Page 28

I was quiet the entire cart-ride back to the Firehold. Leaning forward with my elbows on my knees, I played over everything I’d heard from Lukain and that shadowy man, but still couldn’t make anything of it.

Two boys sat between us. Antones had won them as a “package deal.” Their gaunt, dirty faces were scrunched with confusion and fear.

Every once in a while, I’d glance up and see Lukain watching me from the back of the cart. His scrutiny was unnerving. He didn’t trust me. How did things sour so quickly between us?

I was so damned confused. Now he was having clandestine meetings with outsiders. Sitting up with a sigh, I peeked over my shoulder at Antones driving the horses and wondered if he knew about Lukain’s little alleyway meeting.

My eyes swiveled to the scared boys. The sixteen-year-old had shaggy hair. His twelve-year-old friend was shaved bald. Their eyes implored me for something— anything —and I offered them a tiny smile.

“Don’t worry,” I said lowly, patting the twelve-year-old’s knee. “You’ll be fine. Just don’t get on this one’s bad side.” My chin nudged toward Lukain at the back, who remained silent, stoic, and intimidating.

“Who are you, ma’am?” asked the older one.

“My name is Sephania Lock. I’m a fighter. You two can also fight for your freedom with the Grimsons if you work—”

“That’s my spiel,” Lukain muttered.

I raised a brow. Now who’s being the brat?

“They aren’t Grimsons yet. They’re just sewerboys. Have to earn their way in.”

Earn their way in? That sounds like a new stipulation.

Lukain noticed my expression. “Firehold’s getting too packed. Stores are running low and there’s not enough food for everyone.”

“Then why did you buy the poor saps?” I challenged, throwing my arms up.

“Would you have preferred one of those fat slimy fucks to house them instead?” He leaned forward, eyes narrowing dangerously. “Don’t question me in front of our guests, little grimmer.”

I bowed my head in shame. No, I suppose I wouldn’t rather have these boys bought by those wretched slavers.

“Wait, did you say Sephania ?” the older boy asked.

“Erm, yes?”

“As in the Sephania? The womanly vampire-fighter?”

Confusion danced on my brow. When I peeked over at Lukain, he looked as confused as me. Sitting back in my seat, I tried not to make too fine a point of it, but I did position myself in a way that showed the boys my chest was much different than theirs. “Womanly enough, I guess?”

The smaller boy scrunched his brow and tapped the older one on the leg. “What’s it y’on about, Genth?”

His dialect reminded me of Jinneth. It hurt my heart to hear.

The boy named Genth smiled a gap-toothed grin. “That’s her, Faidy. The one that kills bloodsuckers. Ain’t that crazy?”

Faidy smiled ear-to-ear. “Celebiddy.”

I snorted a laugh. “I don’t know what you’ve heard, boys. But I assure you I’ve killed—”

“More vampires than you can imagine,” Lukain interrupted. He gave the boys a firm nod before scowling at me over their heads. “You’re in the midst of a legend, lads. If you’re lucky, she can train you.”

Faidy clapped once. “Well how’s-it-bout-that? Maybe it ain’t gonna be so bad after all, eh Genthy?”

A knot grew in my belly. The poor whelps. Have no idea what they’re getting into. Neither did I. Guess a little hope isn’t a bad thing to give them?

Once Antones parked the carriage, he led the boys down the grate and ladder to the Firehold, where their new lives would begin.

Lukain and I walked behind them.

“Don’t ever undermine your own myth and mystique, little grimmer.”

I frowned. “Even if it’s a fairytale?”

“ Especially if it’s a fairytale.” He shrugged. “Legend grows enough, who knows? Maybe one day it’ll come true. At the very least, it’ll keep the sad sacks inspired.”

Ah. So it’s for your benefit. Because an inspired whelp is one less likely to cause problems.

Lukain stopped me at the ladder stretching down into the darkness below. “Speaking on making it true, you’ll have another shot at it soon.”

I quirked a brow.

“Got another shadowgala coming up,” he said. “I want you fighting again. Little bit of redemption, eh?”

He smiled as he crouched and took to the ladder.

I should have felt exhilarated. My skin prickled with warning though, a chill coming to my cheeks. I recalled the last word the shadowy man had said to Lukain.

“. . . Gala . . .”

The shadowgala group this time consisted of five fighters and three women—a reversal from the last one. After the Jinneth and Aelin debacle, Lukain wanted to tiptoe into the broodstock side of things.

This event would be me, Culiar, Rirth, and two other active fighters who were champing at the bit to make themselves known. On the female side, Helget was joined by the letter-writer Imis and one of the survivors from last gala, Tajeri.

Roughly three months had passed since my first horrendous shadowgala. It was a quicker turnaround than I’d expected. I didn’t think I’d attend more than one a year, the way things moved like molasses in the Beneath.

Apparently, in that time, my fame had grown around Nuhav. I had no idea who would be spilling such falsehoods, embellishing my story so people believed I had killed Garroway, when in fact he’d kicked my ass.

Truehearts flog me, no one in the Firehold even goes to the surface more than once a month! When would someone have the time to gossip to outsiders?

The beautiful carriage was packed full of bodies. The cloying smell was more manly and unpleasant this time around, with fewer perfumed girls in attendance.

Helget had a determined look on her face—determined to be chosen and get out of the Firehold at last, no doubt. Her eyes remained downcast to the floor of the wagon. The usually jovial woman didn’t speak a word the entire two-hour ride.

Imis, who had shocked me with a parting kiss prior to last gala, looked disheveled and racked with fear. She was quaint, bookish, and small. Clearly she worried about never seeing her interfolk partner, Palacia, again. I was worried for her too.

I would never state the obvious, which I had thought on more than one occasion. Someone like Palacia—too frail and feminine to fight but without the right parts to be a broodstock —she’ll never leave the Firehold. Not unless it’s to burn her corpse.

No matter how much Imis enjoyed how big Palacia’s cock was, truth was Palacia served no purpose to the Grimsons. I was honestly surprised she and the other interfolk were permitted to stay.

It was things like that that threw me off. Lukain can be so cold and brooding. An awful slaver who buys young people and uses them for his own purposes. Breaking them so he can rebuild them how he wants.

Yet at the same time, in his own way, he cares for the Grimsons. Almost like they’re his own children. He feeds, houses, and trains them, preparing them for a world of pain and misery.

The only thing he didn’t do, I realized, was rescue them from that pain and misery. He merely showed them the door, the possibilities, and taught them how to push past it.

The Grimsons were a merit-based underground society, growing every month. We had nearly a hundred people stuffed in the Firehold now, when we’d had only sixty when I first showed up five years ago.

My eyes scanned the worried faces inside the cart. Events like these are used to trim our numbers, so Lukain can find new members to fill the holes and start all over again with a new batch of sewerboys and guttergirls.

I sat back and closed my eyes, grinding my teeth together as that familiar sense of anger washed over me. It was all I could do to keep from losing my mind—jostling in my seat with the jagged rocking of the carriage, listening to the wind outside and the clopping of the horses drawing the cart.

When I opened my eyes, it was to the voice of Lukain Pierken. Time had passed. The night was darker now, the moon higher in the sky when I glanced over my shoulder past the front partition where Lukain sat on the riding bench outside.

“The shadowgala we are attending is on the southern tip of Olhav, called Manor Marquin. It may sound familiar to some of you.”

I frowned at Rirth, Helget, and Tajeri across the way. We would carry Manor Marquin in our minds—and its depravity—forever. We were bonded in that.

Now we were heading back into the belly of the beast.

“For the uninitiated,” Lukain continued, “speak to your Holdmates. They’ll explain it.”

For some reason—likely because of my growing “myth and mystique”—all the newcomers’ eyes turned to me.

But how could I explain we were riding into the pit of the underworld itself, a place darker than any subterranean tunnel, masked by gold, false civility, splendor, and the lie of freedom?

We would be leaving Manor Marquin with no more than seven Grimsons this evening. And the night was still young.

The first slavefighter, a young man of nineteen summers who had been in the Firehold longer than me but had never excelled enough to attend a shadowgala before tonight, had his blood spilled across the latticed grate overhead.

It dripped down the open holes into our cells, and we all looked up before he was dragged away out of our vision.

Probably to be opened up like Kemini and feasted upon by the revelers.

“Stupid bastard,” Culiar muttered from the cage across from me. “Think he regrets being so eager to come here?”

Rirth’s voice bounced off the walls of another cage. “I don’t think he regrets anything at all, Cul. He’s dead.”

Culiar chuckled. The snarky young man had a grim sense of humor. “Too true, Rir.”

Rirth called out, “Looks like you’re up second this time, Seph.”

The white-robed, mute acolytes came to stand in front of my cell.

With a groan, I stood from my bench. “Lucky me,” I muttered as my cell door swung open.

Walking past Rirth’s cell, his arm shot out and he grabbed my wrist. When I paused, the short fighter shot me a wistful smile. “Give ‘em the business, Seph. Make the bastard wish he’d never been born.”

I smiled at him, patted his hand, and continued on with the three acolytes. They brought me up the spiral staircase onto the first level of the mansion.

I instantly noticed a stark difference this time around, squinting to take in the gold tapestries, the pale bodies, and the impeccable décor of the ballroom.

No one wore a mask. Whatever the Olhavians were celebrating this go-around was different than last time.

It was a chilling shift. Being able to see the faces of the noblebloods that wanted me dead and wished for my blood unnerved me.

The vampires had gaunt features and smooth complexions, adorned in fine gowns and tight suits, with soulless red eyes and grim smiles as they watched me step into the lowered pit in the center of the room.

My eyes found Lukain, who stood at a table off to the left. His visage showed concern in his knotted brow, gaze never leaving me. He stood next to two lanky bloodsuckers I didn’t recognize.

One of them lifted a chalice to drink from—

And I sucked in a sharp breath.

Four fingers. Missing his pinkie.

The man Lukain had met in the alley was a sketchy-looking vampire with beady eyes darting around. If I didn’t know better, I’d think the bastard looked nervous, even though he was surrounded by his kind.

Just what scheme have you gotten yourself mixed up in, Master Lukain?

Off to the right, at another table, Helget sat on a vampire’s lap. Seeing her startled me—her elegant blue dress had been lowered to bare her plump breasts, just like last time, though no one paid it any attention other than the man whose lap she straddled.

No, it was the other part that made my heart beat faster. Her eyes rolled back in ecstasy as the vampire slowly drank from her supple neck.

Truehearts save me. Good for you, Helg . . . I suppose.

The man I would be facing had his back to me, speaking with someone standing higher up at the edge of the pit. I could tell by the back of his hand he was not a grayskin or fullblood. His slightly leathery knuckles showed me this was a man who enjoyed the sun.

A human.

Small mercies, I supposed, not having to face a dhampir menace like Garroway again.

As the low murmurs of the crowd became louder, my gaze lifted past the combatant to the raised stage at the front of the ballroom.

There, sitting atop his elegant throne, sat Skartovius Ashfen, Lord of Manor Marquin.

I could see the man’s face for the first time.

It was startlingly handsome. A sheer, clean face devoid of expression, sharpened by dangerous angles and a jaw line cut from marble.

His auburn hair hung full about his shoulders, a lion’s mane if I’d ever seen one.

There was a tinge of gold in his red eyes, matching the decorations of his ostentatious house and the red-and-gold robe he wore.

This time . . . he didn’t seem bored. He didn’t rest with his chin on his fist. No, he sat straight, a slight frown on his full lips. Watching me intently.

Lukain’s words from our torrid night in this very mansion spilled through me. “Skartovius Ashfen showed interest in choosing you as broodstock . . . he offered a great sum of money, power in his court. I denied him.”

This did not look like a man who would be denied twice.

I swallowed hard, my throat suddenly dry.

The combatant I’d be fighting to the death turned to face me, and my world tilted.

My vision fractured as I stared at the battered face of a formerly handsome young man, now marred and disfigured by three puffy slash scars from temple to cheek, his left eye missing and patched.

My childhood friend. My rival. My betrayer.

Baylen Sallow shot me a cruel smile.

“Well met, Sister.”