Page 15 of Rise of a Fallen Man

She spotted the townsfolk by the broken fence and shoved me away.

“Don’t touch me,” she hissed in a half-whisper. A ripple ofreflectionpulsed through her body. “Where is my wagon? I’ve got to get out of here before anyone sees me with you.”

She paid me to fuck, kiss, and cuddle her in private, but wouldn’t accept a friendly touch from me in public, ashamed tobe seen with me. Her rejection burned, but I tamped it down promptly before even a hairline ofreflectioncould mar my skin.

No one could ever see mereflect. No one could know how much their insults hurt me or how scary the world’s disdain could feel.

Sincereflectionwas a public display of fear and shame, a part of dealing with it was to control those emotions. The other part was to physically hold back the ripple, which I’d learned most people couldn’t do. I started training this ability of mine back in Lady Lana’s manor. By flogging myself with the riding crop, I’d learned how to hide my fear of physical pain. During my years at the fun house, I’d trained to conceal my shame too.

“Salas!” Traeh rushed to me. “Erif... He didn’t come out. Everyone is here now, but he’s still inside.”

A beam crashed in the kitchen, sending fireworks of sparks out of the broken windows all around the house.

“Oh no. No, no, no... Erif.” Traeh wailed, falling to her knees beside me.

“I saw him on the stairs,” one of the men said. His leg was bleeding, either burned or cut.

“Erif!” Traeh lurched toward the house, but I managed to grab her just in time.

“You need to take care of the men.” I pointed at the one with blood dripping down his arm and all the others huddling in the yard, half-naked and shivering.

The villagers poured through the broken fence. They threw torches and curses at the house. I feared they might turn their wrath from the inanimate objects like the fence and the house to the people who were taking shelter in the yard.

“Stay here and keep the townsfolk at bay,” I told Traeh, then tipped my head to the closest of our men. “Keep her here. I’ll be right back.”

I picked up the blanket that Madam Edirp had dropped in her escape to her wagon. Throwing it over my head, I ran back into the burning building.

A wave of heat slammed into me inside. The smoke proved disorienting. I dropped to the floor, where the smoke wasn’t as thick, and crawled toward the stairs.

The staircase had burned through and prolapsed. Erif lay at the bottom, his foot stuck between the boards of the lower step. He didn’t move when I grabbed him under his arms. I hoped with all my heart he was just unconscious, not dead.

I freed his leg and dragged him to the exit where Traeh was waiting for us.

“Oh, thank gods...thank gods...” She grabbed Erif’s arm.

Two other men from our house rushed to help.

With a loud cracking, the door frame collapsed. The top beam just missed my shoulder, but the side post caved in, crashing down and scorching my side on the way. My right pant leg caught on fire. The searing pain sent me out into the yard. I fell and rolled on the frozen ground, trying to kill the flames that burned my skin and flesh.

Terror and agony ravaged me. Shame pulsed through it all, fanned by the screams from the crowd higher than the flames. But I didn’t let a single line ofreflectionshow anywhere on my body.

The world did not deserve a visual display of the torture it’d been putting me through.

“Burn. Burn. Burn,” the villagers chanted. “Burn, filthy whores!”

Chapter 5

Salas

Seven years later.

The crowd screamed as the royal gladiators and I entered the arena. These were the screams of cheers and support, but they echoed with the chants “Burn, filthy whore!” ringing through my memories.

I was the same man, with the same body and soul, and the same shameful past. Only the place had changed. And here, they admired me instead of despised. I wondered how long it would take for the cheers to turn to sneers if they found out who I really was and how I came to be here now.

After Traeh’s fun house had burned to the ground, I spent weeks recuperating from my burns in a rented room. As my injuries healed painfully slow, I had plenty of time to contemplate my future.

The decision was simple because my choices were fewer than ever before. I was a fallen man who’d worked in a fun house for eight years. There was only one place for me to go now—another whore house. Even a slave contract was out of reach with the past like mine. There was no such thing as a “former whore.” Traeh had been right all along. A stain like this remained forever. It became a life sentence.

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