Page 99 of The Warrior
“No, but my leg hurts.”
Laura took Mila’s other hand and spoke with a voice full of sympathy. “It’s the bone accelerator working, sweetie. Try to think of the pain as a good thing.”
I got up. “Let me get Finn. He should give you some pain reliever.”
“Finn already did,” Laura informed me. “He gave her the maximum dose. She’ll have to wait another two hours for her next dose.”
I grunted. “I’ll tell him to give her morenow!”
“Magni.” Laura’s voice was firm and with my hand on the door handle, I turned to her.
“What?”
“I already asked him and he said that he would if he could. Finn is the doctor and you need to respect that. You just told Mila not to let people pressure her into doing something against her better judgment, and now you want to go and pressure Finn.”
My first reaction was to tell Laura not to tell me what to do, but she did have a point, and the last thing Mila needed was Laura and me fighting.
Going back to my seat, I made Mila a promise. “I’ll talk to Finn in an hour.”
She nodded a thank you, and turned her head to look at Laura. “Will you lie next to me when you tell the story?”
“If you want me to.” Laura crawled behind Mila, and with her back to the wall, she propped herself on her elbow and looked at me. “I can take this first shift. I’m just going to tell Mila the story and help her fall asleep.”
“You do that, but I’m staying.” I’d never heard Laura’s side of how she’d experienced the time I won her in a tournament, and now that she was about to tell Mila, I wasn’t going anywhere.
With her left hand, Laura began twirling Mila’s long blonde hair. “Okay,” she said and inhaled deeply, before she started telling.
CHAPTER 26
The Tournament
Laura
“Mila, I don’t know how much Magni told you about me. But I grew up on the East Coast with my father, brothers, and my twin sister. My mother died during childbirth when I was eleven. She had given birth to four children, and suffered six miscarriages, when it happened.
“I know marriage isn’t normal where you grew up. In the Northlands, however, it’s what all girls look forward to. From the time we’re little girls, we fantasize about the day men will fight for us and we will choose our champion.” I chuckled. “I can’t tell you how many hours my sister and I have spent talking about what outfit to wear on our wedding day. It was our favorite subject.
“It used to be that we girls would marry at the age of fifteen, but then our old ruler got ill, and Khan changed it to eighteen. I don’t know why, but I was very upset with him for doing that. You see I had my outfit picked out and all.” I smiled at how silly it sounded.
“Do you still remember what you were going to wear?” Mila asked.
“Of course. I was going to have my hair up in a beautiful braid, and my father had given me a black pearl necklace that I would wear with this beautiful white velvet dress that he had ordered especially for me.” I didn’t look at Magni when I spoke; all my talk about clothing had to be boring to him.
“I know why the rules were changed,” Magni said.
“Why?” Mila asked.
“I’ll tell you later. First, let Laura tell her story.”
“Because my sister and I were twins, it was an enormous event that attracted thousands of men to participate in the tournament. I suppose they thought the chance of winning would be twice as good as in a normal tournament, but with the large amounts of participants, it was lower. The way it works is that every participant must pay a fee. That money, as well as the entrance fees for the spectators, goes to the prize money.”
Mila frowned. “I thoughtyouwere the prize.”
“The five strongest men are presented to the bride, and the champion that she picks gets both her and one million dollars.
“April and I studied the lists of participants, and held our breath when vile and disgusting men were added to the roster of participants. We cheered and danced when handsome and likable men signed up to fight for us. And every day we kept looking for the one name we most wanted to see.
“Whose name was that?” Magni asked with deep frown lines on his forehead.
