Page 52 of Chained to the Champion
“She insulted me. Slandered my victories,” he growled, claws twitching, greed shining in his eyes. “I demand payment.”
My stare narrowed. “Did she fail to bow? Are you so soft scaled?” I laced each word with acid. “Should I break her for calling you what you are?”
The corridor tensed. Every Drakarn poised, nostrils wide for blood.
Rukos lunged, snapping teeth, wings billowing with fury.
I let my teeth flash, a threat, a taunt. “Perhaps I should reward her for recognizing a coward.”
He surged. Guards caught him, swinging him back behind their wall of spears. I dug my heel a fraction deeper into Vega, enough to send the right message—mine—without damage.
One guard hissed, “You must control your property, Scalvaris.”
“The Tournament Master has made his displeasure clear,” the other barked. “No more strays. Either keep your pet with you or lock it in the slave quarters while you're here. It is forbidden to wander.”
Vega’s hand squeezed my tail, twice. I understood the signal, even as it made bile rise in me.
I glared at the guards, voice low and lethal. “Then take her there. I'll collect her when I'm done with my business. Do not bother me with these useless things. But if she has a single bruise that I did not give her, I will demand payment in blood.”
19
VEGA
Rockslide.That’s about how gentle the Ignarath guards were, only less thoughtful. They hauled me down corridors slick with the stench of fear and blood, claws digging into my arms with all the sympathy of a butcher inspecting a slab of beef.
“Move faster, slave.” The guard had green scales, a roadmap of old scars, and eyes glazed with boredom and cheap cruelty. He shoved me hard enough that my teeth clicked, and I nearly bit my tongue. I stumbled, catching myself before I faceplanted.
The corridor corkscrewed downward, light fading out in grudging increments the deeper they dragged me. Torches stuttered every few meters, casting thick shadows that pressed and squeezed, hungry and watching. Something dripped down the walls. I didn’t check if it was water. It didn't exactly smell fresh.
We stopped at a door squatting at the end of the world. Wood reinforced by metal, rusty as an old nail. One guard fumbled for keys, the other kept his meat-hook grip locked on my arm, claws just shy of breaking skin.
“Your master will tire of you soon,” green-scales sneered, hot breath slithering over my ear.
I gave him nothing, just the blank bored stare of a human with better things to do.
The door screamed on its hinges, opening wide enough for a slap of foul air to slap me full in the face. Unwashed bodies. Old waste. Hope abandoned at the threshold. Shoved hard, I went down, hands scraping against wet stone, grit grinding into an already growing bruise. Great.
“Enjoy your stay,” the guard cackled, and then the door slammed behind me like a casket lid.
I waited there on the gross ground for three seconds. Let the echoes settle and the guards retreat before I slowly got up.
A cage. Stone walls wept. The floor was a slick, treacherous mosaic of who-knows-what. One torch guttered in a bracket too high to reach, coughing out more shadow than light. What a miserable place.
Over in the far corner: two figures huddled together. Kinsley was on her knees, working a filthy rag over someone’s ruined face. Yelena. She had one eye swollen shut, her cheek splotched purple and black with a busted lip. Sweat pasted her hair to her skull. Her chest moved, barely.
Kinsley looked up at my approach, her expression wrapped in something tougher than exhaustion, resignation, bone deep. “Of course it’s you,” she whispered.
“What did they do to her?” I asked, picking my way across the uneven floor.
Kinsley’s lips twisted, silent in a way that said more than words. She wrung pink out of the rag into a bowl that had maybe, once, hosted clean water. Yelena didn’t move.
I made a circuit of the cell. The waste bucket reeked in one corner. Blankets thrown in a heap, threadbare and with more holes than fabric. A water basin that looked like someone had used it to rinse knives. The door behind me, solid, no easyescape. No windows. A vent in the ceiling, barely big enough for a skinny arm, if you could break every finger.
A tomb with a view of absolutely nothing.
Rounding back to Kinsley, I crouched. The light wavered, shadowing her face, but not enough to hide the fine tremor in her hands. Up close, Yelena looked worse. The bruises on her neck were finger perfect. A chunk of her hair was torn away, scalp still angry red.
I started to ask something, but Kinsley hit me with a look sharp enough to draw blood. I swallowed the words, every useless question melting in the heat of her warning.
