Page 6 of Bought by the Broken Beast
“Nowhere left to run, disgraced one,” he sneers, his sword scraping against the cobblestones. “Lord Malacc sends his regards.”
They advance slowly, savoring the moment. I push Bella behind me, my body a solid wall of muscle and defiance. I have no weapon but my fists and my fury. It will not be enough. I scan the walls around us, my mind racing. Brick, stone, timber… and a section of wall to my left that looks older, the mortar crumbling, stained dark with moisture from a leaking gutter. A weakness.
“When I move, you follow,” I grunt to Bella, my voice low. “Do not hesitate.”
Vorlag is only a few feet away now, his sword raised. “Your honor died in the arena, Saru. Now, you die in the dirt.”
I let out a roar, the sound of pure, primal rage, and charge—not at him, but at the wall. I put every ounce of my Vakkak strength, every bit of my shame and fury, into the impact. My shoulder hits the crumbling brick like a siege engine.
The wall explodes outward in a shower of dust and rotten mortar. Pain, sharp and blinding, shoots through my shoulder, but I ignore it. Beyond the gaping hole is darkness. A passage. One of the city’s old, forgotten sewer tunnels.
The guards stare, momentarily stunned by the impossible act. It is the only opening I need.
I spin, grabbing Bella’s arm, and haul her through the jagged opening with me. “This way,” I grunt, pulling her into the suffocating, pitch-black darkness as the sounds of the city watch erupt in fury behind us.
5
BELLA
The darkness of the sewer tunnel is absolute, a suffocating blanket of stench and silence broken only by the drip of unseen water and Votoi’s heavy, guiding presence in front of me. My shoulder aches where he grabbed me, a phantom pressure that matches the bruising on my throat. I stumble on the slick, uneven stones, my hand flying out to brace against the slimy wall. A shudder wracks my body. I am a creature of ink and parchment, of quiet rooms and orderly numbers. This subterranean filth is a violation of my very nature.
Votoi stops, and I nearly collide with the wall of his back. He is utterly still, a statue carved from shadow. I can hear nothing but the frantic thumping of my own heart. Then, a low grunt from him. A scraping sound of stone against stone. A sliver of dusty, grey light appears, and with a final, groaning heave, he pushes a heavy sewer grate aside.
“Up,” his voice is a low, rough rumble, devoid of emotion. “Quickly.”
He hoists himself out with an ease that belies his size, then reaches back down. His massive hand engulfs mine, the calloused skin rough against my own. He pulls, and I feelweightless, lifted from the suffocating darkness and deposited onto the grimy cobblestones of another alley.
I blink, my eyes struggling to adjust to the dim light of the pre-dawn city. The air here is different from the manicured gardens of the merchant district. It’s thick with the smells of sweat, spilled ale, roasting meat, and the metallic tang of the nearby arena. We are in the city’s gut, the working-class district of the Fiepakak. The buildings are timber and plaster, leaning against each other for support, their upper stories looming over the narrow streets. This is a world away from Kairen’s white marble.
Votoi is already moving, his posture different here. In the upper city, he was a caged beast. Here, he moves with a grim, purposeful stride, a predator back in his hunting grounds. Minotaurs, broad-shouldered and unadorned with the finery of the upper classes, pass us, their gazes lingering on me. I am an anomaly. A human, small and pale, trailing in the wake of a disgraced Vakkak. I pull my cloak tighter, trying to shrink, to become the invisible scribe once more, but it’s impossible. Here, my otherness is a beacon.
He leads me to a corner tavern. The sign above the door is a crudely painted axe splitting a barrel, the name ‘The Bitter Draught’ carved into the weathered wood. The sound from within is a low murmur of voices, punctuated by the occasional gruff laugh. It smells of damp wood and stale beer. This is not a place a slave, or a Vakkak noble, would ever enter.
Votoi pushes the heavy door open and steps inside. The tavern goes silent.
Every eye turns to us. The patrons are all Fiepakak—laborers, off-duty guards, grizzled arena hands with scarred knuckles and cynical eyes. They see Votoi, and a ripple of recognition, of old respect and fresh pity, moves through the room. They see hissplintered horn, the symbol of his shame, and then their eyes fall on me, and the mood shifts. Suspicion. Hostility.
A figure detaches itself from the shadows behind the bar. A female Minotaur, her fur the color of a stormy sky, a long, faded scar cutting across one of her heavy brows. She is not as tall as Votoi, but she carries herself with an authority that makes her seem just as large. She wipes the bar with a rag, her movements slow, deliberate, her dark eyes missing nothing.
“Look what the sewer washed in,” she says, her voice sounding like a smoky drawl. It’s not a welcome. It’s an accusation.
Votoi walks to the bar, stopping a few feet from her. I remain by the door, feeling like a field mouse in a den of lions. The power dynamic here is a language I don’t speak, a complex tapestry of history and caste I can only guess at.
“Lyra,” Votoi’s voice is rough, rumbling. “I need a room.”
The female, Lyra, lets out a short, humorless laugh. “A room? You think this is a Vakkak pleasure house? Or have you forgotten what you are?” She tosses the rag onto the counter, her gaze flicking to me, sharp and dismissive. “And what isthis? Your new pet?”
The insult is a physical sting. My cheeks burn with a mixture of shame and anger.
“She is with me,” Votoi states, his voice flat, offering no further explanation. The protective stance is subtle, a slight shift of his weight that puts him more squarely between me and the tavern owner, but I see it. And I know Lyra does, too.
Her eyes narrow, studying him. There is a deep, unspoken history between them, a current of shared memories that I can feel crackling in the air. Her gaze softens for a fraction of a second, a flicker of something that might have once been affection, before hardening again into a mask of weary cynicism.
“You look like hell, Votoi,” she says, her voice losing some of its edge.
“The world is hell, Lyra,” he replies, the words steeped in a bitterness so profound it makes my own fear feel shallow.
She sighs, a heavy, world-weary sound, and gestures with her head toward a dark staircase in the back of the room. “The old storage room above the kitchens is empty. It’s not fit for a Vakkak, but I suppose it’ll do for what’s left of one.”
