Page 39 of What Fury Brings
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The room went quiet as Olerra considered the question. For some reason, she didn’t seem to like the idea, which baffled Sanos. He was an excellent fighter. Not that he had any desire to show her. To have herapproveof him. He was still of half a mind to strangle her with these manacles, the guards and witnesses be damned.
But then he remembered that she thought him his younger, poetry-loving brother. She’d meant to take fucking Andrastus, who was likely shitting himself trying to figure out how to take on the temporary role of heir while Sanos was missing.
If Sanos was going to get out of this horrid mess, he first had to get out of these damned manacles. That meant pleasing Olerra. Surely winning this proposed fight was a good step in the right direction.
He leaned his lips down to her ear.
“I’ll do it,” he whispered. “I’ll win for you.”
She met his gaze, before her eyes roved over the muscles that could be seen through his outfit. He didn’t know why she deliberated so carefully, but in the end she said, “Done. Andrastus will face any man from your harem you choose.”
“Excellent,” Glenaerys replied. “I shall have it all set up by this afternoon. The whole court should witness the display.”
Sanos didn’t understand Olerra’s hatred of her cousin. As far as he could tell, she was a beauty who thought highly of herself. Not someone so dangerous or troublesome as Olerra had made her out to be.
Glenaerys went rigid, yelled, “Ouch,” then turned and struck the man massaging her across the face. He fell down to his knees, but it was hard to tell what was from the force of the blow versus the natural reaction of the whore to go to his knees before her.
“Forgive me, mistress.”
“I shall,” she said, not missing a beat. “Tonight after the lash.”
“Yes, mistress. Thank you, mistress.”
Had he just thanked her for being sentenced to a lashing?
“You,” Glenaerys said, pointing to the one on the floor. “Finish my massage.”
The men immediately swapped places, and Olerra’s cousin took to running her fingers through the hair of the man who had worked at a knot in her back in a way she didn’t like. It was not difficult to see that she occasionally pulled his hair. Hard. Just because she could.
Sanos didn’t want to imagine the kind of tortures she made the men withstand in her bedroom.
When Sanos had agreed to fight for Olerra, he hadn’t realized the scale of what her cousin had planned. They were outdoors, the sun shining down on the faces of countless women packed into an amphitheater that had to house around a thousand. There were clearly more than just the nobility who’d come out to watch. How could the people in the farthest stands even see him? Why would they want to see him? And how had Glenaerys gotten word out so fast?
Olerra waved at a gathering of women dressed in armor with strange helmets and red-tipped spears. Women she fought with? Was the entire blasted army here to witness him fight off some pretty bedroom boy?
He knew this wouldn’t be the most elegant thing he’d ever done. Battling a whore for sport.
Then he reminded himself that this was what other people thought he was to Olerra. They thought she was bedding him and would continue to do so up until their wedding day, which he’d overheard would be some three months from now.
That was how long he had until escape became vital.
“Be careful,” Olerra said to him from where they stood on the outskirts of some sort of fighting ring at the center of the audience. “It was trouble enough taking you. I’d hate to find myself a new husband.”
She said it with a smile, as though she were joking or he were a joke to her.
“Afraid I’ll mar my pretty face?” he asked. “Be unsuitable for your bedroom activities?”
She stepped up to him, looked him carefully in the eye. “Our bedroom activities have yet to begin. Would you like to change that?”
“Apparently,” he said carefully, “there is someone else who would like to participate in your bedroom activities.”
She cocked her head to the side. “Are you jealous?”
He did not dignify that with a response.
“I’ll admit there were times when I was flattered by Daneryn’s attention, but I’ve put a stop to it. He won’t approach me like that again. He is a power-climber, and I will not be his ladder.”
