Page 22 of Bought by the Broken Beast
The blood in my veins turns to ice. Who? Who could have warned them? Only a handful of us knew the plan. Lyra. Grak. The gladiators. One of them… one of them betrayed us. The thought is a shard of glass in my soul, a pain sharper than any blade.
“Now!” Vorlag roars, his voice echoing across the docks.
The world explodes.
From the rooftops, from the alleyways, from behind the crates, a hail of crossbow bolts rains down on my men’s positions. The air is filled with the thrum of bowstrings and the sickening thud of bolts finding flesh. Cries of pain and surprise erupt from the shadows. The hunters, my proud, loyal hunters, are cut down before they can even raise their spears.
“Charge!” I roar, my voice a guttural sound of pure, unadulterated fury. There is no more strategy. There is no more hope of victory. There is only the battle, only the blood.
I leap from the roof, landing on the cobblestones with a ground-shaking impact. I am a whirlwind of destruction, my sword a blur of silver, my rage a cleansing fire. I carve a path through the shield wall, the sounds of my men, my brothers, dying behind me a torment in my ears.
The gladiators charge from their cover, their battle cries the desperate, hopeless roars of cornered beasts. They are magnificent. They are born for this, for the blood and the chaos. Zorn, the freedman, fights at my side, his massive axe a blur ofmotion, his face one of grim determination. We are a two-man army, a force of nature, but we are hopelessly outnumbered.
For every one of Vorlag’s men we cut down, two more take his place. The docks become a slaughterhouse, the cobblestones slick with the blood of my followers. I see Kor, on the rooftop, shielding Bella with his own body as crossbow bolts shatter the tiles around them.
I see Grak, the old hunter, emerge from an alley, his spear in hand, his face a hard mask of grim resolve. He sees an archer on the deck of the ship taking aim, not at me, but at the rooftop where Bella is hidden.
“No!” Grak roars.
He does not hesitate. He throws himself into the open, a perfect, desperate target. The crossbow fires. The bolt takes him in the chest, lifting him off his feet, his spear clattering to the ground. He looks at me, his eyes wide with a final, silent apology, before he collapses.
A scream of pure, animalistic rage rips from my throat. I abandon all pretense of defense. I’m no longer a warrior. I am an executioner. I fight my way toward the gangplank, my only thought to kill Vorlag, to tear the sneer from his face with my bare hands.
Zorn is at my side, his axe a whirlwind. “They are too many, my lord!” he cries, his voice strained. “We cannot win!”
“Then we will die with honor!” I roar back, my sword cleaving a soldier’s helmet in two.
A spearman lunges at me from my blind side. Zorn shoves me out of the way, taking the blow himself. The spearhead punches through his leather armor, and he lets out a sharp, surprised grunt. He looks down at the shaft protruding from his gut, then back at me, a sad, knowing smile on his lips.
“It was an honor… to fight beside you again… brother,” he whispers, before he collapses at my feet.
The world goes red.
I am no longer Votoi Saru. I am a beast of the arena, a creature of pure, undiluted rage. I lose myself in the red mist of battle, my sword a living extension of my will, my body a vessel for a grief and a fury so profound it threatens to burn me alive from the inside out.
I am vaguely aware of Bella screaming my name from the rooftop, her voice a desperate, terrified plea. I am aware of Kor, pulling her back, away from the edge. I am aware of the city watch bells beginning to clang in the distance, a death knell for our failed rebellion.
We are not just defeated. We are massacred. Annihilated.
And we were betrayed. By one of our own. By someone I trusted. The thought is a cold, hard stone in the pit of my stomach, a poison more potent than any blade.
17
BELLA
From my perch on the warehouse roof, the world dissolves into a nightmare of fog, blood, and the screams of dying men. One moment, our plan is a perfect, whispered thing, a fragile hope held in the pre-dawn gloom. The next, it is a slaughterhouse.
Crossbow bolts thrum through the air, dark, vicious hornets that find their mark in the shadows below. I see the hunters, the proud, quiet men who guided us through the woods, fall without a sound. I see the gladiators, the broken, forgotten souls who answered Votoi’s call, charge into a wall of black-armored steel, their battle cries turning into gurgles of death.
My mind, the analytical, orderly thing I have always relied on, shatters. There are no numbers to balance here, no patterns to discern. There is only chaos, only the brutal, horrifying calculus of death.
“Stay down!” Kor’s voice is a low growl beside me. His massive, one-eyed form is a shield, his body absorbing the splintering impact of a crossbow bolt that shatters the roof tile where my head was a moment before.
But I can’t stay down. My eyes are fixed on the whirlwind of destruction at the center of the battle. Votoi. He is no longer a strategist, no longer a leader. He is a force of nature, a beast of pure, undiluted rage. The red mist of the arena is upon him. He moves with a terrifying, mindless grace, his sword a blur of silver, his roars of fury a sound that tears at the very fabric of the morning. He is not fighting to win. He is fighting to kill. He is fighting to die.
And I see it then, the horrifying truth. He is lost. The man who spoke of his home by the sea, the one who held me in the forge as if I were something precious, is gone. In his place is the monster from the gladiator’s pit, a creature who will fight until he is overwhelmed, until a dozen swords find their way into his heart. He will die here, on these bloody cobblestones, and my last, desperate hope will die with him.
“No,” I whisper, the word a raw, broken thing.
