His blood goes cold.
The exit corridor is not empty.
Demos is standing between them and the door.
He has six armed men at his back. Swords drawn. Crossbows braced. They are arranged in a loose arc across the width of the corridor, blocking the passage completely, and Demos is infront of them with his ringed hands at his sides and his small eyes bright and his mouth curved in the particular, satisfied expression of a man who anticipated the plan, who knew the route, who has been here the entire time, waiting.
Lethe’s hand tightens in Zazyrus’s.
Demos smiles.
"There’s my little lamb," he says. "I was wondering when you’d arrive."
Chapter twenty-four
Chapter 24
Zazyrus puts Lethe behind him.
The movement is automatic. Instinctive. His arm sweeps back and Lethe is moved from his side to his back in a single fluid motion, tucked behind the wall of his body, shielded by the width of his shoulders and the reach of his arms and every inch of the muscle and bone and fury that stands between the boy and the men in the corridor.
Six armed men. Swords drawn. Crossbows braced. And Demos in front of them, ringed hands at his sides, his small eyes moving between Zazyrus and the space behind him where Lethe is pressed against his back.
Zazyrus catalogs the threat in the time it takes to breathe.
Six men. Two crossbows, four swords. The crossbows are the priority. The bolts will fire before he can close the distance, which means the crossbowmen die first or Zazyrus dies with iron in his chest. The corridor is narrow, too narrow for six men to fight effectively, which means they will crowd each other and the swords will be a liability in close quarters. The crossbowmen are in the back, behind the swordsmen, which means Zazyrus needsto get through four men with blades to reach the two who can kill him from a distance.
Demos is in front. Unarmored. Unarmed except for the knife on his belt that he uses for cutting fruit and threatening people who cannot fight back.
Zazyrus looks at him.
The pit lord looks smaller than he does in the cage. Down in the deep kennels, with the torchlight and the bars and the power of ownership, Demos has a presence that fills a corridor. Here, in the open, with his men behind him and his beast in front of him and the night air coming through the exit door at his back, he is a man. Just a man. Short. Soft through the middle. His cologne competing with the sour note of fear sweat that Zazyrus can smell from fifteen feet away.
He is afraid.
He should be.
"Come back, little lamb," Demos says. He is addressing Lethe, not Zazyrus. His eyes are trying to find Lethe behind the wall of Zazyrus’s body and his voice carries the particular tone he uses when he speaks to things he owns, casual and proprietary and underlaid with the threat of consequence. "You know what happens when you disobey."
Lethe goes rigid against Zazyrus’s back.
Zazyrus feels it. The full-body flinch, the involuntary contraction of every muscle, the conditioned response of a body that has been trained over six years to react to that voice with compliance because the cost of defiance has always been pain. Lethe goes rigid and his hand, pressed against Zazyrus’s lower back, clenches into a fist in the fabric of his waistband.
The fist is not compliance.
The fist is fury.
"I said come here." Demos’s voice sharpens. The casual tone drops away and what’s beneath it is raw and ugly and afraid. Heis losing control. His most valuable fighter is free and his most useful possession is behind the fighter and the armed men at his back are expensive and frightened and the situation is not going the way he planned. "Now, Lethe. Before this gets worse."
"No."
The word comes from behind Zazyrus. Small. Quiet. Certain.
Demos blinks.
"No," Lethe says again. His voice does not break. It has never broken. Six years of unspeakable things done to his body and his spirit and his voice has held through every one of them, steady and clear and implacable, and it holds now. "No. I’m not coming back. I’m not yours. I was never yours."
The silence that follows is dense and absolute.
