enough for Varian to recover and join the fray.

He brought Deimos up in a two-handed slash. The foul reek of her poisonous blood filled the air, and she loosed a chilling cry.

A series of inhuman screams answered it.

Her children.

I turned. Two spiders raced down the corridor—the same path I’d taken. Their slitted nostrils flared. They made right for me, drawn by the blood trail I’d left.

What timing, I cursed myself. What fantastic bloody timing.

With a practiced flick of my wrist, one long dagger flew from my hand, imbedding its curved edge in the gut of what had been a human man. The beast cried out but kept coming. Noxious blood oozed from the wound as his hand rose. Palm open, sticky webbing shot straight for my face. I whirled, moving low, and came up at the spider’s opposite side. One last thrust of my remaining blade met its mark. The spider’s leg curled in and the body dropped to the floor.

Before I could retrieve my other blade from the creature’s abdomen, the second spider was on me. A razor-edged leg landed a glancing blow that cut through the leather greave that covered my calf. The wound burned and blood flowed, but there was none of the telltale reek that marked poison.

I stumbled back, remembering what I’d told Parthenia—aim for the soft parts. I waited, single blade in hand, allowing this spider—a female—to rear back on her legs like a frightened mare. I rushed forward to meet her, rib screaming, and sliced from belly to back.

Just like the spider I’d killed only hours before, her guts fell in a stinking heap onto the ground.

Wheezing against the pain in my side, I turned away from the hot pile of entrails to find Varian backed against the wall, a web of spider silk sticking up in silvery globs around him, trapping him right where Arachne wanted him. Blood ran down one arm from a deep gash in his bicep as he struggled to keep Arachne away. Her fangs extended from a black maw opened impossibly wide. Venom dripped from her fangs.

Varian feigned to the right. Landed a strike to her hairy, distended abdomen, but it did little. She rocked back a step, only to charge for him again. Even with Varian’s God-Blooded skills, he was losing ground and his strength was fading fast.

I hesitated. Varian had waged war, enslaving humans and any who dared stand against him for years. He’d already taken much from me. Already waged war on the Shards—on Myridia—once before. He would try to again. If I let him.

But if nature took its course, Arachne could end him now.

And yet, Varian had had me at the mercy of his sword, and he’d hesitated. Well, until I’d baited him, of course. But the Emperor’s sudden, miraculous transformation obviously troubled the General Prince. Perhaps there was hope for my old friend.

Varian took a risk. Leaving his flank exposed, he slashed against the spider silk caging him. His blade bounced off, the silk intact. She reared back, clawed hand striking him. Blood flowed down his armor.

My mind worked frantically. Despite the many blows Varian had landed, Deimos had torn only the shallowest of cuts in the creature’s thick hide. My short blades had little chance of doing even that much damage. And with my magic gone, what other options did I have?

Tafari’s words echoed in my mind—we had no other weapons and thought it might be of some use. Therius insists that it is sturdy stuff.

I pulled the thick coil of spider silk from my belt.

Arachne’s gift had been weaving, but it had also been her downfall. Perhaps it could be again.

I searched the darkness and there, looming out of the shadows, stood an outcropping of jagged rock. I wound one end of the silk around the formation, keeping the rest of the silk loosely circled around my one hand, my blade in the other. I moved behind Arachne and she reared up, spinnerets shooting wads of webbing at Varian, and slashed against her backside. She spun to face me and, leaving a loop of silk loose, I ducked beneath her as she swiped with her taloned hands. I kept low, weaving beneath her knife-edged legs as she pursued me. Each time, I came up on her opposite side, wrapping loop after loop of silk around her spindly legs.

Varian sprang forward with a cry, thrusting his blade high and catching her in the hard belly. Unlike her children, this was clearly not a soft part. The strike only enraged her. She shrieked and skittered towards him, fangs wide.

Her movement drew the silk around her legs tight. She stumbled but kept upright.

“Varian!” I cried, throwing the last loop of silk high over Arachne’s back.

His face shot up as the glimmering fibers flew toward him. He caught the thread and pulled it tight with all the strength Ares had blessed him with.

She struggled, crying out, legs skittering for purchase as we pinioned them tight with her own webbing. Not even her sharp legs could break the strong bonds that she herself had woven.

“Hold her!” I bellowed.

I took a running leap, propelling myself against the rock wall, and landed firmly on Arachne’s back. Her taloned hands reached for me, sliding off my leathers as I grabbed a fistful of her thick, greasy black hair and yanked her head back to expose a white, once beautiful, neck.

Solid black eyes met mine, and I dragged my blade across her throat. Poisoned blood gushed from the wound and the soulless malice faded from her eyes. Something human, confused and pained, filled those black eyes. Then peace. The same peace I’d seen pass over the faces of the dead countless times before.

Her body went limp, legs curling beneath her.

The Second Trial was over. And I had a feeling that we were the only two left in the game.

We entered the labyrinth’s innermost chamber—a dark and dank hall littered with bone dust and the rusting weapons of the many who had faced Arachne before. It was quick work to find her nest. To end those poor humans who had not yet hatched.

We made our way out of the maze, following a series of nicks Varian had been wise enough to leave in the rock. He’d marked the path all the way back to where the Dorians waited in their underground hall.

“I wasn’t meant to kill them,” Varian said, breaking the silence.

“Who?” I asked, unable to hide the bitterness in my voice. “Your fellow competitors or your father’s pet monsters.”

He flashed me a cruel smile. “So they found you.”

“Your Eleutherian cronies? Yes, though I’m afraid they didn’t fare so well in the encounter.”

He shook his head. “A shame. They were useful. But I meant the spiders. My father enjoys putting his monsters to work. He thought they would make an excellent addition to my own forces.”

My gut roiled. The idea of slaves used in such a way—transformed into soulless beasts to feed Adresto’s endless hunger for conquest—was too much to stomach. It was almost too cruel to imagine, had I not witnessed what the Dorians were capable of with my own eyes. “I take it you disagreed.”

“I’ll do what I must for my people, for the empire. But there are some lines that should not be crossed.”

A flicker of torchlight cut through the gloom ahead and a slight murmuring of voices drifted toward us. We were almost there. Almost done. “I don’t think your father feels that way.”

Varian slowed, drawing behind me a step. “No,” he admitted, “but there is one thing we agree on.”

Dread spilled like a slow poison through my blood.

I turned, but too late.

A flash of white was all I saw before a searing lightning strike of pain blinded me. I fell to a knee, the edge of my vision blackening. “What—” was all I could manage. The pain was all-consuming. I reached for the source of the agony, fingers numb as I pulled an object from the tender flesh between my neck and shoulder.

A white fang clattered to the floor. The pointed end of it gleamed a sickly green from venom strong enough to kill a god.

Varian yanked me to my feet, and I cried out at the jolting movement. He threw my arm over his shoulder and dragged me toward the open fissure in the rock ahead and the crowd that waited beyond.

“It will be a slow death, and I’m sorry for that,” he said, leaning in close enough that I could feel his breath. Every nerve in my body was on fire and even that small contact became an agony. “But as I said, there is one thing my father and I do agree upon. You cannot have Aurora. She belongs to Doria,” he hissed, fingers digging into my arm as he pulled me toward the waiting light. “She belongs to me.”