Thinking this is my chance, I lean toward the brown-eyed beauty. “Thank you,” I say.
The corner of her lip quirks. “You don’t need to thank me. We have to watch out for each other to survive. I’m Leina, by the way.”
“Katya.”
“I know.”
Oh. right.I guess it makes sense she’d know who I am after Aemon and I made such a scene the other day.
The males are still talking animatedly, passing gold coins back and forth, and paying zero attention to us, so I chance another question.
“Why are they so interested in our bloodlines?”
She rolls her eyes, and I can’t tell whether it’s in response to my question or simply an act to preface what she’s about to say. “It’s a bunch of nonsense.” Definitely not the question. “They believe things like youth, beauty, magical bloodlines and what-not makes a person’s blood more potent. They also prefer females, though I can’t say why.”
So, now I’m a valuable commodity. Every girl’s childhood dream.
“I can’t look,” says the brunette at the other end of the line. She’s turned her head away from the arena floor, where two lines of people enter from arched tunnels on opposite sides. They’re mostly blood fae, judging by all the white hair on display, but some humans and surface fae as well.
“Just breathe,” says the woman standing next to her. “Close your eyes if you have to.”
“What’s going on?” I ask Leina, noting the way her lips have pressed into a thin white line, and her eyes pointedly avoid looking at what’s happening on the arena floor.
“An execution.”
I examine the people walking out onto the sand. They aren’t simply walking in a line, their wrists are cuffed to long poles. I do a quick head count. There have to be twenty people down there. “All of them?” I say, a little too loudly. Leina sucks in a breath, and I quickly check Raiden to see if he heard me. Fortunately, he’s too entrenched in a discussion he’s having with a male in green pajamas to notice.
“All of them?” I ask again, softly this time.
She nods.
I let out a long breath. “Gods.”
It would be easy to call these people monsters, and maybe some of them are, but I have a feeling this is less about depravity and more about political strategy. It makes sense in a twisted sort of way. You entertain the masses, while simultaneously reminding them of what will happen if they step out of line.
Black-clad guards flank the prisoners as they cross to the center of the arena. Then, one by one, the prisoners are released from the poles and led to points along on the surrounding wall—like numbers on a clock—where they’re shackled to dangling metal rings. All of a sudden, my mind starts going through the possible horrific scenarios: disembowelment, setting on fire, whipping to death, limbs amputated. My stomach churns with disgust. I don’t want to see this. Why would anyone want to see this? At the same time, I can’t look away.
A pudgy male in red walks into the arena to shouts ranging from “Move it along fat ass” to “We love you, Bene.” Bene stops in the middle of the ring and waits for the crowd to quiet, his expression oddly serene given the current situation. “Fellow Ümbrians,” he says, arms spread wide, “we gather here to enactjustice on those who would have the good and law-abiding people of this great city live in fear. Our benevolent King Khalmos…” The crowd cheers as he gestures to the box where Khalmos is watching the display from his stand-in throne, his elbow propped up on the arm of the chair, chin resting in his palm. The king oozes boredom. Not regret or excitement even, but complete and utter indifference. How could someone be so cold and unfeeling? He’s having these people killed. That’s supposed to affect a person, dammit.
I’m so distracted by my own outrage, I don’t realize the announcer started talking again until he’s waddling back into the tunnel and shutting the gate behind him.
What now?
I don’t have to wait long to find out. Somewhere, a gong clangs, alerting the crowd to quiet down and pay attention. All the gates except the one Bene, the announcer, just exited through open and out of each steps a creature of nightmares.
That’s when the prisoners begin to scream.
32
The announcer glides past me, a grin on his face like this is all great fun. I’d deliver a quick jab to his throat if I didn’t think it would end up with me chained out there with those other poor bastards. At least I’m being given a fighting chance, though I doubt it’s much of one. I briefly considered shifting into one of these guards, and trying to escape, but I’ve had three of them on my ass since the moment I was taken from the mines. Not to mention, I have no idea what they did with Katya, and I refuse to leave without her.
If I die, so be it.
The gates open, and I swear I just about piss my pants as I watch five giant lizard-looking creatures step onto the arena floor. The creatures pause, eyes scanning the feast chained up before them. One, that I’m guessing is the leader, hisses at the others. They hiss back at him, then each other, but don’t move as the leader slowly advances toward the wall to my left, where a female and two malesfutilely twist and tug against their restraints. Then the creature lunges, the movement so fast, it’s little more than a green blur. The next thing I know, the fae male in the center is missing the lower half of his body, his entrails a steaming pile in the sand below. He didn’t even have time to scream, but the others do. I take deep breaths, trying to stem the sudden rush of nausea, and watch as the herd of lizards descend on the helpless prisoners.
The sound of hissing and the pounding of fat lizard feet combines with the snap of bones and horrified screams in a cacophony of death. Fists squeezing the metal bars so hard my knuckles turn white, I watch as legs are torn from bodies, their blood spraying from the severed limbs like geysers. Some prisoners are ripped from their shackles entirely, leaving what’s left of their arms hanging against the wall. The white walls are now red with blood, and the first thing my messed-up mind thinks is how are they going to get it clean?
The carnage seems to go on forever, but in actuality, it probably wasn’t more than a few minutes. The arena goes quiet as fae in red robes race into the ring to round the lizards back into their pen, using the scattered body parts as bait. One male goes so far as to the toss a disembodied head into a tunnel—the way someone might throw a ball for a puppy—and sure enough a nearby creature shoots in after it.
