She put herself in his line of sight, blocking his view of the kill. “Bring me my brother.”
Chalen jerked as if he were surprised to find her with him. Blinking, he brushed that skeletal hand across his wrinkled brow. Then he focused on her. After a moment, his eyes narrowed with calculation, proof positive that the male he had always been was still alive inside the elderly shell.
“There is something else you’re going to do first,” he said.
“I’ve already gone far enough for you.”
“Have you? Really? That’s for me to decide, don’t you think.”
“Bring me—”
“Your brother, yes, you’ve made that request. I’m not going to, however. Not right now.”
Ahmare took a step forward before she was aware of moving, a tide of aggression carrying her toward—
She stopped as a pair of guards stepped out from the darkened corners.
“That’s right,” Chalen murmured. “You will want to rethink any offensive maneuvers. I may appear weak, but I am in charge here. That has not, and will not, change.”
She pointed to the hearth. “I did that for you. You owe me.”
“No, four nights ago, your brother stole two hundred seventy-six thousand, four hundred fifty-seven dollars from me, and as is my right, I claimed his physical form as payment for the debt. You”—he pointed to her—“came to me when you could not find him. You asked how you could get your kin back. I told you to kill him”—that finger moved to the severed head—“and you did. What you failed to understand when you agreed to terms was that that murder settled the debt Rollie had with me. It didn’t do anything with regard to your brother, so you and I still have a negotiation to get through—assuming you do not want me to torture him to death. Over a period of nights. And send you pieces of the body up in Caldwell.”
“Fuck you,” she breathed.
Two more guards emerged from the shadows.
Glaring at them, Ahmare crossed her arms over her chest so she didn’t do something stupid.
“Such language from a gentle female.” Chalen shifted in his throne like his bones hurt. “And all things considered, you are lucky you have something you can do for me. I find it very easy to dispose of people who are not useful.”
“You don’t need me. You’ve got this place full of males prepared to do whatever you want. If you have another bright idea, let them carry it out.”
“But perhaps that is the problem.” Chalen smiled coldly. “I have been using the wrong sex all this time. I am thinking now that I should have put a female to this specific task, and you already have proven you can get a job done. Also, like most females, you have exceptional taste in decor. I have this lovely piece of art to enjoy courtesy of your efforts.”
Ahmare looked around the throne room, or whatever the hell he called it. No visible means of escape, and no weapons on her as per instruction. She was good at hand-to-hand thanks to all her self-defense and martial arts training, but going up against multiple weaponized males of her own species—
“Twenty years ago, something very precious was taken from me.” Chalen went back to staring at the head. “My beloved was stolen. In the whole of my life, it is the only time I have been violated in such a manner, and I have searched for her, prayed for her return.”
“Which has nothing to do with me.”
“Then your brother will die.” Chalen pushed his half-empty crown back on his balding head, the remaining rose-cut diamonds winking wanly. “You must understand that you are in control of that outcome. It matters not to me whether he is killed or goes home with you. If you bring me back my beloved, I will give you your flesh and blood. Or I will cook the meat off his bones and serve him for Last Meal. What will be, will be.”
She heard the chains first. Then the moaning. Both were very far off—coming from below?
With a series of creaks, a section of the floor opened up at the base of the dais, a six-by-six-foot wooden panel she had not noticed sliding back to reveal a subterranean level some thirty feet down.
It was a fighting arena. An old school stone fighting ring, and in the center of it . . .
“Ahlan!” she cried as she lunged forward.
Lit by flickering torches, her brother was naked between the grips of a set of guards, his head hanging down, his legs pigeon-toed and lax, steel shackles dragging behind his motionless body. Blood rivered down his back, the whipping he’d been given making shreds of his flesh, and she knew by the bad angle of both his feet that his ankles had been deliberately dislocated.
So he could not run.
She dropped to her knees and leaned into the drop. As she opened her mouth, she wanted to yell at him for being foolish and greedy, for staying in the business she’d told him to get out of, for taking the word of a dealer like Rollie, who he should have known not to trust. But none of that really mattered now.