So I turn my head—slowly, because fast movements draw predators—and look.
Oh.
He stands at the arena's edge, and he iswrongin every way that matters for a man. Too tall—seven feet, maybe more. Too broad, all brutal muscle and scarred flesh barely contained by leather armor that's seen battle and won. Horns curve up from his temples like a crown of blackened bone, and his hands...
His hands end in claws.
The beast lords aren't supposed to come here. They stay in their territories beyond the Blackwood, taking their tributes and leaving civilized lands alone.
That's the treaty.
That's thepeace.
But he's here now, and he's looking at me.
Gold eyes. Burning gold, like a forge in full flame.
Predator's eyes.
The Auction Mistress recovers first, her voice pitched higher than before. "Ah! Lord Vorak of Blackwood graces us with hispresence! Will you be bidding tonight, my lord, or merely... observing?"
He doesn't answer her.
He doesn't look away from me.
The silence stretches. Somewhere in the upper tiers, someone coughs nervously.
Then a voice—drunk or stupid or both—breaks the quiet. "What's wrong, beast? Afraid of a little witch?"
Scattered laughter, brittle and uncertain.
Another voice, emboldened: "She's probably toofragilefor the likes of—"
Vorak moves.
He doesn't run. Doesn't rush. He simplymoves, and three strides later he's on the sand, and the drunk lord who was mocking him suddenly looks remarkably sober.
"I'll bid," the lord says quickly, words tumbling over themselves. "Five hundred—"
"No." Vorak's voice is gravel and death and finality. "You won't."
"This is anauction, beast." The lord's trying for indignant, landing somewhere near terrified. "I have every right to—"
Vorak hits him.
It's not a duel. Not elegant or ceremonial or bound by any rule exceptsurvival. It's just violence, quick and brutal and absolute.
The lord goes down hard.
Vorak follows him down.
I should look away. Every instinct screams to close my eyes, to spare myself this, but I can't.
I watch him fight the way he was made to fight—like violence is a language he speaks fluently, like he was born with the vocabulary of breaking things.
The lord tries to get up.
Once.
