I was confused at first, watching the crowd roar my name and Major Shange congratulating me with the biggest smile I have ever seen. Still, realization only set in when I looked to the high rankers' booth and saw Slava staring down at me, grief and concern plastered on his lips with a stream to his ear.

  When he saw me looking, he hid the stream behind his back and gave me a thumbs up, a big smile that conveyed a “Well done! I’m proud of you!” even across this distance. Mother stood next to him, her face neutral. She looked down at me without warmth or gesture, but I knew the disappointment that lay behind her eyes all too well.

  I had won. Where all my subordinates had failed, I succeeded. A dishonorable success born off the backs of my inferior’s losses, for without them, even this would not have been possible.

  My mind was stuck between two thoughts: the first one being that to gain success, one must remember the practicality of virtue. A single success won through cheating and deceit can make all future triumphs impossible. And the second thought is that if you aren’t cheating, you aren’t trying.

  My mouth set in a hard line as I swung from one to the other wildly, as I stepped forward toward the center of the platform where I would be congratulated, and where I was meant to shake hands with Boris.

  But I don’t think he would do that.

  “What the fuck! I was still alive! How the fuck did she win? I was about to kill her! We can go again! I didn’t lose! I did not lose!” he roared from the other end of the platform toward the high rankers' booth, his complaints falling on deaf ears as both Slava and my mother turned away.

  Both would be on the platform soon to congratulate us in person. Boris stopped complaining to the empty booth and instead chose to speak to me, but any insult he threw was drowned out by the crowd as they booed him.

  He turned his insults from me to the crowd, promising to kill all of them in admittedly creative ways. I arrived at the center of the platform, Major Shange was already there waiting for me as she put the microphone to her lips.

  “Thank you everyone! I hope you enjoyed the tournament! I must say I have never seen such a powerful bunch of sleeveless in all my time running this tournament, I cannot wait to see what they accomplish in the future!”

  The crowd's boos had turned to cheers by the end of her short speech, their attention diverged from the idiot. She turned to me and grabbed my hand without warning, lifting it toward the crystal ceiling, “And of course, how can we forget to celebrate our winner! She’s a chip off the old block, isn’t she?”

  The crowd hooped and hollered, the applause raining down just as I imagined it. But for all the theories on victory, on how to win and what you have to do to win, they never specified how it’s meant to feel. And it felt… hollow. Incomplete.

  Boris had stomped up to us now, wrenching my shoulder towards him as he screamed in my face, “That doesn’t count! This isn’t fucking fair! Do you think that was a win you bitch?”

  I looked into his red face, the spittle dripping off his lips as he seethed at his loss. In response, I only gestured at the crowd. “Fifty thousand people think I won, so yes. Can we shake hands and move past your childish tantrum, please?”

  He grabbed me by the collar and lifted my feet off the floor to continue his tirade, “You didn’t win! And I am still going to kill you sl—”

  I blinked, and in that amount of time, a golden string wrapped around his throat. He let go with a wheeze, his eyes popping out of his head as he scratched at his neck before he was hoisted a few feet into the air, the string winding around him like a python, restricting his every movement.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  I turned to see the saint of Kaleidos marching up the stairs, the fierceness in his eyes unfamiliar as he approached his new prisoner. Mother appeared a moment later, her hands behind her back, the same neutral expression on her face as she came to a stop next to me.

  “Drop him, Slava.”

  “He just assaulted his superior officer!”

  Her mouth only frowned as she looked toward him. “And yet, I said drop him. Or are you disobeying your superior officer?”

  Slava turned his attention from Boris to Mother. They stood locked in a staring contest that felt like it would crack the concrete before Slava dropped him with a growl. Boris landed with a thud, hacking up a lung as he tried to breathe.

  Mother turned away from them and walked right past me like I wasn’t even there, arriving at her usual place like it was just another tournament, like nothing was out of the ordinary.

  I turned to see that all my high rankers had followed her onto the platform, standing in a neat line as all the other high rankers were lining up behind them, imitating Mother in their nonchalance.

  Calder kept glancing away from me while Selena stared through me, like I wasn’t even there. I fell in beside Viktor. Bongi would have been preferred, since his theft of Boris’s weapons is what allowed me to win, but Viktor would do.

  Slava grabbed Boris’s collar the same way he had grabbed mine, and whispered something I couldn’t hear before throwing him towards us, treating him like the petulant child he behaved as. When he fell into line beside me a moment later, I could hear his teeth grating.

  “This isn’t over,” he whispered.

  I didn’t spare him a glance. “Yes, it is.”

  Boris’s retort was cut off as Mother’s voice echoed over the loudspeakers, “that exciting match concludes the tournament everyone. I will not bore you with a speech today, so Calder Ashford, Boris Warde, and Sofia Grant, step forward.”

  I walked forward to stand front and center, my every step measured and my back as straight as I could make it. Calder was beside me in less than a second, mirroring my movements exactly. Boris followed behind me like a lost puppy.

  When we stopped I had to push Boris into the right position before Calder, him and then me stood in a line, facing the crowd. That many faces would have scared me a week ago. Now all their half bored, half expectant faces only concerned me at most.

  Mother stood before us, her back to the crowd as she continued her speech. “These individuals have proved the most capable in the tournament. The ones that shall fill the front lines ranks and help us ascend, help gain new ground to fulfill Alexander’s dream. Congratulations, I believe that you will be something great.”

  Her eyes were only on Boris when she spoke, and she started clapping when she concluded her obligatory speech. I had always known the end of the tournament to be customary, full of half-hearted lip service and awards, but I thought my tournament would be different. I thought my mother would stand here with an arm around my shoulders as she bragged about her daughter to all of Kaleidos. But it proved to be the same as every other tournament that had come before, boring.

  The only exception was him. The man scratching in his ear, meeting the earth's most powerful person’s gaze with indignation, a shrug to his shoulders as if to say, “What do you want?”

  Mother approached Calder first, pinning a bronze button on his cloak to show he was in the last three of the tournament. She was with him for at most two seconds before she moved on to Boris.

  She stopped in front of him, her eyes on the button he should have taken out himself. But without a word of complaint, she grabbed his shirt and pulled him close, unthreading the button and dropping it to the floor like it wasn’t important. She pinned on the silver button, the one signifying he was a finalist in his tournament, before straightening his cloak until it sat neatly on his shoulders. She looked from the cloak to his face, finding wide eyes filled with judgment before she stepped away.

  It must have taken her at least three minutes to put on his button. In that time, I had shifted my cloak to hang loosely off my shoulders. I stood tall when she stopped in front of me, pinning on the gold button, showing that I was my father’s daughter.

  She looked up from the button, her eyes meeting mine. “Well done.”

  And then she was turning around, approaching the crowd. She had straightened his cloak, but why didn’t she straighten mine? I had won, why hadn't I received the accolades I deserved?

  And in that moment, I felt just as Boris had at the end of our match. This wasn’t fair.

  “Thank you for coming, everyone! You are dismissed.”

  And with a simple sentence, the tournament I had spent years preparing for was over.