The Veil by Stuart Meczes Page A

replaced by the Lightwardens.
    “It’s okay,” I said, with my hands up in an appeasing gesture. “My Huntmaster isn’t feeling well. We just want to leave, that’s all.”
    The Lightwardens looked at each other and then one of them nodded. “I can escort you out, however, once you leave, you cannot return.”
    “I don’t want to return to this murder house,” hissed Gabriella under her breath.
    “Lead the way,” I said quickly.
    The guard gave us a lingering stare and then turned on his heel, shepherding us away from the cheering crowds and towards one of the doors that led back out onto the streets. I glanced over my shoulder and caught sight of the rest of Orion, all stood up and watching us from afar, unsure of what to do. I had no choice but to leave them to it as the guard unlatched one of the doors and it creaked open, allowing the fading remnants of setting sunlight to pour in around us.
    Once we were on the other side and the Lightwarden had firmly shut the door behind him, I turned to Gabriella, placing my arms on either side of her arms. “I’m so sorry Ella, I had no idea it was going to be like that in there,” I said. “Jesus, that was so messed up.”
    “I can’t believe they would allow something that cruel to happen, Alex. Merfolk are Fera – part of a neutral class. If they would allow them to kill each other in the name of sport, it makes me pretty damn nervous to think what they could be doing to a captive Umbra –  someone from a class they see as their enemy.”
    She makes a good  point.
    “Just tell me what you want to do. Do you want to go back to the Homesteads?”
    Gabriella shook her head.
    “Then what do you want to do?”
    She glanced up, her face full of determination. “Screw the rules. I want to find out where the hell they are keeping Iralia…now.”
     

5
    Gabriella
     
    I broke away from Alex and paced down the torch-lined street, clenching and unclenching my hands. My breath escaped my lungs in ragged bursts and a sickening knot had twisted its way around my insides.
    Calm down, Gabriella. Calm down.
    Part of me knew that I was making a bad decision, but the other part of me didn’t care.
    First Iralia. Now this.
    I couldn’t wrap my head around what I’d witnessed at the Aquadome. Sure, Merfolk weren’t the most advanced species in Pandemonia, but they were still living, sentient creatures with hopes, fears and dreams. They had lives…they had families. Merfolk weren’t harmless by any stretch of the imagination – Guardians had killed thousands over the centuries – but as with all Pandemonians only ever the ones that had allowed themselves to become corrupted…no worse than a human who had gone too far off the rails to ever be righted. But those Mermen taking part in the water games, they were innocent. Like the commentator had said, each of them had been forced to brave most what I could only imagine were horrendous circumstances to reach Fenodara in hopes of saving their kin from the horrors of the Ageless War. All that hardship, only to then be pitted against others in a deadly spectator sport – a sport where in the first game, one of them had gruesomely lost their life to the sound of cheering crowds. In a city that is supposed to represent hope for the dying Luminar breeds.
    It was beyond cruel.
    One thing I knew for certain was that Pandemonia was having some kind of effect on me. I couldn’t explain why, but there was something about this world that had set me on edge from the moment we had arrived. It was as if I could feel its corruption, invisible and abstract, but still there, infecting me from a distance. I was a soldier; I worked on what I could see and understand. This world was making me feel strange and out of place and irrational.
    Out of control.
    I have to find Iralia and make sure she’s safe. It was the one thing I could take action on, the one way I could regain some modicum of control.
    “How are you going to find her?”