by Ana Mardoll
Chapter 24
Keoki
The heavy iron doors clang shut behind Handler and the girls. For the space of a heartbeat the room is still as everyone stares at Lucas, then there is a burst of movement so fast my eyes can't track more than a blur. Matías zips through the space between the center of the cavern and the spot where Lucas hangs back by his door. I hear the crack of a hard slap, and Lucas reels away with his hand cradling his cheek.
"What were you thinking?" Fury explodes from Matías as he leans on his cane, panting with the exertion of his superhuman run.
Christian still stands where he leaped to his feet when the tattooed girl first stumbled forward and needed catching. He laces his fingers and stretches his hands out until the joints crack, giving Lucas a furious glare. "You hold him," Christian snaps at Matías. "I'll beat him up. Taste of what he gave that girl."
"Go fuck your hands, Christian," Lucas snaps, whipping around to scowl at him. "Everything's easy for you, isn't it? The rest of us don't have a favorite girl panting for it. You ever think about that, when Ruby's wrapped around you screaming for more? The rest of us are making do with girls who barely tolerate it!"
"Hey!" Matías barks for attention, and Lucas swivels reluctantly back to face him. "I asked you a question. What were you thinking?" Each word is a sentence of its own, spat out and left hanging in the air. Lucas doesn't answer him, glaring in defiance as the silence stretches out around us.
Matías takes a deep breath and leans harder on his cane; I'm not sure if he needs the extra support after the exertion of zipping over there or if he's trying to restrain himself from striking out again. "Lucas," he says, his voice straining to remain calm, "it's one thing to lose control when you're with Emerald. She can't feel anything, so she doesn't know to stop you—"
"Are we still pretending that's what happens? That those bruises he leaves on her are some kind of accident?" Christian crosses his arms over his chest and narrows his eyes at Lucas. "Because I don't know about the rest of you guys, but I'm sick of playing that game."
"It's another thing entirely," Matías presses on, ignoring Christian, "to play rough with the other girls. Sapphire feels pain, just like you or me! You can't tell me she didn't cry out, that you didn't know you were hurting her!" He flings an accusing finger at Lucas' door. "So what were you doing in there that she came out looking like that? You can answer me now or I can beat it out of you in the training pit."
Lucas sets his jaw at the threat, his eyes burning with fresh anger. "She needed to be taught a lesson."
The room stills again until the only thing I can hear is the roar of blood in my ears and the crackle of the torches. "You hit her on purpose," Matías says, his voice cold.
"I've been saying he does!" Christian explodes, turning away to pace the cavern. "There's a difference between rough sex and the shit he does!"
Reese looks up from where he's been sitting on the ground beside me, his face as pale as the sheet he's wearing. "I can't believe you hit Sapphire," he whispers, his voice hoarse. He meets Lucas' eyes for only a moment before his gaze drops to the ground again. "You hit her in the face."
Tony sits on my other side, gazing into the middle distance; he says nothing and his expression is as blank as the expanse of sand in the arena. I look to him for help, for something, but he doesn't even glance my way. I swallow hard, pushing down food that threatens to rise and feeling as sick as Reese sounds.
My voice is thick in my throat. "The fuck do you mean, you taught her a lesson? What kind of lesson does that?"
Lucas turns on me, fury on his face. "I'm surprised you're not smart enough to figure it out," he spits at me. "You thought you were pretty clever at auction, sneaking off with the new girl like that."
With that barb the pieces fall into place. Sapphire was the one who dragged Lucas away so Aniyah and I could leave. I hadn't thought it unusual at the time, figuring the girls looked out for each other. Aniyah was ill, so Miyuki warned me and Sapphire created a distraction. I hadn't expected Lucas to take it personally.
I take a deep gulp of air and try to stay calm. "Dude. She wanted me. I wanted her. It was as simple as that. Not a big conspiracy to fuck you over."
"Dude." The word is a mocking hiss in his mouth. "What she wants doesn't matter. Our job is to go into the arena and risk our lives, whether we want to or not. Their job is to reward us for doing well, whether they want to or not. Any time they wanna switch, I am completely in favor of letting them go out and kill shit while I relax in the stands and stud for them after. You think any of them would take that offer?"
Reese pulls his legs to his chest and presses his face to his knees. His shoulders are trembling and I think he might actually vomit; when he speaks, his voice is choked. "Just because our lives are miserable doesn't mean we have to make theirs equally bad, no matter what Master and Handler say."
"They've given us a system," Lucas yells, his face reddening. "We have points! We go in order. The alternative is a violent free-for-all where we run in and carry the girls off to our rooms. You'd prefer that?"
"I had the same number of kills as you," I point out. The roar of blood in my ears is louder now. "And I was the one who left with your choice, not Sapphire. So because you have a fight with me, you beat up a defenseless girl?"
He narrows his eyes. "You and your girl didn't know the rules," he says, one shoulder rising in a shrug. "Sapphire did. She took away my choice, so I took her. She won't make that mistake again." He watches me for a long moment. "And I'd say you and your girl got the message as well, so that's three lessons for one beating. Out in the arena, that's a bargain."
Tony hops to his feet. I whip around to look at him, hope swelling in my chest as I harbor a wild fantasy that he'll make all this better. How, I'm not sure, but he'll do something and it'll be exactly the right thing. Deliver a stinging rebuke that shames Lucas into acknowledging the error of his ways, maybe, or beat into him a reminder of why he should never ever pull this shit again. I'd be good with either or both.
Instead he stares in the direction of the training pit, looking more bored than anything else. "I'm done eating," he announces. "Don't save any more for me." Then he stalks off, not looking back.
I gape after him and look back at Matías. The older boy rubs his eyes with his free hand and looks as weary as I've ever seen him. "He's right," he says, sounding unhappy about it. "Handler said there was a big show in the works. We still don't know when it is; could be later this cycle, or could be a dozen cycles from now. We won't know unless Handler decides to tell us in advance. All we can do is prepare; rest, eat, and train."
Reese reaches for another bowl but otherwise ignores the rest of us; I get the sense that he won't be speaking to anyone for a long time. Given that he was the most cheerful and talkative among us, his silence is more reproachful than any words he could say. I feel guilty, and I wasn't even the one hurting girls.
I look up to see Christian scowling at Lucas, who meets his gaze with answering acrimony. "You'd better start working on a good apology," Christian advises, his voice low and still very angry, "or hope you're lucky enough not to be sent Ruby before she decides to forgive you. You haven't seen her when she's mad, and believe me: you don't want to." That said, he flops back down to the ground and reaches for the food.
"So that's it?" I demand from Matías. "We're just going to go back to normal and pretend this never happened?"
Lucas narrows his eyes. "The fuck are you going to do about it, newbie?"
Matías turns away from the other boy and walks slowly back to where we sit. "It's done," he says. His voice is calm now, the worst of the anger dissipated. "There's nothing we can do to undo it. If he does it again, he's a dead man." The cold threat hangs in the air and Lucas looks away.
It's not enough. I'm so upset I could shout the words, but I bite them back. I hold my tongue more for Reese's sake than anything else, as he doesn't need me yelling at the top of my lungs when he's within arm's reach
of me and still trembling. Yet the longer I hold it in, the louder the anger throbs in my blood; there are a million things I want to say and none of them will help anyone.
"I'm going to find Tony," I announce, shoving at the ground with all the force I'd like to use on Lucas and hopping to my feet. No one tries to stop me.
Tony isn't hard to find; he's in the center of the training pit, doing things with a sword that would take my breath away if I weren't so furious. He's graceful to a fault out in the pale sand, moving his legs and arms in slow motion as he practices stances I have no vocabulary for. Whatever I was before this, I must not have been up on sword-fighting. Swordplay. Swordery.
No, it's no good. It just isn't funny.
I stand there without speaking for more heartbeats than I can count, watching him practice. I wonder how much of this he knew before he was brought here and how much he was forced to learn in order to survive. The thought strikes me that I have it easier than he does; brute strength doesn't have a lot of finesse, but it's not hard to learn and I can't be easily disarmed. Mostly I just have to hit things and not die. As far as talents go, I've been pretty lucky; luckier than Justin, at the very least.
"You get enough to eat?"
Tony doesn't look at me when he speaks, but there's no one else here. I nod and then shake my head, the gesture one of disbelief rather than denial. "What are you doing?" I ask, spreading my hands to encompass the training area. "Don't you care? You didn't say a word back there. Did you see what he did to her?"
He's quiet for another stretch of beats, working through a complicated set of lunges with the blade. His feet sweep the sand, leaving little trails that would tell the story of his movements if I were skilled enough to read them. He moves subtly away from the trails as he works, edging down the center of the pit, and I wonder if Matías will come by later to study his footprints and grade the perfection of his form.
"Did you know," he says, his voice low and even, "Sapphire's been here longer than I have? She's a good girl. Doesn't care for boys, never gets attached to one, but she's a good sport. She's bendy—that's her power—and she can dance. She does things with her hips that'll make your dick stand straight up. Doesn't mind you touching yourself while she does it, either. I've had her probably half a dozen times, and she was always sweet as fruit."
His feet sweep in a quick turn, punctuated by a deep thrust of his sword. "Yes. I fucking care."
I find myself blinking back tears because I'm so relieved to hear him say it. "I'm sorry," I tell him, feeling ashamed of my earlier berating. Of course he knows her better than I do; I'm the newbie and he's been here longer than most of the other guys. "Why didn't you say anything?"
I'm more curious than angry now, and I hope he can hear the change in my tone; at any rate, he doesn't seem to take offense. He works a shrug into his graceful movements. "Because Lucas is going to do what he does. If he won't listen to Matías and Christian and Reese and you, one more voice isn't going to make any difference."
I frown. His logic is sound, but it seems so cold. "So you're just giving up? Training out here because it's not worth the effort?" I don't like it, and don't know how to say so without sounding judgmental; just because something seems inevitable doesn't mean there's no point in voicing opposition.
He drops into a roll and comes up on one knee, sword thrusting at his invisible opponent. Sand streams from his shoulders and hair but he doesn't even blink, his eyes focused on the middle distance. "I train out here because eventually I'm going to be in the ring with Lucas," he says, his tone cool. "And I need to make damn sure I can survive on my own, after I let whatever we're facing kill him dead."
The blood drains from my face. "Oh," is all I can say. That's one way to handle a problem. After seeing Sapphire bruised and broken, and that fist-shaped ring around her eye, I'm not even sure it's the wrong way. "I... I'm gonna go check on Justin." I can't help Tony out here, anyway; I'd be useless with his sword practice at the best of times, and now is definitely not a good time in my head.
"Tell him I said 'Hi'," he says, as calm as the cavern air.
Justin's room is cool and dark. We moved him here when Matías and Miyuki decided it was safe to carry him to his bed. She'd been worried about leaving him to sleep on the hard floor, and Matías believed his wounds had been closed long enough that careful movement wouldn't tear them open. Four guys had worked together to carry him to bed; Matías had directed while I watched uselessly from the side. My wounds had closed faster than Justin's, but no one wanted to take any chances.
I knock on the door and let myself in, waiting on the inside step until my eyes adjust to the low light. In the glow of the phosphorescent moss he doesn't look good, but he looks better than before. The bandages encasing him are clean and white and damp, and I realize Miyuki must have changed them before she left. The dirty cloths are in a bundle in the far corner of his room, near the toilet; I ought to take them out for Handler to wheel away with the empty dishes.
For the moment, however, I just stand next to the bed and study his face. His cheek and most of the right side of his head is bandaged where the creature savaged him, and his nose has a long gash across the top. By some miracle his eyes weren't gouged out; from the wounds along his arms, it looks as if he threw them up to protect his face. I reach out to touch his forehead with the back of my hand: he's warm but not feverish. Matías said that was a good sign, and that the healing water was working. Probably.
He stirs at my touch. Shit. I shouldn't have bothered him. Miyuki keeps him in as deep a fog as she can manage and he must have just gotten a fresh dose before she left. Here I'm waking him up and shaving off precious sleep time until the next dose. I straighten up to leave, but he groans and mumbles something.
"What was that?" I stoop lower, craning my neck to see into the wall niche that houses his bed. "Sorry, I didn't hear you, buddy."
"Is food time?" The words are a soft slur, relaxed and pained at the same time. I wince and the fresh scars on my chest prickle with sympathy pains.
"Yeah, it is, actually. Ha, I probably should have remembered to bring the food with me, huh? Let me go fix you up a bowl and I'll be right back. It's actually pretty good this time."
His moan turns distinctly negative, the aural equivalent of a headshake. "No. Just... stay?"
I hesitate. I'm pretty sure he needs food, but I can't deny him this simple request. Either Matías will come by or Justin will eventually get hungry enough to let me pop out and fix up a meal for him. Either way, he'll be fed; the spread out there was big enough that the guys aren't going to eat it all. I hunker down on the floor next to the bed and reach up to touch his shoulder—one of the few places not covered in bandages.
"What's new?" Each word escapes slowly, slurred by the combination punch of his wounds and whatever Miyuki does with her hands to keep the pain in check. I shrug, trying to act cool while desperately wishing I knew.
"Uh. There's some kind of big thing coming up? Matías keeps talking about it. We're supposed to be resting and training and shit. But we have no idea when it's on and aren't going to know unless Handler stops being an ass. Same as usual, I gather?"
He doesn't respond, save for the soft wheeze of his breath in the dark. Time stretches out until I wonder if he's gone to sleep on me. I'm just about to try standing up when new words trickle out. "Am I part of it?"
I blink. The kid can't even get up out of bed, let alone go to the arena. If we tried to carry him there, he could die from his wounds opening before we got to the gate. Even if he were healed enough that the wounds wouldn't tear and bleed out, his leg is still splinted. He'd be about as much use in a fight as a corpse.
"Probably not? I mean, you're not really at your best right now."
My answer is weak, sure, but I'd expected him to feel a little relief. Instead he sighs, a soft puff of air that's as forlorn a sound as I've ever heard. "That's a good thing, isn't it?" I ask, looking at him.
Dark eyes watch me through
barely-open lids. His lips move the least amount necessary to let him speak. "If I can't fight... they won't keep feeding me." Each word a slow effort, hardly more than a breath.
A lump forms in my throat, hard and painful. "Hey. It's gonna be okay, man," I tell him, the words rushing out automatically. "Really, I have a good feeling about this. Look, close your eyes and take a rest, okay? I'm gonna go get you some food. I'll be back in just a bit; you'll hardly notice I'm gone."
I slip out of the room before he can object and almost run to where the dishes are scattered across the floor. I'll fix up a bowl and count to one hundred. By the time I do that, the tears threatening to fall will have dried up and I'll be able to go back in there with a calm face.
Chapter 25
Aniyah
When Handler brings food at third bell, he doesn't take Miyuki away to tend Justin. Instead, he fixes his sightless gaze in my direction. "Alexandrite, come with me." His voice is quiet now, lacking the cold disdain threading through his words earlier. His arms drop to his sides, but one hand strays to rub at the mole on his other hand. The nervous tic is back, I note; I haven't seen him worry at his blemish since the bout when Justin and Keoki were injured and Miyuki was nearly sold away.
Now he wants me to go with him. That doesn't bode well. I frown and look at Hana, but she appears equally mystified. "Yes, sir," I mumble, as there's little else I can do. I manage to pull myself upright, but leaving food behind after such a long fast is almost as painful as the constant tension in my back. Miyuki will save some for me, I console myself, but the comfort is as cold as the food will be.
Of course, that's assuming I come back alive. I give Handler a wary glance as I follow him. He says nothing as he leads me out through the golden doors, his cart rattling on the floor with every step. In the outside hallway I turn to the right, expecting to be led to the boys' cavern or to climb the stairs leading up to the Master's pavilion. Instead, to my surprise, Handler turns down the left corridor, wheeling his cart towards the mysterious bend I'd wanted to explore with Keoki during Auction. "Keep up, Alexandrite."