He nodded. “And when the time comes, everyone who played a part will die a slow and painful death for what they did to you.”
“They did it to you too.”
Gallagher frowned. He seemed unable to understand that he too had been a victim. “I am a warrior, even in chains.”
“I know.” The canvas of scars his torso had become would never let either of us forget that. “Tell me what happened. Please.”
He sighed and finally sank onto the stack of mats, maintaining as much respectful space between us as he could. “I don’t want you to hate me, but I’ll understand if you do. However, that won’t change anything for me. My oath can’t be broken. Even if you loathe the very sight of me, I will protect you with my dying breath.”
“I understand.” But I also understood that he wasn’t yet armed with all the facts. If I was carrying his child, would that complicate his oath? It would certainly complicate everything else. “Start from the beginning. Please. When did it happen?”
Gallagher took a deep breath, and his thick chest swelled. “It was my second night in the arena. Our second week here. After the fight, two guards took me back to my cell, but you weren’t there. They stayed while I showered, then they gave me a clean pair of pants and said I’d been requested for a private engagement.
“I didn’t even know what that meant. I had done nothing but fight since the bachelor party. But they wouldn’t answer any of my questions. They just said that if I cared about you, I’d do whatever the client told me to. When I arrived, there you were, standing with two other women.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know. It was a small room, with thick rugs and pillows all over the floor. The lights were dim. They lined me up between a shifter I’d never seen and Drusus.” The incubus from Metzger’s.
“Who was the client?”
“They didn’t tell me his name. He was tall, for a human, and painfully thin, and he obviously had a good deal of money. The handlers said no one had ever requested a champion before, and that Vandekamp charged him a fortune.”
That was no surprise. The Spectacle’s clientele could afford anything they wanted, and all they seemed to want was something no one else had ever had. Like afaechampion who drew his lifeblood from the gaping wounds of his victims.
“He paired the others on rugs arranged around the room, while he stood in the middle. Then he turned to us. I thought it was coincidence that he’d paired us, but finally I realized he’d overheard something at the fight. Something about you and me.”
“He heard that you would only fight for me.” The same thing I’d heard in the private viewing box. “We’ve become some kind of a Savage Spectacle legend, and Vandekamp plays it up.”
Gallagher nodded. “I told him that our relationship wasn’t sexual in nature. That to even imply such a thing was an insult to both of us, and could not be suffered.
“You started crying, and I wanted to rip his head from his body, but he wasn’t threatening your life, so I couldn’t, and I felt so...”
“Helpless?” I said, and he nodded. He didn’t have easy access to that word.
“When I refused, he put you with the incubus. Drusus promised you’d like it. He was trying to comfort you, but you didn’t want to like it.”
Of course not. I wouldn’t have wanted him inside my head any more than I wanted him inside my body. Being forced to enjoy something I didn’t want would have been another choice taken from me. Another humiliation.
“He... Drusus reached for you. He was just trying to save you both. But you started screaming.” Gallagher’s voice sounded thick, as if each word had to be forced from his throat. “You were terrified, but I’d promised you I wouldn’t kill anyone who wasn’t threatening your life. So I did the only thing I could think of.”
“You took his place,” I whispered.
“It was the best I could do.”
I squeezed my eyes shut and suddenly the memory was there.
Cushions and pillows. Thick rugs in shades of blue and purple, as if the room is one big bruise. Tear-streaked faces and bare bodies. Guards standing against the wall, watching with various levels of disgust and fascination.
Gallagher, naked, his face a mask of self-loathing, looking at me as if I were the source of all his pain, yet his only hope of redemption.
“Forgive me,”he whispers.
Then he reaches for me—
I opened my eyes, and the images were gone. And suddenly I was terrified to close them. I’d needed to know, and now I was ready to forget again.
“You remember?” Gallagher said.
