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They want blood.

She is about to give it to them.

The fight starts, and she’s magnificent.

But she doesn’t knowwhat she’s done yet.

Not as she stands there in the middle of the bloodstained pit, her chest rising and falling in sharp, shuddering gasps. Not as the dagger slips from her fingers, landing with a soft, sickening thud in the dirt beside the body.

She hasn’t realized the implications of the kill, her body running survival mode.

She will when it sinks into her bones. When the ghost of the man she just killed crawls into her ribs and makes a home there.

She will when she understands that she’s just taken a life—and she will never be able to give it back.

The crowd erupts, their cheers rolling through the cavernous pit like the roar of a starving beast.

Nairarooted on the spot.

She just stares at the man she cut down. The blood spreading slowly, slowly into the dirt beneath his slackened body.

For a second, I wonder if she’s going to drop. If she’s going to collapse beneath it.

But—she breathes.

Deep, steady.

And when she lifts her head, her dark, furious gaze meets mine. There it is.

That hatred.

That realization.

She knows exactly what she’s done.

And she’s very aware as to who made her do it.

The mark I burned into her skin is still fresh, just barely hidden beneath the thin silk I forced her to wear. I wonder if it aches now, the same way I imagine her heart must be shattering.

I hope it does.

I want her to remember every second of this.

I want her to know that she belongs to me now—not just in body, but in soul.

She steps toward me, her movements precise, deliberate.

Her hands are still stained red, but she doesn’t wipe them clean.

Good. She shouldn’t.

I lean back against the stone railing as she reaches me, tilting my head in amusement. “You look different,” I murmur.

She stops inches from me, so close, too close.

I smell the blood on her, the sweat, the lingering stench of fear, rage, and something crumbling.

But her voice is steady. “I hope you die on your own spit.”