“Let her do it her way,” a female voice echoed through the arena, seeming to come from every direction at once. “I want to see this.”
Before I could speculate about that voice, the bell chimed once again, and the next monster entered the arena.
I was jerked rudely awake by a dark angel. He hadn’t been gentle about it either. My body screamed beneath his magic’s hard grip. My vision blurred, my head spun, and I almost passed out again.
“Wake up,” Soulslayer snapped, then released me. “It’s time for dinner.”
I shot him a skeptical look. He hadn’t fed me since bringing me here. Maybe he wanted to poison me for some new fun. I wouldn’t put it past the sadistic dark angel. After all, once he’d broken some of my bones right before a fight. Sometimes, he used potions to block parts of my magic like Ronan had. Except Ronan had done it to help me, and Soulslayer was doing it to torture me.
I’d come to realize that the dark angel was trying to get a reading on my magic, both light and dark. He dropped me in situations that tested my powers. That’s why I was in the arena. Maybe poison was the new test, the latest experiment to see how I’d handle it—how my magic would handle it.
“I don’t need food to poison you,” Soulslayer said.
I’d given up on hiding my thoughts long ago. I didn’t have the energy left to do it. Most of the time, I was just thinking about enacting my revenge on the sadistic dark angel who was torturing me. He was free to read those thoughts all he wanted.
I decided I would eat. I needed my strength a lot more than I needed to piss him off. Besides, the biggest poisons were Nectar and Venom, and I’d already survived both.
“The food isn’t poisoned. In fact, it’s just what you need to survive the next fight,” said Soulslayer.
The fateful bell rang again, and the gates opened. Someone was pushed into the arena. A human. A bleeding human. That was the meal Soulslayer was offering me. I should have known it wouldn’t be that easy.
The door slammed shut, trapping the man in the arena. He was meant to tempt me. Like a shark smelling blood, my senses were heightened, my body alert. My body was screaming at me to drink from this poor person, to drain his blood to heal my wounds and feed my starving body.
But I was immortal. It took a lot more than an empty stomach to kill me. As painful as they were, I wouldn’t die from my injuries either. They just made me weak. I couldn’t feast on this innocent person just to alleviate my discomfort.
The man met my eyes, his own widening. He spun around, banging desperately on the door. He was completely terrified. It must have been all the blood splashed over me. I’m sure my hungry eyes weren’t helping either; I could feel them burning silver.
I put my hands up in the air. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
The man continued to claw at the door. He was scratching so hard that his fingernails were bleeding. The sharp tang of fresh blood only made it harder to resist the hunger.
You’re stronger than this, I told myself, swallowing hard. The burn in my eyes faded.
When it became clear I wasn’t going to tear the man’s throat open with my fangs and feast on his blood, Soulslayer frowned in agitation. He waved his hand, and the door slid open once more. The human bolted for the opening, but he didn’t make it far. A gigantic white furry bear-man beast charged out, meeting him halfway. Before I could blink, the monster grabbed the man and swallowed him whole. I stared at it in shocked outrage.
“You should have drunk from him when you had the chance,” Soulslayer chided me. “Now, it’s too late. Your stubbornness didn’t save him from death. All you did was deny yourself relief from the hunger.”
Smacking its lips, the monster lumbered toward me, obviously still hungry. Anger sparked in me as I looked at its furry face, stained crimson with blood. I grabbed one of the legs from the dead big bird. It was as hard as metal. I swung it at the bear-man, slashing across its tummy. I struck again. My rage propelled me, making me forget the pain—anger at the dark angel for doing this, for bringing innocents into this sick game of his. Colonel Fireswift was harmless compared to the darkly vicious Soulslayer.
I drove the metal leg through the beast’s heart like a long stake. The monster spluttered, then dropped dead to the ground. Yellow sand swirled, puffing up from the impact of the heavy body.
I glared up at the dark angel. My body pulsing with pain, I swore, “I will kill you.”
“Finally, we’re getting somewhere,” Soulslayer said with satisfaction.
Disgusted, I sat down on the sand. I was so done. I was not playing along anymore. I was tired of these games.
That ominous, hateful beep sounded again. The gates opened, releasing another monster. I kept my butt planted firmly on the ground.
“Get up,” Soulslayer commanded.
I didn’t move an inch, even as the monster slinked toward me. As sleek and black as a panther—at twice the size—the catlike beast moved slowly, taking its time to assess its prey.
“Get up,” Soulslayer said again.
Magic pulsed behind his voice, his siren’s song compelling me to obey. I let his magic bounce right off of me. Resisting him didn’t hurt half as much as I already did.
Surprise flashed in his eyes, but his smugness quickly returned. “You’re bluffing. You won’t let yourself die. If you’re dead, who will find your brother?”
“No, you’re bluffing,” I shot back. “You have no problems pushing me to the brink of death, but you won’t actually let me die. You’re too invested in gauging my magic to kill me.”
His smile faded, his bluff called. “You are every bit as repugnant as they say.”
“You bet I am.” Grinning made my cheekbones feel like they would crack apart, but I did it anyway.
A calculated smile curled Soulslayer’s lips. “If you don’t play along, I’ll just put your sweet little sisters into the arena. I wonder how much I have to hurt them before they scream.”
I jumped up, angry tears burning my eyes as I glared at the dark angel. “Before this is over, I will kill you,” I promised him again. Then I faced the monster.
26
Distinctly Medieval
The next time I woke up, I was not in the fighting arena. I didn’t smell the delicious, tempting magic of the yellow sand calling to me, and I wasn’t squinting under the glare of the blinding floodlights.
The lighting in this room was diffused. It sparkled softly against the black marble floors and the white marble that covered every wall. A symbol of intersecting circles sat at the center of the floor. It was a symbol I didn’t recognize.
The room was both opulent and sterile, like a hospital mixed with a bank. I tried to move, only to discover that I was chained to a wall. A basket of tools lay on a nearby table. It was filled with syringes, scissors, needles, forceps—and some things I didn’t even want to imagine what they did. One thing was clear, however: it was a torturer’s toolbox.
No, on second thought, this wasn’t a bank or a hospital. It was a five-star dungeon.
I might have been able to use some of the tools to free myself, but the basket was just out of reach. My magic was of no help either. It was a weak hum, fizzling in and out intermittently, blinking like a lightbulb that needed to be changed.
Across the room, Gin and Tessa were trapped in twin cells, each of my sisters tied to the wall beyond a glowing magic barrier. Their heads drooped to the side. I called out to them, but they didn’t wake up.
I tried to break free of my restraints. The chains, infused with powerful dark magic, burned like acid against my skin as I struggled. They didn’t budge at all.
I heard the sharp click of approaching footsteps, then a swoosh as the glass doors to the room slid open and Soulslayer stepped into the bright marble dungeon. Without saying a word to me, he roughly grabbed hold of my arm and stuck a needle in me. He took enough blood to fill a small vial, then brought it to a machine on the desk past the small table of torture tools. I’d seen Nerissa use these machines. They tested the magic in blood.