Page 208 of Gladiators of the Vagabond Boxset

Luka

I didn’t touch the delicate constructions of puff pastry and fragrant meat that were artfully arranged on my plate.

Not with my mother’s anticipation soaking into my skin, making my belly crawl.

What had she planned? Was it about Noa? Was she going to hurt her?

I searched for her again in the crowd and spotted her serving plates to other guests farther down the long table.

It still caught me by surprise when Tiam, Koratalin’s father, suddenly made a coughing noise, his red skin taking on a purple hue right beneath his eyes.

For a moment, I froze, staring as a sharp pain stabbed at my throat, burned down my esophagus, and churned up my gut.

Briefly, I couldn’t tell if it was happening to me or to him.

Then my training kicked in, and I leaped to my feet.

“Tiam has been poisoned!” I yelled out. “I need a medkit, now!”

I rushed around the table as a stunned silence fell across the ballroom.

Then Koratalin started screaming. Fear, panic, and grief blasted into me from her direction, while from my mother’s side came smug satisfaction.

Drameil and several others at the table followed with amusement, not a hint of surprise, and a sense of expectation, their eyes all turned to my mother.

They knew as well as I did what had just happened.

I was the only one responding to Tiam’s distress.

The guests at the table looked on with varying degrees of distaste or surprise.

The ones I suspected were crimelords were nonplussed.

Only Tiam’s daughter was wailing in agony, blasting my senses until I felt overwhelmed.

I dragged the male out of his chair and rolled him onto his side, sticking my finger into his throat to try to get him to throw up.

The symptoms he was displaying made it fairly obvious what kind of poison had been used, fast-acting, tasteless.

I didn’t have high hopes of the male surviving, but I had to try anyway.

Always, though, I was aware of Noa’s presence as she and the other slaves circled the room, forced to continue serving my mother’s guests while this spectacle occurred.

The older male heaved weakly a few times, dislodging a few bites of the pastry he’d just eaten.

But it wasn’t enough; his entire body was freezing up—paralyzing—including his lungs and his heart.

Under the soundtrack of Koratalin’s wailing, the clink of cutlery as people ate while they watched, and the quiet shuffle of the footsteps of the slaves, Tiam died.

Sitting on my haunches next to his body, watching the golden glyphs on his arms grow dull, I was numb, barely hearing how my mother declared with satisfaction that she’d be taking Tiam’s place on the council.

No, Tiam hadn’t been a good man. Not many would mourn his passing, and it could be argued that I shouldn’t have even tried to save him. I wasn’t sure I could have done anything; the damage had already been done the moment I’d felt it sear my senses.

Rising to my feet, I made eye contact with my mother before stalking out of the ballroom.

Behind me, noise finally broke out as guards came in to dispose of the body.

A guard detail should have followed me, but I’d ducked out of the room through one of the servant exits, mingling with a group of panicked, frightened slaves hurrying to do their jobs.

For the moment, I was free from their interference, and though I was shaken from that assault on my empathic gift, I forced myself to search for Noa. Had she left the room? Was she here?

*

Noa

He was here, in the corridor with me, and I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to run to him or away.

He looked lost, a bit worried, and I saw a dot of red blood clinging to his skin just above his upper lip.

If his empathic gift was real, that scene back there must have been quite intense for him, no wonder he looked like he’d seen a ghost.

His eyes landed on me before I’d made up my mind about ducking out of sight.

Now it was too late, and I wasn’t a coward, I wasn’t going to run once he’d seen me.

So I locked my knees, pressed my back to the wall, and waited for him to reach me, letting the others in the corridor flee down to the kitchens.

“Noa,” he murmured, his hand curling around my wrist. “This way, hurry.” Against my better instincts, I followed him, waving at Pato, perched on his shoulder.

At least that confirmed that the little monkey was all right, I’d been worried sick about the little fellow.

My heart was racing just being near Luka, my traitorous body definitely thinking about all those times he’d brought me pleasure.

As soon as we’d ducked around a corner, out of sight of the others, he paused. His dark eyes were mournful as he raised a hand as if to touch my face. “Don’t you have a grieving fiancée to comfort?” I snapped at him, and he flinched back.

His face settled into grim lines. “I do not care about her. Here, we must hurry.” He fished a slender pen from the sash around his waist and held it out to me.

“Turn around, and I’ll undo your collar.

You must try to escape as soon as possible.

Please, Noa, I just need you to be safe.

” He raised the black pen—or maybe it was more of a stylus—and gestured at the collar around my neck.

I wanted to believe him, and I wanted to trust him so badly, but my friends and I had more than once heard from a guy, “Oh, she means nothing.” Like I was just supposed to not care that I was the other woman, that I didn’t deserve his full attention.

In his fancy clothes, his ears blinking with silver studs and gems, his fingers dressed up in glimmering rings, he looked every bit the rich asshole I’d once pegged him as.

“There he is,” someone said, sounding suspiciously like Dumb.

Luka turned, pressing me behind his back and pushing the wand in my direction.

I wanted to grab it and make a run for it, but just at that moment, Dumber came from the other side.

No chance to grab that wand now, they’d see it and confiscate it immediately.

So I shoved away from Luka, pushing his arm with the wand into his side with some of that anger that was filling me tonight.

“Get lost, you asshole,” I told him, and I stalked away, heading for the kitchens and my job for the night.

I could only just duck out of reach of Dumb’s grabbing hand.

I looked over my shoulder as I turned the corner, noticing Pato leap away from Luka, the wand in his mouth as he scampered to safety on all fours.

Luka had pinned Dumb to the wall with a hand around the male’s throat, and he was speaking to him in a low voice, menace on his face.

Then I was in the kitchens, surrounded by the hubbub of the kitchen staff and the slaves here to serve the next course.

Everyone was talking about what had just happened in the ballroom, the murder orchestrated by the Dragon.

Were we supposed to just carry on? Bring out the next round of food?

No one seemed sure. It was such chaos that I saw my chance.

Doing as Luka had said, I made a break for it.

None of the guards stationed around the rooms noticed me as I ducked behind a stack of crates, then scuttled after someone carrying a bag of trash from the room. Once inside the darkened basement beneath the mansion, I quickly branched off, searching for a way out.

I had to get to the ground floor. This basement floor only seemed to have an entrance to the outside from the kitchen.

I distinctly remembered that they’d brought Luka and me in that way the day we’d arrived here.

I had no clue how long ago that was, but it wasn’t hard to locate a set of stairs, harder to find a set that didn’t have a guard standing on the other side.

The sound of footsteps forced me to duck away into what turned out to be the very broom closet I’d woken up in only a couple of hours ago.

I didn’t dare pull the door shut behind me entirely, instead peeking through the crack to see who was trotting down the corridor.

Was it Luka? Had he shaken off the Dumb Duo and tried to come after me?

My heart started racing. Did I want him to?

Was I going to believe him? Believe in us?

It didn’t matter, it was the Kertinal, jogging down the corridor with purpose.

He ran past me without stopping, and I took a chance, following him from a distance, hoping he’d lead me to an exit I could use.

If not, I could fall back to my original plan and try to seduce him until I could knock him out.

I still had the knife tucked into my apron pocket, it was quite possibly even more violent than the glue gun, but a girl couldn’t be picky at times like this.

He went up a winding flight of metal stairs, and then I smelled the outside air—fresh grass, a slightly ozone-like scent, as if it had just rained.

I drew in a breath greedily. The stairs didn’t make any noise as I followed him up, but the scent never disappeared, as if he’d left the door propped open.

I paused on the landing, looking left and right to make sure I was alone in this small room.

There were three doors leading off it, and the stairs continued to spiral up as well.

Only one door was open, a metal panel that led to the outside.

I tiptoed across, searching for the Kertinal in the slice of land I could see.