Page 45 of Baited

“Won’t serve gladiators,” I grumble.

“You mean they won’t serve you, Blayn,” Voyon says, coming out from his back room. “Captain’s orders.”

I lift my lips in a snarl.

“But”—Voyon holds up a tentacle and a hand—“there’s a new place opened up around the corner. I’m sure he hasn’t got to them yet.”

I check on Izzy. She shrugs. “Why not? I could eat something.”

While my stomach is growling, I could also eat something, and it’s the little snack sat on my lap, heating me through and through.

IZZY

Ican’t believe Blayn dropped off while Voyon was searing a new design into his shoulder. But as the laser hummed and he talked, his eyelids drooped, and after no time at all, he was gone. The occasional twitch told me he was still alive.

And now he’s awake, hungry, and clearly aroused. Blayn confuses the hell out of me. My body wants one thing and my head…it doesn’t know what it wants.

Blayn plucks at my heart. He might be huge, terrifying, and a trained killer, but he has a center to him which isn’t any of those things. An enigma I want to unwrap.

The male who claims to have no family and yet, when he was sick, spoke of a mother.

He has a story, and I want him to tell me.

Voyon sprays Blayn’s shoulder with something that makes him shudder.

“If you’re already recovering from an infection, you don’t want another one,” he warns. “Keep it clean,” he adds, “for at least a nova-week.”

Blayn snorts, as if the whole thing is an annoyance to him, wrapping his arm around me. We exit the shop and are back on the busy street again.

“What does it mean?” I ask, as we make our way around the corner. “Your new art.”

“It is about life and death, the dark and the light,” Blayn says, as if it explains everything. “And you. Voyon can see thoughts, he is the best tattooist because he can incorporate what I think into the designs he etches.”

A less grimy looking establishment than the others is set between something which looks and smells like it sells used footwear and an empty unit.

Blayn fills the doorway, hesitating on the threshold as if expecting to be ejected.

Inside it’s dark but not unwelcoming. Richly colored fabrics cover the walls and ceiling in huge swathes. It makes me think of Morocco, especially as the entire place is lit with flickering brass-like lamps.

“Come, come!” A tiny Jiaka, appearing out of the gloom, beckons us forward. “Sit, sit.” It points one of its four hands to a bank of comfortable looking recliners, common for most eateries in Tatatunga.

Once the door to the street is closed, the noise abates, and I see we’re the only customers.

“Looks like the captain hasn’t got to this one yet,” Blayn says as he takes a seat and pulls me down next to him. “Good.”

Behind us, the Jiaka pulls a heavy curtain across our booth, shutting out the rest of the eatery and muffling the sound further. It’s like being in a sumptuous cocoon. Blayn shuffles his feathers into a more comfortable position and leans back against the cushions, spreading himself out.

“Why does he stop you eating where you like?”

Blayn’s brow darkens. “Never enough food in the dome. Captain says it’s bad to eat what I want. If he didn’t bar me, I’d never get a pass. Then I get put in the parade and I never get a pass.”

My blood boils. It’s bad enough Blayn and the others have to risk their lives in the dome, but to have everything else controlled is grossly unfair.

“Why is it bad?”

“I like to eat.” Blayn smiles his secret smile. “But we’re only supposed to have gladiator rations or we’ll be slow.”

I genuinely can’t imagine Blayn being slow at anything. For such an enormous being, he’s lithe, quick, deadly.