Page 7 of Fae Champion

Though the resistance made me dizzy, and the stab wound to pang, I bucked against him. He settled his full weight onto mine, crushing me against the corpse. He had to be nearly twice as heavy as I, most of the mass muscle. Even so, I thrashed some more.

The man chuckled darkly. “Fight me all you want, woman. It only turns me on.”

I stilled. My resistance was futile anyway. There’d never been any winning with this displayin the first place, a conclusion I would have reached had I not just scarcely evaded death.

“Let her go,” someone hollered from up in the stands, a hopeless and likely dangerous gesture.

From my vantage point close to the ground, I spied shiny, pointy black shoes and sky-blue stockings running our way. When they reached the horde of guards circling us, Braque’s voice snarled, “Move, you morons.”

The guards’ legs swept out of the way as quickly as if the queen herself had ordered them. Everyone had to know Braque was her mouthpiece.

Those stupid shiny shoes stopped an inch from my nose. “Let her go,” Braque said. “I’ve got her now.”

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea, milord,” advised the beastly guard who was making every one of my breaths a struggle. “She’s a feisty one.”

“Obviously,” Braque quipped. I could picture his puckered lips and dark, high-and-mighty eyes. “Move.”

The moment the guard released me, I shot to sitting, sucking in deep breaths. My world spun before I could get to my feet, and I braced myself against the earth.

Braque was already pulling potion bottles from the satchel that was a constant strapped across his round belly.

“Lord Braque,” Azariah asked from behind me. “What shall Her Majesty have me do? Should I entertain the crowd?”

Without looking up from the examination of hispurse’s contents, he answered, “Yes. Announce the next fights. Be verbose about it. That should be easy for you. You rarely shut up.”

“Yes, Lord Braque,” answered the magnificent creature who shouldn’t be beholden to someone like this prissy lackey.

Azariah separated himself from the tumult with a steady beating of his hooves before he cleared his throat and began calling out the next contestants to enter the ring—and possibly not leave it alive.

“Everyone, cover your ears,” Braque commanded brusquely to those nearest us, and guards slapped their hands to their ears. Those who’d drawn weapons in anticipation of subduing me sheathed them hurriedly before doing the same.

I got to my feet, glad to find myself steady enough, and looked down on Braque. His entire face was flushed with the run over here.

“What are you planning on doing to me now? Your spell controlling what I say isn’t working anymore.”

“Don’t you think I know that?” he snarled, making me wonder if the queen would punish him for his failures even though he kissed her ass at every opportunity and was a distant descendant of her bloodline, one evidently unworthy of becoming an heir.

He clutched two slim vials while rummaging in his bag for another. Their contents swirled inside the thin walls of glass in cloud white and the dark of a moonless night. “My spell should’ve held. No one should be able to break it.”

I smirked, though it was mostly to irritate and unsettle him. “Obviously your spell wasn’t as strong as you think it was if I was able to break it.”

How, I still wasn’t certain.

“You might have the king’s blood in you,” he commented, distracted as his bottom lip waggled as he deliberated between the contents of two vials. “But that’s not enough to break any of my spells.”

“Then it seems to me like I’d be a fool to allow you to cast another one on me.”

In the end, he pulled out both of the tubes he’d been considering, clutching all four of them in his stubby fingers, before fully registering what I’d said. He jerked his stare up to me.

Whatever intentions he read on my face, he brought the first bottle up to his mouth to wrap those puckered lips of his around the stopper.

Before he had the chance, I drew one of my daggers and sliced the straps of his purse. As the bag slid along his body to plunk to the ground, I spun until I pressed my chest to his shoulders, the point of my blade to his bobbing throat.

The guards, all now in motion toward me, stopped moving. The one who’d tackled me earlier aimed a sword at my side.

Using Braque as a shield, I turned us until the queen’s alchemist stood fully between me and the most threatening of the guards.

Azariah had stopped speaking mid-sentence. The stadium was awash with excitement. Cries rose abovethe sudden chatter, but I distinguished none of them as I snapped my gaze back and forth between my many threats.

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