Page 18 of Bought by the Broken Beast
The full, horrifying scope of Malacc’s plan crashes down on me. The air is stolen from my lungs. This was never just an assassination. An assassination is a blade in the dark. This is a massacre. A public, brutal slaughter. He intends to use the festival as a trap, to detonate these weapons at key points, to wipe out not just the King, but the entire Zu Kus, every Vakkak and Zotkak of influence, in a single, fiery stroke. He doesn’t want to seize power. He wants to incinerate it and build his own empire from the ashes.
“Bella?” Votoi’s voice becomes a low growl of concern, sensing my distress. “What is it? What have you found?”
“He’s going to kill them all,” I whisper, my voice trembling, my finger tracing the horrifying map. “Everyone. The King, the Senate… he’s going to burn the city to the ground.”
Votoi’s entire body goes rigid, a low, guttural snarl of pure, unadulterated rage ripping from his chest. The sound is terrifying, the sound of a beast pushed past its breaking point. But even as the horror of it settles over us, a new, chilling thought pierces through the fog of my terror.
“The festival,” I say, my mind racing. “It’s the key. The attack is planned for the festival.”
“Yes,” Votoi growls, his eyes blazing. “In two days.”
“No,” I say, looking up at him, the final, terrible piece of the puzzle clicking into place. “No, it isn’t. Lyra. She said the King is ill. Publicly ill. There are notices posted in the market squares. I saw one when we were fleeing Kairen’s.” My blood becomes ice. “They’ve postponed the festival. Officially, it’s out of respect for the Zusvak’s health.”
The fire in Votoi’s eyes dims, replaced by a cold, dawning horror that mirrors my own.
The weapons are arriving in two days. The timetable for the delivery is set. But the timetable for the attack… it’s gone. Malaccwill wait. He will wait until the King is at his weakest, until the city is distracted, and then he will announce the new date for the festival. It could be in a week. It could be in two. We have no way of knowing.
14
VOTOI
The horrifying truth of the manifests settles over us in the cold, smoky air of the forge. A massacre. Malacc does not intend to simply cut the head off the serpent; he means to burn the entire nest. The Zusvak, the Zu Kus, every Vakkak and Zotkak of note, all consumed in a storm of forbidden alchemical fire. It is a plan of such breathtaking dishonor, of such utter contempt for our people and our traditions, that it leaves me reeling.
And we are the only ones who know. Two fugitives, a disgraced gladiator and a human slave, stand between the kingdom and annihilation. The weight of it is a physical pressure, a crushing force that threatens to extinguish the small, flickering flame of our hope.
“The postponed festival buys us time,” Bella says, voice a low, steady thing that cuts through the roaring chaos in my mind. She is already thinking, analyzing, her mind a sharp, precise weapon against the encroaching darkness. “But it also makes our task a hundred times harder. The weapons will be smuggled in, hidden, and we will have no idea when the strike will come.”
She is right. We are fighting a shadow, an enemy whose final move is now a mystery. We cannot stop the shipments—five ships, five different entry points, it is an impossible task for two people. We cannot warn the King—we would be cut down by Malacc’s guards before we ever reached the palace gates.
For a moment, I am back in the arena, outnumbered, unarmed, the chaos of the crowd is a deafening wave of condemnation. The feeling is the same. Hopelessness. The cold, bitter certainty of defeat.
But I am not the same Minotaur I was in the arena. I am not the same beast I was even yesterday. I look at Bella, at the fierce, unyielding intelligence in her eyes, at the smudge of soot on her cheek, at the quiet, unshakeable courage that radiates from her small frame. She did not break in Kairen’s study. She did not break in the face of my rage. She will not break now.
And neither will I.
“We cannot do this alone,” I say, words a confession, a surrender of the solitary pride that has been my only companion for so long. To ask for help is a weakness I have never allowed myself. But to refuse it now, to let my pride condemn the kingdom, that is the greater dishonor.
I need an army. And I know the only place to find one.
I send the message the only way I can. A small, fleet-footed Fiepakak street urchin, his face all sharp angles and hungry eyes, is willing to be a messenger for the price of a single gold coin from Bella’s satchel. The message is not written. It is a simple, spoken phrase, one that will mean nothing to anyone but its intended recipient. “The bitter draught has grown stale. It is time to tap a new barrel.”
We wait. We wait as the sun sets, as the forge grows cold, as the sounds of the city shift from the clamor of commerce to the drunken revelry of the night. Every footstep in the alley outside is a potential threat, every shout a possible alarm. Bellaeventually succumbs to an exhausted, fitful sleep, her head resting on a pile of discarded leather aprons. I do not sleep. I watch. I listen. I wait.
Hours later, a soft, rhythmic knock comes at the forge door. Three taps, a pause, then two more. The signal.
I move to the door, my hand resting on the hilt of the sword I took from Kairen’s guard. I slide the heavy bar and open the door a crack. Lyra stands in the rain-slicked alley, her scarred face impassive, a heavy cloak hiding her form.
“The barrel is tapped,” she says, voice a low murmur. “The patrons are thirsty.”
I give a single, sharp nod and follow her into the night, Bella a silent shadow at my back.
The back room of The Bitter Draught smells of stale ale, unwashed bodies, and a deep, abiding hopelessness. It is a small, windowless space, lit by a single, sputtering oil lamp that casts long, dancing shadows on the rough-hewn wooden walls. The men gathered here are the dregs of our society, the broken and the forgotten, the very men the kingdom has cast aside.
Grak, the old Fiepakak hunter who aided us in the woods, stands by the hearth, his arms crossed over his broad chest, his expression grim. With him are the five other hunters, their faces weathered and hard, their eyes holding the quiet, watchful patience of men who live their lives on the edge of a blade.
In the other corner, slumped around a crude wooden table, are the gladiators. There are ten of them, massive, scarred beasts of the arena, their bodies a testament to a hundred brutal battles. I know them all. There is Kor, a bull of a Minotaur who lost an eye but not his ferocity. There is Hakar, a former Vakkak like myself, disgraced for a lesser crime, his spirit now drowned in ale. And there is Zorn, a freedman who fought his way out of the arena, only to find the world outside was just a larger, colder cage. They are the men I bled with, the men I fought beside andagainst. They are the men I freed with my winnings in my early days, a foolish act of a noble trying to cling to his honor in a place that had none. They owe me their lives, a debt they have been repaying with cynical, drunken loyalty.
They all look at me, their expressions a mixture of curiosity, pity, and a deep, abiding weariness. Then their eyes shift to Bella, and the mood curdles. Suspicion. Contempt. A human. A woman. Here, in their last refuge.
