Page 16 of Rise of a Fallen Man

A working boy was required to be registered to a brothel and confined to a fun district. Legally, I wasn’t allowed to leave the district without permission or accompanied by a woman.

Traeh gave me a letter of reference for another establishment like hers. As soon as my burns healed enough for me to walk, I headed to the town where it was located.

Once again, I walked along a frozen dirt road to a place I’d never been to before. This time, however, I had the money to stop at a tavern and buy a meal.

By pure luck, I found a letter of reference in the tavern, dropped by someone, probably after a night of heavy drinking. The letter had no name. I couldn’t return it. So, I used it to sign my first slave contract.

As a whore, I could only keep my heart to myself. But as a slave, I kept more. I no longer had to share a bed with anyone. I was not required to fake emotions I didn’t feel or to have strangers’ hands on me when I didn’t want to be touched. As long as I did my work during the day, my body remained my own.

Later, I learned, of course, that slaves were still despised and looked down at by free folks. Yet the status of a slave was higher than that of a whore because every slave had a chance at redemption, even if many of them never got free again.

After that first contact, getting the next one proved easy. As long as I worked hard and asked for little, slave owners didn’t dig deep into my past.

Nothing in my life had predicted my being in the gladiators’ arena now. A position like that was highly coveted by many and was granted to very few. Still, when Lady Gem had offered this opportunity to me, my first instinct was to decline.

The gladiators’ games rivaled the queen’s parades in popularity. They attracted enormous crowds, and in my case, too much attention could be deadly. I’d broken the law by concealing my past to become a slave. If discovered, I risked the death penalty.

But in the end, I had accepted the offer. A part of me wished to experience at least a moment of the respect and admiration that society showered the royal gladiators with. I wanted to know what it felt like to step in front of a crowd with my head held high.

The other reason was her—Princess Aniri. As a royal gladiator, I got to stay in Egami, where she lived.

My mind demanded I get away, but my heart decided otherwise. And that was the problem. That girl with her freckles, and her glasses, and her tragic secrets had made her way under my skin, getting dangerously close to my heart.

She was the only woman I’d ever met who made me feel like her equal, despite our positions being so impossibly far apart. The feeling came as a true shock, and I still wasn’t sure whether it was her who was so down-to-earth or me who felt elevated in her presence, but with her, the slave felt worthy of the princess. She never treated me as a lesser being, not even after she’d found out the whole truth about my past.

The gladiators formed a circle around the arena, framing it in a single line. Queen Anna and her royal consort King Trebor walked down the long rug laid over the sand. Regal and dignified, the royal couple crossed the arena toward the lavishly decorated sitting platform on the opposite side.

I thought I was prepared to see her again. I’d waited for this moment all morning. But my breath hitched when Princess Aniri stepped out into the arena after her parents.

She held her chin up, not letting her tall crown weigh her head down. The long train of her formal gown sparkled like a starry sky, stitched with diamond stars. The starched lace collar rose from around her shoulders like a wide flower petal, not letting me see her face until she stopped in the middle of the arena and raised her hand in greeting.

Ari turned around slowly, waving to the crowd. Hiding behind the visor of my helmet, I greedily soaked in every detail about her.

The sun reflected in her glasses, hiding her eyes from me. Did she see me? I was standing too far away, and she was looking up at the cascading rows of seating from where the people who’d come from all over the queendom waved and cheered.

A different kind of images entered my mind as memories rushed me. I remembered how her glasses fogged with my breath while I kissed her freckles. I never forgot the sensation of her hair gripped in my fingers while she held my cock in her mouth. And how she sobbed in my arms, recalling things that no girl should have to live through.

The princess was a survivor. Like me. I sensed our connection from the first words she said to me. That was the only reason I’d agreed to come to her bedroom that first night.

The generous sum the crown offered for teaching the princess the ways of sex would’ve enticed many. But for me, it was useless. I didn’t plan to buy my freedom because there was no future for me beyond slavery.

I had no desire to work as a hired man of pleasure ever again, not even for one night, not even for the crown princess. But I had to make sure that Princess Arini was simply the spoiled little girl like most nobles were. Born in miracle and raised in luxury, she couldn’t possibly have anything in common with me.

How badly I’d been mistaken, and how wrong she’d proven me. Since that first night, I couldn’t get her out of my thoughts.

Throughout my life, women had been many things to me. My mother was a source of strength and safety. Lady Lana became my source of pain and humiliation. Later, being with women delivered some pleasure and even comfort. My clients had been my job that I did well but didn’t think about once it was done. I hadn’t pleasured a woman since the night of the fire and hadn’t missed it.

But with Ari... With her, I let it all spiral out of control, and I wasn’t sure when or how it had happened.

It wasn’t Ari’s fault. I knew who she was from the very first moment I laid my eyes on her. I had no business falling for the crown princess. But there I was, falling, plummeting so hard, my head was spinning, and I had to stop it before I crashed.

She crossed the arena and climbed the stairs up to the royal balcony under the awning of gold brocade. The train of her priceless gown stretched over the stairs like a waterfall of diamonds and sunshine. I watched her climb higher and higher to the heights where I could never follow her.

As she took her seat next to the queen, I forced my thoughts out of the past and into the present.

Instead of remembering how Ari’s arms twined around my neck with her naked body pressed against mine, I recalled the purpose of all of us being in this arena today. The purpose of this event was for Princess Aniri to welcome to Rorrim Queendom the three high-born princes. Before their visit was over, she’d choose one of them to be her lawfully wedded husband.

By the end of this year, another man would share her bed, touch her body, and kiss her freckles. And it wouldn’t be me.

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