POV: Soraya
The first strike sends a spray of black sand into the air.
The scarred warrior moves fast for someone his size. He lunges with a roar, swinging a short sword in a vicious arc aimed straight at the chained man’s ribs. The masked fighter—Kaelen, I hear someone shout his name from the stands—twists his body just enough that the blade slices air. Chains clatter.
The crowd jeers and hollers, some shouting suggestions, others simply enjoying the violence. This is entertainment to them. A break from drills and border skirmishes. An afternoon treat.
For me, it is something else entirely. It is the sound of my future being shredded, thread by thread.
The chained warrior’s name is Kaelen—I heard the crowd calling him. His wrists are bound in front of him, heavy iron links limiting the range of his movement. But even with that restraint, there’s a deadly grace in the way he steps. It’s not wild thrashing. It’s calculated. Efficient. He watches his opponent with a sharp stillness, like a predator waiting for the right moment.
“Fight, beast!” the scarred warrior taunts, circling. “Or have they beaten the rage out of you?”
Kaelen doesn’t answer. The iron mask over his mouth hides whatever expression he might have. His chest rises and falls slowly, controlled.
My heart slams against my ribs. Every muscle in my body is taut. Darron once taught me to read fighters, to see where their weight is, where their eyes are aiming. Old habits kick in now, even through the fog of fear.
The scarred warrior’s stance is bold, almost careless. He’s used to winning. He expects this to be the same.
Kaelen… Kaelen is holding back. Why?
Zarek steps closer to the edge of the arena. “If you bore me, Kaelen, I’ll put you down myself.”
The scarred warrior feints left, then darts right, aiming a slash at Kaelen’s shoulder. This time the blade grazes skin. A line of red appears, stark against the man’s tanned flesh.
The crowd cheers at the sight of blood. Kaelen staggers back a step, head turning slightly, eyes narrowing behind his mask.
“See?” the warrior crows, breathless with his own excitement. “Not so frightening now, are you?”
Zarek doesn’t look at me. His gaze stays on the arena. Something changes in the air.
It’s subtle—like the way a sandstorm feels a heartbeat before it hits, the weight of the wind shifting, the desert drawing a new breath. Kaelen straightens, rolling his shoulders once. The lazy, almost sluggish movements are gone.
What remains is coiled precision. The scarred warrior notices too. His smile falters a fraction.
“What’s this?” he sneers, but there’s a hint of strain in his voice now. He charges again, swinging high.
Kaelen steps in instead of back. For a moment, it’s a blur—iron glinting, sand flying. Kaelen ducks under the slash, pivots, and slams his shoulder into the other man’s chest. The impact knocks the warrior off balance.
Before he can recover, Kaelen’s chained hands shoot out, catching the man’s sword arm. With a sharp twist and a brutal yank, he wrenches the limb backward.
A crack echoes through the arena, sickening and loud.
The warrior screams. His sword falls to the sand. And the crowd goes wild.
“Break him!” someone shouts.
“Kaelen! Kaelen!” another voice chants.
My stomach flips. I can’t look away.
Kaelen doesn’t let go. He uses the moment of shock to sweep the man’s legs, sending him crashing to the ground. The chains rattle as Kaelen moves, adjusting his grip. He drops to one knee beside his thrashing opponent and drives a fist into his throat.
The sound that comes out of the warrior is a choked gurgle. His eyes bulge. He claws weakly at Kaelen’s arms, but with the broken limb and the blow to his windpipe, there’s nothing left in him that can resist.
It’s over faster than my mind can catch up.
One moment, there’s a fight. The next, there’s a body on the sand. Still. The arena goes quiet all at once. Even the jeers cut off.
Kaelen stays where he is, kneeling over the man he just killed, shoulders heaving. The chains on his wrists are spattered with blood. A drop slides down, falls, and darkens the sand.
Slowly, he lifts his head.
His gaze rises along the stands, over the line of watching warriors, over Zarek’s impassive face—
And lands on me. The world narrows to that line of sight.
He is too far for me to see the exact color of his eyes through the shadow cast by his hair and the edge of his mask. But I feel him. Something cold and hot at once runs down my spine, like stepping into water under scorching sun.
He doesn’t look triumphant or proud. He looks… aware. Present. Terrifyingly conscious of what he’s done and why.
Zarek breaks the silence.
“Well done,” he says, his tone almost bored. “At least one thing in this cursed day does what it’s meant to.”
He steps closer to the edge of the pit, looking down at Kaelen. “Stand.”
Kaelen pushes to his feet. The chains drag, clinking in the sudden stillness. Blood streaks his chest, his knuckles, the iron links. Zarek gestures toward me without looking.
“As promised,” he announces to the arena, “the winner claims the prize.”
Heat rushes to my face again. My heart slams against my ribs.
“Kaelen has won the right to her,” Zarek continues. “She is his now. For whatever… use he chooses, when he’s not rotting in my cells.”
The way he says use makes my stomach lurch.
The crowd erupts again, this time with a different energy. The focus shifts from the dead man on the sand to me and the one who killed for the right to own me.
“Good for you, beast!”
“Hope she screams nicely.”
“Kharad knows how to reward its champions!”
My throat closes. I can’t breathe. I am not a person to them, just meat.
“Take them both,” Zarek orders, voice cutting through the noise. “The beast goes back to his hole. The girl goes somewhere she can’t cause trouble before we decide what to do with her.”
Guards surge forward.
Two jump into the arena, grab Kaelen’s chains, and yank. He doesn’t resist, but neither does he stumble. Even bound, even blood-streaked, he moves with that unnerving balance.
I’m too empty to fight.
Zarek’s gaze brushes over me as I’m hauled past him. “Don’t damage her,” he says idly. “She’s worth more unbroken. For now.”
Unbroken.
Too late.
They take me through a side passage that slopes downward, the air growing cooler and damper with each step. The light from above fades, replaced by the dim glow of wall torches that sputter and smoke, filling my nose with the scent of burning tallow and mold.
The corridor opens into a row of barred cells carved directly into the rock. Iron doors. Narrow windows set high near the ceiling, letting in only slivers of light. The sound of distant dripping water echoes somewhere unseen.
“This one,” a guard grunts, swinging open a door.
They shove me inside.
The floor is hard-packed earth, scattered with old straw and a thin blanket rolled in the corner. It smells of dust, sweat, and something sharper—metal and old blood, clinging to the stone like ghosts.
The door slams behind me with a final clang.
I stumble forward a few steps before catching myself on the wall. My wrists burn where the rope has rubbed them raw.
For a moment, I just stand there, breathing hard, heart pounding in my ears.
Then I feel it, a presence.
Across the narrow corridor, in the cell directly opposite mine, someone shifts. Chains rattle softly. A shape detaches itself from the shadows.
Kaelen.
They’ve thrown him here too, close enough that we’re trapped together, separated only by rusted bars and a strip of corridor.
He watches me. Not like the warriors in the arena did. Not like Zarek did. Differently.
“Congratulations,” I say, my voice rasping, clinging to dry humor because it’s the only shield I have left. “You won yourself a cursed girl.”
His head tilts a fraction. Then, for the first time, I hear him speak—or something close to it.
Not with his mouth but with his mind.
You’re not cursed, a rough, unfamiliar voice whispers inside my skull. You’re leverage.
I freeze, spine pressed to cold stone, heart thundering, as the truth settles over me like a second set of chains.
He’s dangerous in ways I don’t even have words for yet. And we are both prisoners now. Together, in the dark.