“I hope the take was good.”
I didn’t even have to ask if my father had won or if he had bet. He always did, and he was always right. For the centuries that the Trpaslíks had been fighting in the pits, he had been right. It was how he had kept his guard so well trained. He only picked the winners.
If I remembered correctly, even Cail had killed ten men without the use of Edmund’s ?tít in the pits.
Everyone had to prove themselves. The more you proved yourself, the higher you were in the ranks of the Trpaslíks’ magic.
“Earlier, he won over twenty thousand Euros,” Damek answered, his voice eager again.
Without so much as a glance toward the man, I continued toward one of my father’s other guards, a handsome man who stood outside of one of the many entrances, his body shrouded in a heavy, black cloak.
“Ovailia,” he greeted me as we approached, his voice heavy against the shouts of betting, taunts, and hollers that were leaking from the arena just beyond him.
The exhilaration for the coming match was mounting, infecting me with an eagerness I awarded to Damek’s masked insubordination.
“Sir,” I greeted him, knowing I should have corrected him yet choosing to leave the overly familiar greeting hanging, the single word bristling poor Damek’s insecurities further. “Is he expecting me?”
The man nodded with a smile, moving to the side to let me through before moving back, blocking Damek from entrance. “His majesty does not wish you further entry,” the younger man growled.
Damek’s instantaneous rebuttal was lost amongst the crowd I was moving toward.
Joy swelled at the exchange I was leaving behind. I was glad I wasn’t the only one who was getting fed up with the boundaries Damek had been pushing. After hundreds of years of service, he should know better. No matter. From what I had witnessed, he would be gone in a matter of days, anyway.
As I walked through one of the small hallways that led to the main space, the bones of the structure fell away to reveal rows and rows of metal bleachers, the smell of sweat and blood mixing with the joy and exuberance of the crowd.
I smiled broadly as I moved into the stadium, the wide space open to a white sky. Snow fell gracefully above the heads of the thousands who sat around the pits yet never reached them, as it evaporated in the heat of the inside.
The sound of raucous bidding was deafening as I stood at the highest point in the stadium, rows stretched below me before dropping into a large, open pit where dirt and blood mixed together so seamlessly that, unless you knew what you were looking at, it would be easily mistaken for mud.
“Ovailia!” my father bellowed from below me, his voice an excited boom over the noise I was already inundated by.
Already in good spirits thanks to the entertainment, Edmund smiled with a dangerous grin that, to anyone else, would insight fear. And, while I did feel the shiver of warning, it was the eagerness of danger, of reward, that pulled me forward.
He sat alone, surrounded by pillows and platters of food, his guards flanking him in such a wide berth that he was an island amongst the shiny, silver bleachers. An island that was draped in an ornate cloak I hadn’t seen since before we had been banished from Imdalind the first time.
I recognized the fur-trimmed relic as what he used to wear to council when I was a child. It had been given to him by some king when he had saved their country, or so the history books said. In reality, it was him taking over, a coup he would run from behind the scenes.
Another kingdom we had claimed for our own.
Just like this one.
All he needed was the crown, and he would get it before all this was over.
“Father,” I began, his eyes lighting up at the greeting. “You seem quite comfortable.”
His nefarious smile grew, hand waving to the bare bleacher beside him in an invitation to sit.
Without missing a beat, one of his newly found servants, one of the Chosen, moved forward to place another pillow there, his head bowed low, his hands and arms covered with bruises. He shook as he moved, as if every step was a trial, the shake in his back growing the closer he moved to my father.
“Was your task completed?”
I knew he was speaking of Sain, and I smiled, the poison in my spine tightening in a heavy exhilaration. There was a reason I had been rushing to return to my father, and it wasn’t because he had called for me.
“Yes.” My voice gave everything away as my heart rate moved into a torrent of thunder.
I expected him to reply, to demand more information, but instead, he drank, smiled, the maniacal greed I had seen in his eyes so many times before taking over. It filled me as it did him, increasing my excitement.
“He gave you something.”
“He did not mean to.” My lips twitched into the smile my father always brought on, my own eagerness to tell him mounting.