Page 40 of What Fury Brings
“You’d rather step on me instead,” Sanos said.
“I would not step on you. I would have you rise with me until we are both gloriously untouchable.”
He looked pointedly at his chains.
“Right,” she said. “Best take these off for now. Though it would be humorous to watch you try to fight with them.” She was clearly ignoring his intended meaning on purpose, but Sanos didn’t press for now. Not whenshe removed the key from some hidden pocket of her tunic and undid first the lock of the shackles at his feet. Then the manacles at his wrists.
He was unbound for the first time since arriving in this horrible kingdom.
And he could do nothing. Not with nearly a thousand spectators watching. With hundreds of guards surrounding this place in case… what? The spectators got out of hand? Were all the women so bloodthirsty?
“Undress,” Olerra said.
“What?” he asked, certain he’d misheard her.
“Disrobe,” she said, as though perhaps he was too stupid to understand what the first word meant.
And then with horror he noted the naked man standing in the fighting ring, waiting for him.
“I’m to battlenaked?” he asked.
“Of course. That is the way of wrestling, is it not?”
“In front of other men. Notwomen.”
“Well, the only people of importance here are women. Now strip, Andrastus, before you forfeit the match.”
He must have been taking too long, because Glenaerys showed up. “What’s the matter, Olerra? Having second thoughts once you noted my pick?”
Olerra turned toward the man standing in the ring, and all the color left her cheeks. Sanos focused on Glenaerys’s pick for the fight, wondering if he’d missed something during his first perusal. The man was massive. Much bigger than Sanos, though nowhere near his father’s proportions. Glen’s man was covered in scars, as though fighting were something he did for a living. Sanos wasn’t scared, though. He regularly bested men bigger than he was.
Except for his father.
“What is Athon doing here?” Olerra asked.
“You haven’t heard?” Glenaerys asked. “We’ve been courting.”
“Since when?”
“About a day after you left to kidnap the Brute.”
Sanos may not have been an expert in Amarran customs, but he knew politics. Whatever the reason for Glen courting Athon, it was strategic. Olerra’s face showed it. She was visibly upset.
Why?
Olerra glared at her cousin. “Always games with you.”
“I’m just too good at winning them. Now hurry it up. The prince still has to get oiled.”
“Oiled?”Sanos caught on that word with horror.
Glenaerys raised one perfect blond brow. “Shall we call it off?”
“No,” Olerra barked. Then she reached over and literally ripped the shirt from Sanos’s shoulders. He was disgusted by the look Glenaerys gave him. The way she bit her lip as she admired the sight of his bare torso. He realized the tight shorts were doing him fewer favors on than they would off.
So he slipped out of them until he was standing in nothing, save the armband.
The crowdroared.
