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“Brace,” Lukain said.

I blinked. “What?”

His fist flew into my stomach. I doubled over, knees buckling, and clutched a hand to my belly while coughing and groaning. My muscles seized, every inch of me contracting and fighting off a wave of nausea that rose in the back of my throat.

Master Lukain circled my kneeling, coughing form. “If you want to fight with the men, you have to learn to take a punch like one.”

With a snarl, I tamped down my pain and launched at him from my knees like a feral animal. My arms wrapped around his waist, trying to tackle him to the ground.

The grayskin simply turned his hips and flung me aside. I flew like a ragdoll, rolling on the ground before bumping against the stone wall.

My breathing was labored, body aching and pulse pounding. I stared up through grimy eyes. He had his arms crossed over his chest, his dark leather training clothes tight against his strong body.

“There’s that tenacity, at least,” he grumbled, “shining bright and impulsive, even if your logical mind doesn’t always catch up in time to keep you from doing something reckless.”

I wanted to steal the sword hanging off his hip and skewer him with it. The pain in my stomach, radiating out to the rest of my body, melded into a dull throb.

He crouched in front of me, his head tilting curiously. “You asked for this, little grimmer.”

“I asked to be sucker punched without preparation?” I grunted and sat up with my back against the wall.

He smiled. It was a tantalizing expression from such a beautiful, hard man. “Your adversaries in the Firehold will do the same if given the opportunity. We have to build you up somehow, Sephania.”

I could think of a thousand other ways to “build me up” that didn’t involve bushwhacking me. But I wouldn’t complain. It was what he wanted—bring out my weakness, see if I would give up.

“I can tell by the lack of light in your eyes you’ve been abused,” he said simply. “Don’t think I will be kinder to you than others have before me.”

“Even though I’m your property, Master?”

He smiled wickedly. “ Especially because you’re my property.”

I gnashed my teeth and stood with the assistance of the wall, sliding my palm up the cold, jagged rock. “Good. I don’t want you to go easy on me.”

His smile disappeared. Once I was on my feet, he stood over me. “Is that so? Antones, in here.”

Lukain’s human lackey stepped into the small sparring room as if emerging from the shadows.

Antones, affectionately referred to as Ant by some of the Grimsons, never went anywhere without his dark green cloak pulled over his head.

Ant had been the one to free me and the other six prisoners from our ropes when we first arrived in the Firehold weeks ago.

“Yes, sir?” Antones said, his voice rasping.

Lukain stared at me as he spoke over his shoulder. “Who do we have in the rot-house?”

The rot-house was the aptly named prison cells in the southern caves of the Firehold, away from any others. People in the rot-house were driven mad by silence or eventually atoned for their transgressions, typically through torture.

So far, I was lucky to not find myself there.

Antones said, “Peltos is a new arrival, sir.”

I recognized the name. He was a leering young man of about eighteen summers who always crudely blew me a kiss before stepping into the training ring with me.

His antagonizing worked to draw a red curtain over my eyes, which was Lukain’s point: I needed to learn to control my anger and emotion so these bastard boys couldn’t defeat me before the fights had even started.

So far, I hadn’t bested Peltos in the ring. Most recently, he had beaten me with a hard thwack to my spine from his wooden sword, which left me in the infirmary for a week. When Lukain came to visit one of those days, he said I was lucky my back wasn’t broken.

The grayskin had looked down at me like I was a pest, more disappointed than anything else. It reminded me of Father Cullard’s expression when I disobeyed, and it was impossible to forget how he turned out.

I didn’t give a shit about Master Lukain’s contempt for me. I felt it was all a show to get me to give up, otherwise he wouldn’t take the time to personally train me as I had asked.

“What did Peltos do, Antones?” Lukain asked.

“Raped a girl. Helget. The round quiet one? Broke into the women’s quarters during sleeping hours. Was caught red-cocked, as it were.”

My blood boiled. I fought back a response, keeping my face slack and uninterested as Lukain studied my reaction.

“Hm.” Lukain turned to Antones. “Bring him in.”

Ten minutes later, Peltos shuffled in, Ant leading him in by a chain around the neck. His hands were bound in front of him, feet manacled to make his gait clipped and jangling.

Peltos would have been an attractive young man if his personality wasn’t so awful. He sneered instead of smiled, he scoffed instead of laughed. There was nothing honest or good about him. Hearing this about him and Helget, well . . . that was all I needed to know to want to rip his face off.

“Master, please,” Peltos began, bowing his head in shame as Antones pushed him in front of Lukain. “I know I fucked up. Let me make it up to you. How can I—”

“Silence.” Lukain’s voice was tinged with darkness. He looked to me. “You don’t want me to go easy on you, little grimmer?”

He unsheathed his sword, forcing me to backpedal in surprise until my ass hit the wall.

Lukain turned the blade and abruptly swung it against the side of Peltos’ leg. The flat of the blade caused such a fierce, loud thwack that I heard an ugly crack along with it.

Peltos shrieked and stumbled to one knee. When he looked down, his screeching grew louder. Bloody-white bone, jagged and fractured, pierced the skin through the side of his kneecap. Lukain had maimed him in a single blow.

The grayskin faced me and spoke calmly over Peltos’ wailing. “ That is what happens when I don’t go easy on you, Sephania. Understand?”

I gulped past a dry throat. I understand you’re a monster. Slowly, my head nodded on its own.

“Good.” He lifted his hand and flipped the blade, handing it to me hilt-first. “Now it’s your turn.”

My eyes blinked rapidly, confused. His gaze gleamed with unbridled excitement, his face betraying no reaction whatsoever. When he nudged his chin down to the weeping form of Peltos, I understood.

“Don’t go easy,” Lukain murmured. “Your opponents never will.”

The shackled young man glanced up at me in horror as I reached out for Lukain’s sword. I could have punched the blade into Lukain’s chest, or at least tried.

Instead, I wrapped my fingers around the worn leather handle. It was heavy in my young hands. A true weapon.

I glared down at Peltos . . . and blew him a kiss.

His mouth dropped open. “Wait, please, girl, I have nothing against you!”

“I have everything against you, Peltos.” He was just like the other despicable human men I’d met.

The feeling of power inside me surged. Perhaps it was the yard-long sword I held in my hands, or the fact Master Lukain was giving me credence to be violent.

I imitated Lukain’s move when he handed me the sword, flipping it so I held the blade flat between my palms. Then I reeled my arms back and swung the sword like a club, putting all my weight behind the swing.

The pommel of the sword was a steel bludgeon. When it struck Peltos’ face with all my young force behind it, his jaw snapped to the side, unhinging from the rest of his skull. Teeth fragments and bloody bits of his mouth went flying and splattering against the wall.

He was left unconscious, toppled on his side.

A sick and twisted wave of glee washed over me as I stared down at the rapist’s broken body.

Lukain tutted. “It seems you need more training with the sword, little grimmer. You’ve missed.”

I tilted my head at him. Far as I could tell, Peltos was completely incapacitated. Maybe even dead.

“I expected to see his head severed from his neck, given he represents the same deeds once inflicted upon you by other men.”

I stifled a gasp. Dimmon? How does he know what Dimmon did to me? Can he really see all that in my eyes alone? My demeanor, my plight, my brokenness?

Lukain nudged his chin to Antones in the corner of the room. “I think it’s time we give Peltos his monthly surface outing, Ant. What say you?”

“A fine idea, sir.”

“Drag this filth to the Floorboards.” He spit on Peltos’ unmoving form. “Give him to that affable dhampir bastard always slinking around the alleyways in the south. Garroway, I think he’s called?”

Antones bowed his head. He grabbed Peltos’ legs—including the broken, bent one—and unceremoniously began sliding him out of the sparring room.

“There’s a lesson here,” Lukain said once we were alone. “Everyone is expendable.”

Except for you, of course.

Lukain shrugged. “One man’s blood is as good as another’s for my kin. Rapists still bleed red.”

I didn’t know what he meant.

He studied me. “You have the determination and barbarous disposition necessary to fight in the Firehold, little grimmer.” He patted my shoulder as he walked by to leave the room, evidently finished with today’s lesson. “Now you just need the skill.”

The layout of the Firehold was a sprawling network of underground caves and dwelling-rooms that split out from the vast female and male quarters like spiderwebs.

The tunnels here had been painstakingly shoveled and worked on over years, decades.

New tunnels were always in construction.

There was a constant hammering and scraping that echoed through the passages and mingled with the trickling sounds of water and sewage coming from the surface.

I still had no idea what part of Nuhav we were situated under. In the three weeks I had been here, I had not yet gotten my monthly surface outing where, I assumed, someone would lead me through the Above in a daze, blinking against the blinding sunlight.