Page 26 of Raven

“Great!” Kat replies. “I’ll get Slate to pick you up and bring you to Archer’s around seven. We’ll go from there with the rest of the guards.”

It’s been several days since Raven and I spoke, with no word from him. He is either extremely busy or cooking up some sort of plan. Or playing—I’m curious to see what his intentions are besides sex, because that one is obvious.

But he is MIA, while every evening, I get cleaned up and nervously wait for him to text or call me any moment.

Before leaving my bungalow, I check myself in the mirror.

Two years of camping out on the Eastside completely changed my habits. I tried hard to make sure that no one could put together the blonde Milena Tsariuk in designer clothes and high heels and a ton of makeup with what I look like these days—natural, my chestnut dye grown out and blended with my natural color.

The truth is I miss the old me more and more these days.

Right now, I look plain. Invisible—I hated that word all my life. Until I wanted to become invisible. Mission accomplished.

But now I think about Raven and smirk. He doesn’t know what I am.

I pull the hem of my boring dress up and take it off, then kick off my tennis shoes.

My closet has several party dresses that I never dared wear. I put on a peach strapless minidress then add knee-high gladiator sandals. I twist my hair and pin it high on top of my head in an effortless but elegant hairdo, then tug one strand out and let it fall on one side of my face.

For a moment, I crave a line of coke or an MDMA. But that was the old me. Instead, I take a bottle of vodka from the freezer, throw back a shot, and chase it with a slice of lemon. The burn makes me close my eyes and drift back to the times when partying was the easiest escape. I do another shot that goes straight to my head, then another.

I’m not the prey here, Raven. But you are yet to find that out.

Before leaving the bungalow, I walk to the mirror and stare at my reflection once more. I’m not quite Milena from two years ago, but I’m not Maddy either. And just like that, with the change of outfit, my attitude is different.

Beautiful, I say to myself, sensing a prickle of nostalgia. It’s been a long time since I said that.

11

MADDY

Carnage is a large hangar tucked into the jungle. Its giant parking lot, full of scooters, bikes, golf carts, and ATVs, is lit by bright strobe lights. There’s a metal detector at the entrance.

Escorted by a group of guards, Archer, Kat, and I enter the dimly lit smoky building, full of people I’ve never seen. I assume they are from Port Mrei. Armed guards are everywhere—the entire perimeter, around the large cage in the center, and a row of them on the mezzanine catwalks below the two-floor high ceilings.

Carnage gives me whiplash, and I close my eyes, letting the angry music that blasts from the speakers and the smell of violence take me back in time.

It reminds me of home, or at least parts of it. Growing up, there was that strange contrast between the fancy places and the subtle sense of violence that emanated from the men I was around.

Right now, I want to talk to Dad. The feeling of nostalgia assaults me so hard that I have an urge to stop this hidden identity spectacle. I want to call him. Talk to him. About music, life, about Mom. Anything but his business. I desperately want to hear his voice, because at the end of the day, he was the only person who loved me, in his own possessive way. I don’t know when I turned from his little girl to an asset. But as soon as I did, I became something to barter.

“You okay?”

My eyes snap open to see Kat’s concerned gaze. She is dressed in cargo pants, tractor boots, and a tube top. Her thick hair is almost always loose instead of being braided. It falls beautifully onto her shoulders and back. I think Archer likes it that way.

I search around for Raven, but he is nowhere to be seen. Two guys are fighting in the octagon, but the crowd is not paying much attention to them.

“How long does this go on?” I ask as we take the reserved front seats right next to the chain fence of the octagon, and I study the crowd, noticing many glances in our direction.

“It depends. I’ve only been here twice,” Kat says. “But we are only here for Raven’s fight.”

“He is an interesting guy, huh?” I ask, trying to be cautious about how much interest I show in him in front of others, though I suspect there is a reason Kat and Archer invited me here today.

“He’s twenty-seven,” Kat says. “But he has the skills of an FBI profiler with decades of experience and the mind of a Dalai Lama. That’s what Arch says. The guy fucking reads. I mean, not scientific stuff like Archer but literature.”

I turn to look over my shoulder at the crowd.

“Mostly locals here, from Port Mrei,” Kat explains, “as well as Ayana’s security guards who are into this stuff. We hiked up security here, too. No metal objects are allowed. Everyone not from Ayana gets a pat-down, yadda-yadda.”

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