Page 30 of Bought by the Broken Beast
My world is a roaring, blood-soaked blur. Down on the sand, Votoi is a demigod of righteous fury, his battle with Malacc a brutal, beautiful, terrifying ballet of death. Every clang of their axes is a hammer blow against my own heart. He is wounded. I see the dark stain spreading across his thigh, the slight falter in his step. He cannot lose. Hewill notlose.
The crowd is a single, bloodthirsty beast, roaring for the kill. They see a traitor being brought to justice. They do not see the honorable warrior fighting for the soul of their kingdom. Not yet.
Malacc raises his axe for the final blow. My heart stops. This is it. Our desperate, insane gambit. It is now or never.
I catch the eye of one of the hunters positioned in the upper tiers. I give the signal—a small, sharp tug on my earlobe.
It begins.
A single piece of parchment flutters down from the heavens, a white dove in a storm of violence. It lands near the Zusvak’s royal box. A senator, his curiosity piqued, picks it up. Then another falls, and another, a gentle, impossible snowstorm of truth raining down on the silent, watching senate.
The plan is working.
A low murmur ripples through the stands, a sound of confusion, of intrigue. Senators are snatching the parchments from the air, their heads bent together, their whispers turning to gasps, to shouts of disbelief. The deafening roar of the crowd begins to falter, replaced by a rising tide of chaos.
“It is working,” I breathe, a wild, incredulous hope blooming in my chest.
“It’s not safe here!” Lyra’s voice is a sharp, urgent hiss in my ear. Her hand clamps down on my arm, her grip like iron. “Vorlag’s men will be coming for you! This way!”
She pulls me from my seat, dragging me not toward the main exit, but down a small, shadowed staircase that leads beneath the stands. My mind is still on the scene below, on Votoi, on the tide of truth we have just unleashed. I trust her. She is our ally. She is my protector.
We plunge into a secluded, torch-lit corridor. The uproar of the crowd is a distant, muffled thunder. The air is cool and smells of damp stone and caged beasts.
“Where are we going?” I ask, my heart still hammering with adrenaline.
Lyra stops, turning to face me. The concerned, loyal ally is gone. Her face, in the flickering torchlight, is a twisted, unrecognizable mask of pure, venomous hatred.
My blood runs cold.
“He will never love you,” she snarls, her voice a low, guttural thing that is more animal than Minotaur. A dagger, long and wicked-sharp, appears in her hand as if from nowhere. “He is Vakkak. He is a god among men. And you… you are a human pet. A temporary distraction.”
The world tilts, the stone floor seeming to fall away beneath me. The pieces click into place with a horrifying, soul-shattering finality. The ambush at the docks. The perfect timing. Hakar was not the only traitor. He was just the pawn. She was the queen.
“It was you,” I whisper, the words a ghost of a breath. “You betrayed us. You sent them to their deaths.” Grak. Zorn. The hunters who had shown Votoi such reverence. All dead. Because of her.
“They were acceptable losses,” she spits, her eyes blazing with a crazed, obsessive light. “They were in my way.Youare in my way. I did it for him! To strip away his distractions, his foolish attachments! If he has no one, if he is truly broken, he will have no choice but to come back to me. To the one who has always been there for him!”
Her madness is a palpable thing, a suffocating wave of obsession. She will tell him I am dead, a casualty of the chaos. And he, broken and alone, will turn to the only comfort he has ever known. Her.
The grief, the shock, it is all consumed by a sudden, white-hot inferno of pure, undiluted rage.
“You did not do it for him,” I snarl, my voice a low, dangerous thing I do not recognize as my own. “You did it for yourself. You would rather see him broken and in your arms than whole and in another’s. That is not love. That is poison.”
“I will cut his love for you out of his heart, starting with yours!” she screams, and she lunges.
She is a warrior. I am a scribe. She is a Minotaur, a creature of muscle and fury. I am a human, a creature of bone and soft flesh. I should be dead.
But I am not the same woman who fled Kairen’s estate. I have walked through fire. I have been held by a god. And I will not die here, in the dark, at the hands of a jealous, heartbroken fool.
I do not try to meet her strength with my own. I use my head. As she lunges, I do not retreat. I sidestep, kicking out with all my might, my target not her, but a large, open barrel of sand kept for dousing fires.
The barrel topples, and a cloud of fine, gritty sand explodes between us. She roars in fury and pain as the sand fills her eyes, blinding her for a crucial, precious second.
I scramble away, my boots slipping on the sandy floor. But she is a predator. She is on me in an instant, her vision clearing, her face a mask of murderous intent. She grabs a fistful of my hair, yanking my head back, the dagger flashing, arcing down toward my exposed throat.
This is it. A close call is not enough. I am going to die.
A massive, scarred hand shoots out of the shadows, grabbing Lyra’s wrist in a grip of pure, unyielding iron. The dagger stops, a hair’s breadth from my skin.
