Page 70 of Gladiator's Captive
Serena
My entire body was riddled with tension as I stared at Rager and Sayk, still fighting. I had no idea what to do, but I knew I had to do something.
Anything.
My mind overflowed with thoughts and fears, so fast just a few bubbled to the surface. All that had happened came back to me, all at once.
Someone had betrayed Rager and Sayk’s plans to Wylder. Someone who was close enough to know the nooks and crannies of the plan. Someone who had a lot to gain from Sayk’s fall.
My eyes strayed to Ry, who stood just in front of us, tall and impassive in his enforcer’s uniform. The commander’s badge, Sayk’s badge, shone on his chest and as I stared, a terrible, horrible suspicion grew in my guts. Ry had been there all along, serving as Sayk’s right-hand man. And my anger rose and rose.
“How could you do this to them?” I asked, low enough not to disturb my father and Wylder, but loud enough that I knew he heard me. “They trusted you. We all did.”
Ry turned his eyes to me. Pain and shock registered on his face, but only for a moment. Soon, it vanished and the cool and collected enforcer returned.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Ry answered. “Keep quiet and don’t do anything foolish.”
For a long moment, I locked gazes with Ry. Anger churned in my guts, boiling to the surface. For the first time in my life, I wanted to hurt someone.
“I hope you burn for this.”
Ry’s face slacked and his eyes shone, but he turned away from me. His back was tense as he watched the fight.
My eyes strayed further and to the crowd. Wylder’s men stood at regular intervals around the circle, making sure to keep the sand clear of the too-eager spectators. Then I saw them.
Faces in the crowd, oddly familiar, if not in their features, in their gazes. Hardened men, not looking for a bloody spectacle. Men whose eyes locked from time to time.
Ry stood, just a few paces in front of me, his face impassible, but his body full of tension. He gave away nothing as Rager moved his blades in a wide arc, the lower one finally connecting to Sayk’s flesh. Blood splattered the sand to the great delight of the crowd.
In slow motion like in a dream, Sayk rolled to the sand on his shoulder, blood spilling from his thigh, splashing the faces of the spectators lucky enough to be close. Savagery and shouts reached a fevered peak as he limped away, the realization that he was injured finally registering on his features. At my side Janet cried out his name, jumping from her chair and rushing forward.
A single glance from Sayk went from Janet to Ry and the man twisted, grabbing her by the waist as she surged toward her man. At the sight of the drama, the crowd went wilder, its movement like a beating heart, impossible to stop.
Rager stood there, his blade soiled with the blood of his friend. Feline eyes slid to me and I realized I was standing, just by my father, at the edge of the makeshift platform.
The men whose faces I had noticed stood closer, to the edge of the crowd. Their hard, focused gazes turned in unison to the Huugwor warrior.
I swallowed, understanding of what was happening just beyond my reach.
Sayk shouted something in his strange, fluid tongue. The faces in the crowd twisted, their features no longer impassible. Violence glimmered in their eyes, and a ravenous hunger painted their features.
Ry shouted as well, the words alien in his human mouth.
The faces in the crowd moved in the same uniform movement until they stood in the crowd no more, but inside the arena. I finally recognized some of Sayk’s enforcers, some of the faces I saw that morning in the dark hallway behind Janet’s clinic.
Wylder’s soldiers stared for a long second, stunned and frozen as weapons glimmered in the enforcers’ hands. Wylder shouted and Arenius shot to his feet at my side, alarm plain on his round face.
Then violence exploded again, but this time, Rager stood back to back with Sayk.
I blinked, understanding finally making its way inside my frazzled brain. This was the coup Rager and Sayk had been planning!
I stood on the platform, frozen, as the fighting intensified in front of us. No one paid any attention to us as Janet and I huddled together, too scared to move, too involved to leave. We both watched as the men we loved fought for their lives, for their freedom.
Rager danced with his blades as the soldiers fell under his attack. My eyes locked onto him, to the beauty and grace in his body, the pure power of his strength. There was never another fighter like him in living history and there would never be another one who was his equal, as long as the universe turned on its axis.
The crowd was running away to escape the fighting, people shouting and shoving their way out of the danger. Some fell and others trampled them while others stood, wide-eyed and terrified.
More men joined the battle. More bodies fell.
