Page 2 of Blood King, Part I (Crowns #4)

The animal was chained, but they were still within its reach. With his leg, Kieve wouldn’t make it to safety.

And Cyrus wouldn’t leave him.

The only thing that could save them now was if Everan killed the last man.

It would stop the fight, and the chains would drag the cats back behind the gates.

Somewhere to his left, he heard the clang of swords—Everan battling the final opponent—but Cyrus couldn’t take his eyes from the cat.

The animal swiped at him again, and he jumped back, narrowly missing it.

They’d had close calls in the arena before, but not many were truly bad. This was bad. Cyrus was a gold-tier fighter, one of the best, but even he couldn’t take on a striped cat with no weapon, no protection. He’d never feared dying in the arena. Perhaps he should have.

The cat struck again, and Cyrus used the thick slave cuff on his forearm to shield himself. It wasn’t enough, and pain sliced down his arm.

“Cyrus!” Kieve shouted from behind him. “Go!”

But still, Cyrus refused to leave him. From the corner of his eye, he saw his sword on the ground. Not far. And yet too far. The animal crouched, lining up for its kill…

Then the cat lunged.

Cyrus threw his arms up, bracing himself.

But the attack never came.

The chain pulled tight, choking the animal back. It took Cyrus a moment to understand what was happening, but then he whirled to see Everan pulling his blade from the final opponent.

The crowd roared.

It was over.

Cyrus stood, his body still quaking with fight. The deep gashes across his chest and arm burned, but as air filled his lungs, his racing heart slowed. He turned back to Kieve.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Kieve yelled. “That cat could have killed you!”

That was the point of the bloodsport. Cyrus ignored the rebuke and pulled Kieve up. He shouldered himself under Kieve’s arm to hold his weight. Across the arena, Everan did the same for Manus, who still struggled with the lance through his thigh.

“Cyrus,” Kieve said, pulling them both still. There was a break in his voice. He couldn’t get his words out, but he didn’t need to. Neither of them had to say how close it had been this time.

“I know,” Cyrus said, and cuffed him on the back.

They staggered back to their gate.

“Four!” the gate guard called out.

Four to live another day.

Everan and Cyrus carried Manus and Kieve down the long, narrow corridor under the arena toward their holding room.

Blood poured down Cyrus’s front and arm.

He gritted his teeth through the pain that came with each step under Kieve’s weight.

The injured fighter was the same height as Cyrus, a little thicker, but a lot heavier.

With his light skin and blond hair, the two could pass as brothers.

Cyrus considered him so. He considered all of them brothers—brothers born of the womb of the arena.

Guards barked orders for them to get out of the way as the arena was readied for the next fight.

They made it to the holding room and laid Manus and Kieve down on the dirt floor.

It was nearly impossible to keep from bumping the lance in Manus’s thigh, and the fighter hissed in pain with each movement.

Blood spilled out and soaked into the dirt underneath him. Too much blood.

Everan pulled off his bloodstained tunic, looking for a relatively clean section, then tore a strip off. “Breathe,” he told Manus before wrapping it around his thigh and the protruding javelin to stabilize it.

Manus groaned through his clenched teeth. Sweat beaded his brow. Everan fastened his belt over the cloth and pulled it tight to slow the bleeding. He eyed his handiwork after he’d finished.

“That looks like shit,” Cyrus jested. Humor was all they had in times like these.

“You look like shit,” Everan told him.

Cyrus snorted.

Everan ripped off another piece of his tunic and pressed it to Cyrus’s gaping chest, but Cyrus pulled back. “Don’t touch it.” He couldn’t let Everan touch his blood. He couldn’t let anyone touch his blood.

“There’s nothing in my mind you haven’t already seen.”

While Everan’s tone was light and he’d meant it in jest, his words were heavy.

It was true—there was nothing in Everan’s mind Cyrus hadn’t already seen, just as with many of his brothers when his blood had accidentally touched them.

Cyrus avoided it when he could, but it wasn’t a choice.

Where his blood touched, his mind followed.

It was a chain pulling him to places he didn’t always want to go.

There were dreams to be held privately, memories he wasn’t meant to see.

He hated it, but he couldn’t stop it. This was the nature of his curse, and only those closest to him knew: Everan, Kieve, Manus, and a few others.

“He’d like not to be in your mind when you use your hand tonight,” Kieve said to Everan, grinning through his own pain.

Everan laughed. “No hand for me. I got two kills. Pyro will let me have Visa.”

Cyrus stiffened at the mention of their master, hating the way his name lingered.

Pyro. He was the man who owned them, forced them to fight, profited from their blood.

But Cyrus tried to push that from his mind.

He was happy for his brother. Everan had taken the final kill.

He’d scored two marks, finished the match, and Pyro would give him a woman for the night as a reward.

Everan would choose Visa—the slave woman he loved more than life.

Cyrus had married them in secret four months ago, with only the stars and gods to witness.

A guard announced the wagon for House Pyro, and they stepped out and down the narrow corridor. They followed it to an adjoining hall, which took them to the back area of the arena, where live men were unloaded, and dead men loaded.

There was already a body in their wagon when they reached it.

Dade had lost his one-on-one bout a few fights before Cyrus’s match.

He’d been a newer fighter to House Pyro.

Cyrus hadn’t known him for long, but Dade’s death still angered him.

Cyrus was angered by all the lives this wretched sport took. But anger wasn’t enough.

Everan placed what was left of his tattered shirt over Dade’s face.

It wasn’t a long ride back to the villa.

As the wealthiest lord of Rael, Pyro had the convenience of quartering his bloodsport fighters near the city center, where many nobles couldn’t even afford to live.

Cyrus was grateful for the short travel time as he watched Manus and Kieve groan from their injuries under the shifting of the cart.

Each jolt drew a painful grimace from them.

Despite Everan’s handiwork, blood seeped from Manus’s thigh and soaked into the wooden cart bed underneath him.

Cyrus was glad they hadn’t tried to remove the javelin.

They might have lost him. But now if they could get Kieve and Manus to Teron, the healer back at the villa, they’d both be all right.

They passed through the gates of the villa and under the columned pathway of blooming wisteria that stretched forty wagon lengths at least. Many thought the villa was beautiful, and it was.

But it was the kind of beauty that masked the rot of morality—marble floors built on bloodstained earth, where silk sheets covered the backs of wicked men.

Golden chains were still chains. Cyrus hated this place, this city, this kingdom.

He hated this life.

Well, most of it. He looked around at his friends. He cared for these men. He would die for these men.

Cyrus and Everan helped Manus and Kieve to the healing quarters. The men’s faces were pale, their bodies weak, but with Teron’s magic, they’d be better by morning.

“Rest well, brothers,” Cyrus told them after he and Everan had laid them on the worktables. He could finally breathe easy. They’d made it. He didn’t have to worry about them now. He clapped Everan on the back in parting and walked to his own chamber.

He was too tired to bathe, too tired to eat, but he forced himself to.

He needed strength. His chest and arm burned as he pulled the linen from the wounds.

The dried blood had melded the cloth to his torn skin, and new blood beaded as he stripped it away.

The gashes were deep. He needed Teron’s healing power too, but Kieve’s and Manus’s injuries begged more urgent attention, and he’d have them tended first.

Having finally washed and eaten, Cyrus sank down onto his bed, but sleep didn’t come. Instead, his mind wandered. Sometimes it brought him dreams of people he didn’t know, places he’d never been. But on days like today, days when his blood had been spilled, his mind traveled.

To everywhere his blood had touched.

He found Manus’s mind. His friend was now finished with the healer and lying in his own room, resting; the same with Kieve.

Cyrus hadn’t realized he’d gotten blood on the both of them— by the gods, that shit got everywhere.

They couldn’t feel his presence, he knew.

If their minds were quiet, perhaps Cyrus would have been happy to stay, to rest in their peace.

But like Cyrus, they felt no peace, only the horrors of the life that plagued their days.

Cyrus pushed his mind to move on. He couldn’t entirely control it. Wherever his blood touched called him. It pulled him in. Rarely could he wrestle himself out, but he could usually move from one mind to another, if there was another mind to move to.

He found Everan. Visa had made it to him, and Cyrus smiled.

He lingered for a moment, looking at her through Everan’s eyes.

She was a beautiful woman. Her skin was dark, but not as dark as Everan’s, the color of night.

Her high cheekbones sat below her large brown eyes and tapered softly to the fullness of her lips, all framed by a thick mane of black curls.

Everan slipped the linen gown from her shoulders, and she smiled. Cyrus struggled to pull himself from his brother’s mind. He hadn’t meant to stay that long; he hadn’t meant to intrude.

He pushed his mind to drift out beyond, to anywhere else his blood called.

And then he found what he was hoping for.

The big cat lay in its cage, sated and lazy.

It wasn’t often Cyrus could travel to one of the animals—it wasn’t often they scored his blood.

But as recompense, he could enjoy the aftermath.

Their minds were peaceful. After the carnage and rage of the fight, animals forgot everything and fell back on simple needs: eating, drinking, sleeping.

As the cat slept, Cyrus let himself stay in the quiet of its mind, where there were no dreams, no memories to haunt him. His body relaxed.

Finally, sleep came for him too.