Page 113 of Shielded Heart

“No one’s in here, boss,” someone shouted from inside the workshop.

“Where are they, sedhi?” Vaund demanded.

“It’s just the two of us, Vaund,” Arc said, struggling to keep his voice steady. He couldn’t allow himself to forget one of the lessons he’d learned long ago—a battle could be won before the first blow was thrown if you could get into your opponent’s head beforehand.

Arcanthus focused his rage into a tiny point, into a powerful, controllable shape, and let his instincts and fear make it cold; it would be a weapon to wield deliberately against his foe, a deadly tool. He could not allow it to control him, or he’d lose.

Vaund laughed again and shoved Samantha aside. She stumbled half a dozen steps before crashing heavily to the floor. To Arcanthus’s relief, her head snapped up immediately, but there was a terrified look on her face. Her shoulders heaved with her quick, gasping breaths.

“The two of us and twenty of my men in the room behind you,” Vaund said.

“I thought this was meant to be a fair fight,” Arcanthus said. “Or is it that you still can’t beat me without a gang to hold me down?”

Vaund reached up with his empty hand and tore off his shirt, tossing it aside. His bared torso was lean, with hard, irregular ridges of muscle, and armored plates jutted from beneath the ashen skin of his forearms. Tattered flesh, smeared with dark blue ichor, dangled from his chest. He looked more skeletal—and less alive—than ever before; his chest didn’t even move with the wheezing breaths flowing through the damaged tube on his mask.

“I don’t need any help killing you, sedhi.”

“Good. I just wanted to ensure we had an understanding.” Arcanthus lifted his arm, engaged his neural link to the auto-canons mounted on the workshop’s ceiling, and flicked his wrist to enable their automated threat elimination mode.

The heavywhumpsof the canons’ rapid firing was joined, for a few brief moments, by the shouts and screams of the uninvited guests in the workshop. Flashes of light pulsed from under the open blast door, casting strobing shadows around Arcanthus. It was over within four or five seconds; the only sound remaining after the canons fell silent was Vaund’s strained respiration.

“It doesn’t matter how many more you have outside,” Arcanthus said. “You’ll be dead before they get here.”

Vaund released a buzzing growl. “I’m going to cut off your limbs again, one by one, and your terran is going to watch. She’s going to be haunted for the rest of her miserable life by what I’m about to do to you.”

Arcanthus opened the compartment on his left forearm, dropping the hilt of his hardlight sword into his waiting hand. He activated the weapon, and the translucent yellow blade materialized, extending from the hilt.

Vaund circled slowly to his left; Arcanthus mirrored his foe’s movement, maintaining the distance between them as Vaund neared the big door and Arcanthus approached Samantha, who had moved to Drakkal’s side.

“You could’ve just accepted my offer all those years ago. We could have avoided all this. All this pain and strife,” Arc said. But he didn’t regret the way things had happened—didn’t regret having been forced to flee Caldorius—because that chain of events, that long, torturous road, had brought him to Arthos and, ultimately, his mate.

“And you could’ve justdied.” Vaund pointed the tip of his energy blade toward Arcanthus. “You had no right to be on top. No right to act like any of us should’ve bowed down to you and fallen into what you thought were ourplaces.”

“Ourplace was on top.” Arcanthus rolled his wrist and halted his legs as soon as his body was between Samantha and Vaund. “That was my point all along. My goal.Webrought in all that money, and it should’ve been ours.”

“Myplace is on top. Yours is face down in an alleyway puddle.”

He was never this much of a talker before a fight. He’s fueled purely by hatred.

“Samantha,” Arcanthus said softly, “stay with Drakkal. We’re going to leave as soon as this is done. It won’t take long; I don’t have the patience to toy with him this time.”

“I love you, Arcanthus,” she said firmly, though her voice was hoarse. “Be careful.”

“Love you, too, little terran.” He raised his voice to say, “Now, Vaund—which side of your face do you want me to remove first?”

With another robotic growl, Vaund took his weapon in a two-handed grip and charged. Arcanthus rushed forward to meet him; he needed to keep the battle as far away from Samantha and Drakkal as possible.

Their blades met with a flash and an instant’s resistance; that fleeting clash was enough to throw Arcanthus’s mind back more than a decade. He could almost feel the roar of the crowd sweeping over him, could almost feel the floor vibrate with the stomping of their feet. Fighting in the arena had always been a thrill—even as a slave, he’d enjoyed it—but now he had so much more to fight for than glory or a victor’s purse. Now he had so much more to lose.

He had Samantha.

Their blades separated, and the dance began in earnest.

Energy crackled through the air, tracing blue and yellow arcs as the combatants swung, thrust, parried, and dodged, their movements faster than conscious thought could enable. More than once, Vaund’s energy blade passed close enough for Arcanthus to feel its heat on his skin.

Vaund’s performance had to be attributed to more than another decade of experience—he was immensely faster and stronger than he’d been the last time they’d battled.

Arcanthus’s rage intensified, sharpening to a finer point; despite his cybernetic prostheses, he and Vaund were a near match as far as their physical capabilities.

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