Ellen looked way better than she had when I started my fight with Rob. Her color was coming back quickly, and she didn’t wince when she wrapped me in a hug. I let her pull me in close, then, when she finally let go, shot her a quick wink. “Had it the whole time.”

  She smacked my shoulder, then glared at me as she pouted. “No, you didn’t. Everyone saw the whole thing. You got lucky.”

  “Did I?” I shrugged and started heading for the food stands. Ellen’s hand grabbed mine, and she followed me over as I kept talking. “I mean, this was the plan. Improvise, find windows, exploit them. I figured out one of Rob’s possible weaknesses and exploited it.”

  “And which one was that?”

  “His build doesn’t have enough Mana regeneration.”

  Ellen stopped for a moment. I could almost see the gears clicking into place in her head. Then she nodded. “Stormbreak ended the fight. Everything after that was a formality.”

  “Yeah.” I paused to order street tacos from a sketchy-looking trailer. “We’ve got an hour before Ophelia and Caleb. Any bets on who wins?”

  “Ophelia,” Ellen said. “I don’t see how she loses to anyone who can’t overcome her deterrence field.”

  I thought about it for a minute. “The problem for her is finding damage. She’s not going to lose, but she might not be able to win. If Caleb fights smart, he might be able to find a way to exploit that, just like I exploited Rob’s weakness. It’s a long shot, but there’s one other thing to think about.”

  “What’s that?” Ellen asked.

  “Revenge is a powerful motivator. It made him break into my apartment, trick Jessie, and even abandon his real identity. He wants a chance to fight Deborah Callahan, and he’ll do anything to get it. That makes him the most dangerous person left in the tournament.”

  Ellen ordered her food, then rubbed her hair between her fingers. “But when Deborah loses…that’ll go away?”

  “Yeah.” I poked her side, and she flinched. “Sorry. You’re feeling more confident, then?”

  “I am. I’m going to get Jeff to help me with something, but I might have a way to win.”

  The taco guy called my name, then Ellen’s, and I dug in. Sketchy-looking taco trailers always made the best food.

  A few hours later, we stood and watched the screen under a tent as Ophelia and Caleb walked into the Fallen Delvers portal. The sparring room changed as soon as they entered, warping into a dark prison with a single, round central space and a tower rising in the very middle. The Spark of Life sat in the tower, and each of the fighters entered from one of the dozen locked cell doors.

  “Wide open arena,” I said. “I’m not sure who that favors.”

  “Me either,” Ellen said. She leaned against me, and I pulled her in close. “It’s cold.”

  “It is,” I agreed. The constant rain and cloud cover had taken a toll, even in the late summer heat.

  Then Ophelia’s aura flashed out, and behind it, the exclusion zone rippled into being. A trio of arrows slammed into it and disappeared. They didn’t bounce off; they vanished. “That’s new,” I said.

  Caleb reacted instantly—and not in the way I expected him to. He drew again and fired. This time, the arrow glowed orange and ice-blue, and when it hit, the exclusion zone’s entire surface rippled in a cascade of colors. He fired again, and the Mana wall shivered.

  “Gotta be his merged Unique,” Ellen said.

  I nodded. So far, Ophelia hadn’t made a single move. She seemed utterly confident in her aura and Unique’s ability to keep her safe. A third frostfire arrow hit, and as it did, she pushed her zone out until it filled the space between cells and tower.

  “Oh,” I said.

  “Oh, what?” Ellen asked.

  “You’ll see.”

  She started walking forward. The exclusion zone moved with her, rippling as Caleb opened fire on it. Arrow after arrow slammed into it. Some were obviously infused with Mana—his jury-rigged build had to be closer to a spellblade’s than an archer’s. Those attacks seemed more useful than the regular shots, but they weren’t going to be enough.

  He started backing up, curving around the tower. Ophelia kept moving forward. Her wall passed the entrance he’d used, then kept going as arrow after arrow crashed into it. A camera focused in on the Lonely Mage’s face. It was covered in sweat as she moved with the zone, and her whole body shook from the effort.

  “It’s…not meant to move, is it?” Ellen asked.

  “No, it’s not. Her core’s not going to handle this for long.” I stared at Ophelia. The rest of the fight didn’t matter—only her core. She’d pushed it way too far, and if she kept going, it’d break.

  “What’s she doing?”

  “She’s trying to pin him.”

  That was the only strategy that made sense. Against an archer, in this arena, Ophelia would lose on a long enough time scale. She was smart enough to know that—and crazy enough to push her skill and her core to the limit overcoming that reality.

  She was changing the shape of the prison, pushing her exclusion zone out all around Caleb.

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  And the archer, bit by bit, ran out of room.

  It took almost six minutes of fighting for him to make the first—and last—mistake of the fight. Ophelia looked almost ready to collapse when he stepped sideways, just far enough into the cell she’d entered from that she could lunge forward, shrink her exclusion zone, and bottle him up. The zone strengthened, and she took a gasping, rattling breath, then pushed it forward again and again until Caleb was pressed against the wall, completely unable to move. He tried to pull a knife and stab Ophelia as her face got within a foot of his.

  The blow never landed—never even got close—and neither did the dozens of attempts after that. Opelia just stared at Caleb, focusing on the barrier in front of her, and after a minute of struggling, Sarah cleared her throat from the tower. “Match.”

  “Told you,” Ellen said from the driver’s seat five minutes later.

  I nodded. “You’ve said that like seven times. I said I thought he had a chance because he had more to fight for, but I didn’t expect that. I don’t know if anyone in the tournament can beat her if she can move with the field.”

  It was honestly horrifying. I’d underestimated her; in our abortive fight against the Traynor Guild’s team, she’d been more of an obstacle than an active combatant. Sure, she was the Lonely Mage, but I hadn’t considered what her B-Rank power-up might actually look like. Even more worrying, she hadn’t used her ability to move with the exclusion zone until the Caleb fight—not even with the Traynor team.

  She was the second most terrifying person left in the tournament—Deborah existed, and we still hadn’t figured out what to do with her. But I was pretty sure about one thing.

  Ellen could beat her.

  Ophelia St. Vrain had tipped her hand during the infernal portal break. She couldn’t maintain her exclusion zone forever—especially if she wanted to keep moving. Ellen, however…

  Ellen didn’t have the same time pressure. She was shockingly sustain-oriented for a mage—especially with Pepperoni feeding her Mana. Caleb hadn’t broken the exclusion zone. No one had so far. But he’d been close, and Ellen would have almost every advantage he had, plus one big one he didn’t.

  Her damage potential was massively higher than his.

  “So, when you’re up against her—“

  “No, Kade,” Ellen said. She held up a hand as her AI-driven car wove through traffic. Neither of us reacted to the blaring truck horn. Deimis knew what it was doing.

  “No?”

  “No. I’m not thinking about her yet. She doesn’t matter. Deborah’s the only person in the tournament who matters to me right now.”

  “Ouch.”

  She blushed a little and rolled her eyes. Then she leaned over and pecked me on the cheek. “You know what I mean. I’ll start game-planning for my fight with you after I beat Ophelia, and I’ll figure her out after Deborah.”

  “Hey, you’re making it sound like I’ll wipe the floor with Jeff or his opponent.”

  “You will, Kade. Rob was supposed to be unbeatable. You took him apart in less than five minutes.” She leaned back and breathed. “We’ll see each other in the final round.”

  “I hope so. You think you’ve got a good play against Deborah, then?”

  “I do.” She paused. Then, after a moment, she kept going, quietly and quickly. “So, I don’t think she’s been holding out or anything. Her build hasn’t been public knowledge for a while—a lot of A-Rankers conceal their set-ups like most of the S-Rankers do—but the last records of her skill set-up show a skill that’s sort of like Jeff’s Retaliate. I think she’s gaining strength from the number of enemies around her.”

  “And that’s how she killed Harold so quickly? She turned his strength against him?”

  Ellen shrugged and nodded at the same time. “It’s the only thing that makes sense. My guess is that she’s able to define what an enemy is, or what a threat is, or however the skill works. And she’s…”

  I waited. She didn’t fill in the space, so I thought about it. We’d been with her on the Carlsbad convoy, and we’d never seen anything like this. And she’d fought on the wall protecting Angelo. It made no sense for her to conceal a skill like that, in those situations. But it was Deborah we were talking about. If there was anyone who’d keep a secret like this, it was her.

  “She’s been putting everyone at risk for this?” I asked.

  “Yeah.” Ellen stared out the front window. “It doesn’t make sense unless—“

  “Deborah Callahan is a vindictive, egotistical person who’s poison for anyone who doesn’t treat her the way she thinks she deserves, and she works for the Roadrunners. Angelo Lawrence is a lot of things, but he’s not patient—and he’s probably not patient with her, either. She’s probably been holding back for him, not for everyone else.”

  “Anyway, I can exploit that. If I don’t give her anything to use as an ‘enemy,’ she won’t be able to take advantage. That means no Shadow Shapes. They’re too ‘monster-looking.’ But I think the Darkness Shadestutter strategy can work against her.”

  “It also means no Pepperoni,” I said.

  “Yep.”

  We started game-planning, and by the time we pulled up to the Desert Wind building, we had a pretty good plan laid out for tomorrow. It’d still be rough—Deborah was an A-Rank tank, after all—but I was pretty confident Ellen could pull off a win. That was, if we were assuming the right stuff about her.

  And if she could, I would see her in the finals.

  Carter hurt.

  It wasn’t a physical pain. But it still hurt.

  He stared at his phone, and at the bracket on its screen. Ophelia St. Vrain had moved on. He hadn’t. He was out. She wasn’t. Not the Lonely Mage. Carter didn’t care about her—the only thing that mattered about Ophelia was that she’d beaten him, and as upset as he was about it, it had nothing to do with her as a person. She was probably just lovely. Maybe.

  You didn’t get a title like the Lonely Mage by being personable, but maybe she was just prickly on the outside.

  No, though. It wasn’t that Ophelia had won. It was that he’d gotten so close to the fight he needed against Deborah Callahan. He’d needed it. And he’d been ready, in a way that most people wouldn’t have been. After all, he’d worked with her, seen her train, and knew what she was capable of—both on the battlefield and off of it.

  He punched the pillow on his cheap hotel bed. Tears ran down his face—he’d managed to hold them back until he got back to his room, but then the sheer, overwhelming, impotent rage took over. He let it flow through him for a while.

  Carter had people who, whether they knew it or not, were relying on him. Terri and Lizzie were better now. He’d seen them outside of a portal, with the Roadrunners. They were still in danger as long as Deborah was out there.

  And he’d failed them. The rage and frustration were justified.

  Then, when he was finally empty, he shut his eyes and breathed in and out, in and out. Slowly, he got himself back under a semblance of control.

  Deborah was unchecked.

  She had two more fights before she hit Kade, though. And Carter had no doubt that Kade could beat her.

  He pulled up everything he knew about Eleanor Traynor on his phone and got watching. She’d be the first line of defense. She was strong for a mage—more sustain than should be possible, a build that was hidden by the Desert Wind Guild, and a variety of tactics in the previous fights that didn’t match the reports from inside portal worlds. He jotted down a few notes, then stared at her status and the one he still had from his time as Deborah’s lackey.

  Eleanor was strong. She was also brittle in ways that Carter could have taken advantage of. It wasn’t just that she was a mage—archers usually beat them if the fight went long enough, after all. It was that she was a single-type caster. He’d never so much as seen her attempt to use anything but shadow magic. That didn’t square with her build—she was intentionally ignoring half of a skill.

  But did that matter? Would that half a skill make a difference now?

  After a minute, he shook his head and pulled up Ophelia’s status instead.

  She’d beat Deborah—and if she didn’t, then Carter would have to meet with Kade one more time. Hopefully, it’d go better than the last time he dropped by.

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