Page 47 of Gladiator's Captive
“Well, that’s good to hear.” I smiled back at her. “Although I’ll miss you, for sure.”
“Me, too,” Doc laughed, but I sensed a heaviness in her voice.
I sat up with her help, wincing at the remnants of the pain in my body. I cast a wide glance around the small room she called her clinic. It was sparsely furnished and small, but she didn’t lack anything even the best doctors in Valcan possessed.
“That’s a lot of equipment you have here, Doc.”
She scoffed, lifting her brows high. “I have all the toys I need, thanks to my favorite brute.” Her tone was derisive, but I sensed a skeleton of truth underneath. She wasn’t as immune to the commander as she wanted me to believe. “And my name’s Janet, not Doc. There’s only really Sayk that calls me Doc.”
I only took a second to register that Doc and I were just officially introduced. Well, sort of.
“And you’re his prisoner in Tartarus?”
Doc—Janet—stiffened, then placed her nano-sensor back in its place in a drawer. As she turned her back on me, her shoulders heaved with a deep inhale. I had the feeling things were much more complicated than they seemed between them. When she turned back to me, her face was soft and her eyes shining.
“It’s a long story and not a pretty one.” Janet shrugged, but I saw she wanted to talk more, so I kept silent. “I was going back to Villea after treating some very rich asshole in Jaggarra who finally got sick after a lifetime of whores and wine. They sent me along with a cargo of precious metals from his mines, escorted by a full force of Imperial Guards. The convoy never made it there.”
I nodded. I vaguely remembered something my father mentioned about one of his friends losing large sums of money to pirates out in the desert, but I remembered no survivors and no search parties had been sent.
“What happened to them?”
Janet’s eyes became foggy and her gaze settled on the wall behind me without seeing. She was far away in a memory best left forgotten.
“We were ambushed.” Her voice was a thread. “It was a slaughter, not a fair fight. Wylder’s soldiers killed them all, no mercy given. They didn’t need to, they could have just taken our cargo. I worked all my life to fix people, to help them. Wylder’s men just cut them into pieces.”
I blinked. This was a lot of information coming all at once.
“Who’s Wylder?”
Janet stared into the void a few more seconds, then seemed to shake herself back into reality. She opened her mouth to speak, but was interrupted by the door to the clinic opening wide.
“It’s always nice to hear my name on such a lovely lady’s lips.” A tall, broad middle-aged man strode in with a proprietor’s stance. A long, bushy black beard hid the lower half of his features and two cold, pale blue eyes set on Janet and me in the middle of a face weathered with wrinkles and the damage of the desert sun.
“Wylder.” Janet swallowed, her face turning stony. Fear etched her features as she eyed him back, not really succeeding in hiding her hostility. “What are you doing in my clinic?”
The man stared at her, glee in his eyes, then laughed. The sound was crude and cruel and the joy in his stare set my spine in ice. Whoever this Wylder was, he was bad news.
“Your clinic?” He cocked his head to the side and his gaze slid over Janet’s body, blatant and unashamed. “You’re forgetting something, woman. Your clinic is inside of my town. Your clinic belongs to me. And you? If you’re not careful, you will end up belonging to me as well.”
“I will never belong to you.” Janet’s entire body trembled as she spoke. “I would rather die.”
“We’ll see when the time comes, how much dying you’ll want to do.” The threat hovered in the air as Wylder stared at her, his blue eyes angered. He didn’t like her defiance, plain as day. “And what about you? I haven’t seen you before in the city. I would have remembered a face like that. What’s your name?”
I sat in silence, holding myself as straight as I could. The emotionless veneer I had perfected so well during all my life slid back as easily as a well-worn shoe.
“My name is no concern of yours,” I lifted my chin and answered coolly, not disguising my disgust. A second later, it was clear this had been a mistake. Wylder’s face contorted and anger flashed on his face.
“I am chancellor of Tartarus.” He spoke through clenched teeth, his fetid breath fanning my face as he invaded my space. “I am not a man to be trifled with.”
I remained unmoving, keeping my face expressionless and my brows high, betraying nothing of the revulsion I felt.
“And I am a lady, not a soldier to be bullied.”
“A lady? It’s been a while since I’ve had the pleasure of meeting with one. Oh, but I forget my manners.” Wylder’s eyes twinkled and he moved, faster than I could anticipate. His hand reached for mine, holding it in a tight, cruel grip even as I struggled to pull it away. It was no use and I stared, horrified, as Wylder bent, placing a resounding kiss on the back of my hand. As his lips withdrew, he turned my hand over and his fingertip ran over my open palm. Cold, calculating blue eyes turned up to me. “A lady, indeed. Now tell me, who are you?”
The sound of footsteps attracted our attention and Wylder turned sideways to see Sayk stride in with Rager right behind. The Huugwor’s electric blue eyes set on Wylder and the air filled with an almost tangible hostility.
As Rager’s eyes settled on Wylder and me, an instantaneous wrath filled them with a murderous glint.
