I look back to Auset, and surprise jolts through me when I find her silvery stare fixed on me. Another lash rings out all around us, the circular shape of the pit and the surrounding building making the sound echo loudly back at us in a taunting, horrific way. Auset looks at me. Her face is frozen and her body is stiff against the pain, but her eyes scream a different story. Like silver daggers, they rip into my soul in search of strength and comfort, and as much as I’m hesitant to trust who she is and what that means for me and my brothers, I can’t find it in me to deny her. My black gaze steadies on her moonlight-gray irises, and I offer what little I can through the strange tether that tightens between us. All the worry and mistrust sifts away as I look past the threat she could be and simply see someone who deserves more thanthisin life.
We stare at each other as everything else slowly recedes and quiets. In her eyes, I suddenly see myself. A street thief, who was one savvy shopkeeper away from having a limb removed for stealing or having a permanent place in the Crown’s prison. I was young. My mother had just died trying to bring another bastard into the world, and the brothel, the only home I’d ever known, decided I either needed to earn my keep or get out. I was desperate for help, in urgent need of someone to look past my dirt-streaked cheeks and jaded eyes and see a boy who could be more than his circumstances. I found it, and as I regard her fervent silver-plated eyes, I start to wonder if now it’s time to bethatfor someone else.
She’s likely a spy, but even so, what kind of life leads a person here? Tied to a whipping post, bleeding into the sand, commanding your body not to show any pain, all in hopes of spying on an Order that will kill you at the first hint of disloyalty. People with options don’t find themselves in this kind of nightmare. People with hope and a future don’t sign up for what happens in a place like this ludere. There’s more to what’s going on here, more to her, and I need to know what that is.
Her eyes are flat by the time the master stops. The emptiness in them claws at my soul, but I continue to watch helplessly as the master winds his whip around his arm. Other slaves move forward to unbind Auset from the post. I can tell she’s barely hanging onto consciousness, and still her eyes never leave mine. I watch her until she’s carried into the ludere and out of sight. My chest feels heavy, like some unwelcome beast is sitting on it and refusing to move, but I keep my face emotionless. Skull and Bones look over at me, their clenched jaws the only sign of how furious they are. From the outside, we look deathly calm just like we always do, but I can tell my brothers are seething inside just like I am.
Slaves begin to rake the blood from the sand as Tilleo blithely announces the time of tonight’s feast. Orders start to depart for their quarters, and my brothers and I stand and casually stride away from today’s useless test and poor show of brutality. Eyes watch us as we go, but I don’t bother to turn and take note of who is tracking us. We stride through the sand, the sun high and punitive in its reach. It’s as though even the celestial body above us is angered by what it just saw. Tilleo’s stronghold wavers in the heat, the massive manor to our right tricking the eye into thinking it can be blinked out of existence. If only it were that easy to escape this place.
Ahead of me, Skull angrily shoves back the flaps of our tent. By the time I stalk in after him, he’s already working to put up wards so no one can hear us. Bones leans against the large chest at the foot of his pallet, arms crossed and blazing eyes watching Skull finish up. I pour myself a drink, throwing it back as I work to get a hold of my runaway fury and chaotic thoughts. Skull no sooner whispers the last power-laced word of his chant than Bones pushes off from the chest and snarls.
“What in the fae fuck was that?” he demands, his arms outstretched and his glamoured face etched in wrath.
“We’ve seen slaves whipped before,” I point out, hating that I’m playing at casual when I feel the exact opposite. I know that I need to be the voice of reason here. I have to be the calm one. If we all lose our heads simultaneously, it could be catastrophic, and we’ve worked too hard to allow that to happen. I toss back another drink and try to ignore the tremor of ire in my hands.
“Not like that, we haven’t,” Bones argues. “We’ve never watched masters interfere like that with the tests or the prospects.”
“We’ve also never watched a blade slave step out of line like she did,” I counter, refusing to acknowledge the heat that climbs up my thighs at the thought of her small act of rebellion.
“Don’t play games, Scorpius, you’re just as bothered by what happened as we are,” Skull snaps at me.
I fill my tumbler to the brim again and drink deeply before leveling Skull with a scowl. “I am, which is part of the problem,” I admit, staring down into the amber liquid clutched in my hand. “We’re all drawn to her. Tilleo and the masters seem intent on making a target out of her, which clearly is working to pull us in even more. She’s a plant of some sort, and although I feel for her”—more than I should—“we need to be careful here,” I admonish, barely believing my own words as they slip silkily out of my mouth.
My brothers go quiet, each of them deep in thought and disgruntled. “So we turn her to our side. Show her that loyalty to us will serve her better than whoever it is she’s accountable to now,” Skull throws out there, and I nod, having thought of the same thing.
“We need to find out what’s at stake here, not just for us but for her too. Someone has gone to a lot of work to set this up; we need to make sure we understand the big picture,” I point out.
Bones shakes his head and stares absently at the far tent wall. “I know you see threats and enemies around every corner—fuck knows it’s saved our asses more than once—but I don’t see what you see, Scorpius,” he declares on a sigh as he rubs at his temples and looks over at me. “She’s familiar, I can’t explain why, but I know her somehow. I don’t see a spy when I look at her, I see a slave who’s tired of being a slave. I see hopelessness and a fae that has nothing left to lose.”
“You see us, before Eacon found us,” Skull adds, his eyes suddenly contemplative, like he’s just now seeing it too.
I’m surprised to hear that what just happened to Auset has stirred up memories for Bones and Skull too, although I probably shouldn’t be. We’ve all shared a unique connection and deep understanding of each other, even back when we were first brought together.
“Maybe that’s it,” Bones agrees, although his eyes remain troubled. “I just can’t shake the feeling that we know her somehow. That we’re here for her. That she’s one of us.”
His words have me examining my own observations and feelings about the blade slave. Is that the draw I feel, some sort of recognition? Could we have known her from before somehow? I shake off the questions and drain my tumbler dry.
“Whatever it is about her, we need to get to the bottom of it and fast. The final Bidding is a day away, and we need to know where we stand with things before we leave here. I taste change in the air, and we need to be on the right side of it,” I announce, and they both nod their agreement.
“Change?” Skull teases. “Your palate must be better than mine; all I can taste in the air are weak fae and toxic egos.”
Bones snorts with hollow amusement. “I’m only getting sand,” he announces, looking around our tent with distaste. “I fucking hate the desert.”
I huff a small laugh and wipe my palm down my face, suddenly exhausted. I couldn’t agree more. This place used to serve a purpose, but now it’s coming off as more of a liability. If my suspicions are right, then this may be our last Bidding, and if Tilleo doesn’t come clean about his part in all of it, he’s about to learn what Dorsin did. You don’t fuck with the Order of Scorpions unless you like the taste of death.
ChapterFourteen
AUSET
My back is on fire. Heat and hurt move in waves over me as I slowly come to. A sharp astringent scent mixed with herbal earthy tones gives my location away, and I know I’m in the healing chambers. The taut canvas of the cot beneath me is stiff and unforgiving against my chest, but when I try to move to get more comfortable, I regret it immediately. Agony flares through me, and I hiss in pain, unable to do anything more than lie here and endure until it slowly fades to a more manageable undulation of torture. It appears that lying here all night unhealed is a continuation of my punishment.
Carefully, I blow out a deep breath and cringe at the memory of what happened. I want to be mad at the masters, and I am, but I’m more furious with myself. I don’t know what I was thinking, losing control like that. I could blame it on the adrenaline, on the high of the fight and the festering fury over everything that was happening. But it had more to do with the loose tongue and careless attitude I’ve acquired in the past couple days. I let myself get too comfortable, and it caught up with me. I’m lucky they didn’t slit my throat…or in this case, unlucky, I suppose, depending on how I look at it. It would have been a faster way to go. Definitely more humane than this slow boil that Tilleo has kindled.
Despair circles my chest, making itself comfortable as it curls around my heart and settles there. My cheek presses against the stiff cot beneath me, and I can see a streak of moonlight that spills in through a window, but there’s no way I can get to it. Tears prick my eyes, and in the silent hours of this deep night, I give myself permission to let some of them go. It’s the only way I know to purge the poison of what they do to me here from my veins. It hurts too much to reach up and banish the wet tracks, so I leave them to carve tiny streams in my dirt-caked cheeks.
I can’t believe thatthisis all my life will ever come to. All the fight I’ve kept stoked and blazing in my body, the white-knuckled survival I’ve held onto at all cost, it wasn’t worth it. I keep telling myself that even though my life has amounted to nothing, my death doesn’t have to, but who am I kidding? I couldn’t even stop the masters today. Six years of forging every part of me into a deadly weapon, and I’m no better off than I was that first night when I woke up in a cage.
I let my sorrow slip out onto my cheeks for a second more, and then I shut it down.
