Page 35 of Sheltered in the Storm

“I didn’t tell anyone I had a sister,” I said. “And I never tried to get a message to her because it would have been intercepted. Some of the highest-grossing bouts andenaras, or fights to the death, were between siblings or combatants who had emotional ties to one another.Enarasbetween girls who were related drew the biggest crowds and made the most money of all fights, except for the team fights.”

“I did not know that.” Vos’s tentacles caressed me over myblanket cocoon. “You did not want to have to face your sister in the arena.”

“No. And I sure as hells didn’t want all those rich assholes betting and making money on it.” I heard and smelled the arena floor so clearly even now, so many years later. “Every time I saw my name posted on the schedule, I lived in terror that I might see Keela’s name listed as my opponent. And like you, I couldn’t show that fear—not to anyone. The gladiators were encouraged to rat on each other. And the more bouts you won, the more enemies you had, so you had to beverycareful at all times. We lived in bunkhouses.”

“So you had no privacy.” He found an uninjured part of my hand and stroked it with his thumb. “Not even at night.”

“No.” I cleared my throat. “I sometimes lay awake wondering what I would do if I were to face Keela in the arena. I couldn’t forfeit and neither could she because that meant a painful public execution. Would I fight to win? Fight to lose? What wouldshedo? And she might not even recognize me. So many questions, so much fear, and I had to hide it.”

He let me stay quiet for a while, stroking my hair as I rested. Talking was tiring, or maybe it was the subject matter that left me feeling so drained.

“By some miracle or twist of fate, we were never opponents or on the same fighting team,” I said softly. My chest ached, but not because of my injuries. “But I saw her twice in the hall before fights—once when I was ten, and again when I was fourteen. And then I never saw her again.”

Vos’s tentacle slipped into my blankets to wrap around my ankle, as if trying to anchor me to the present. He smelled so good, and he was so warm.

“I never saw her name listed as having been killed in the arena,” I added. “It’s very possible I missed it. But it’s also very possible she survived to age sixteen the year before I did, got her collar taken off, and found a way off Ganai.”

“I hope that is what happened,” Vos said, still stroking the side of my hand with his thumb. “There is no way to know?”

“None at all. The arenas burned. All the records went with them. And it’s impossible to find out who took a transport off the planet.” I took a ragged breath. “You know how you said you used to imagine your mother visiting the training facility and watching you?”

He kissed my hair. “Yes.”

“After her sixteenth birthday passed, I used to imagine Keela was in the crowd watching me fight. I knew she wouldn’t be, because no gladiatoreverwanted to watch fights, but I still imagined it. Sometimes I’d look over the crowd to see if she was there, but all the faces were blurry to me.” Bitterness made my stomach churn and my voice harsh. “I hated everyone who came to the fights. I would have burned down the arena with all of them trapped inside if I could have.”

“I do not blame you for that. I imagine many felt the same.”

I swallowed hard. “The day I heard the Alliance and the Barons Guild had forced the arenas to close, I sat in my rented room on Havel Prime and stared out the window, imagining Ganai burning. That was my fantasy, Vos. Not just our keepers and the arena owners dead and the training facilities and arenas burned—awhole planetlaid waste. They all let the arenas stay open for so long just because a few people made so much money off them and convinced the people the arenas offered more benefit than harm. I hated everyone for that. I would have lit the fires myself.”

“Your rage is more than understandable.” He rested his cheek on top of my head. “Calla, I am sorry these atrocities happened to you and your sister, and doubly sorry you cannot hold those responsible accountable for their cruelty.”

“Wait—I’m not done,” I said, and now I began to tremble. “When I turned sixteen, after I was free but before I left Ganai, I went back to the town where I was born. I went looking for mymother. I wanted to know why she sold us. I felt so cold and quiet inside when I stepped off the transport. I had never felt socoldin my life. I had a dagger with me and I went looking for answers.”

Vos’s tentacles caressed me again. “I understand.”

“Do you? I don’t know if I do.” My chuckle was dry and humorless. “At the time, I didn’t know what I would do if I found her, or if whatever she said would matter. Nothing would justify what she’d done. But she was gone. When I got to my hometown, I discovered she’d died years earlier in a transport crash. So I never got to find out what I would have done if I’d found her. I just get to wonder. And I don’t know if that dagger would have stayed in its sheath or not.”

“I had a moment not so different from this, during my final mission for the Guard.” He took a deep breath and exhaled. “I too cannot say what I would have done had the choice not been taken out of my hands. I find myself standing at that crossroads again and again in my dreams and in my imagination. Sometimes I make one choice, sometimes another. I believe I know which was the correct choice, the one I should have made, but then I reconsider and wonder if my fear of the repercussions would have won out. Like you, I do not know.”

“What does it say about us that we don’t know?” I asked. “Shouldn’t we know what’s right and what’s wrong?”

“I am not sure.” Vos moved so he could look into my eyes. His expression was thoughtful. “I do not know if it says anything definitive about us at all that we are unsure. But I think we yearn to have been able to make that choice rather than have it taken away from us. Perhaps we are haunted by the fact we did not get to choose.”

I found myself unable to get a breath.

We did not get to choose.

All my life, until the day I took off my collar, I had not gotten to choose. I had traveled to my hometown wanting to knowwhy I’d deserved that fate, only to discover that once again fate, or the gods, or happenstance, had taken away my ability to choose. I’d wanted control overone thingthat day and been denied. I’d returned to the port consumed by anger and helplessness.

Right behind that realization was another: When my fighter was falling toward Iosa’s surface, I’d had a moment of helplessness before I coached myself back to defiance and remembered I had the choice to fight. I’d probably survived only because I’d fought to the last to control my landing.

I might not have ended up on Iosa by choice, and be hurting and not much use while I healed, but I had the ability to choose what I did or didn’t do. I also believed my ability to make choices for myself was every bit as important to Vos as it was to me. The thought was deeply empowering, and deeply comforting.

“Calla,” Vos said, tipping my chin up so gently. “Tell me what you are thinking.”

I was thinking about his lips, only centimeters from my own, and the way his eyes glowed like starlight.

“I think you’re right,” I said instead. “About not getting to decide haunting us. I think that makes more sense to me than just about anything else I’ve ever heard.”

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