Page 68 of Her Manticore Master
“No,” he agrees, his gaze flickering over my body for a fraction of a second before becoming all business. “Turn around.”
As he efficiently straps on the cuirass, his impersonal touch on my bare back sends a surprising jolt of heat through me. His focused proximity oddly calms my frayed nerves amidst the impending violence.
“The bracers,”he commands. I hold out my arms, and he secures them tightly, his calloused thumbs brushing against the tender skin of my wrists.
“What about you?” I ask, looking at his own unarmored chest.
“I’m faster without it,” he says simply. “You’re not. Your job is to stay alive. Let the leather do its job.” He meets my eyes, his expression deadly serious. “Stay behind me. Stay alive. Do not engage unless you have no other choice. Do you understand?”
“I understand,” I whisper, my voice barely audible over the roaring of the crowd.
Blinded by light, we enter the arena. The overwhelming noise, dizzying scale, and coppery smell of blood and sand assault me. My heart pounds like a trapped bird.
Horgath and Joric, massive and menacing, grin at me from the sand, their eyes dismissive of Ronan. They see an easy kill, a mere appetizer.
The signal horn blows, a long, mournful sound that marks the beginning of the fight. And they charge.
They don’t run. They stampede. The ground seems to shake with their thundering footsteps. And they are both coming straight for me.
In that moment of pure, unreasoning terror, all of Ronan’s training evaporates from my mind. Every lesson, every drill, every bruised piece of muscle memory vanishes, replaced by a single, primal instinct:run.
My mind went blank, but my feet moved. I scrambled backward, dodging Horgath's axe, which buried itself in the sand. Joric's axe swept low for my legs; I leaped back, stumbling in the soft sand. My heart pounded, a scream caught in my throat. This was a real fight, terrifyingly fast, and I was going to die.
Just as Joric raises his axe for a second, more calculated swing, a blur of motion explodes from my left. Ronan is there, a whirlwind of protective fury, his body a living shield between me and the two hulking brothers.
“I told you to stay behind me,” he snarls, his voice a low, terrifying growl that is not directed at me.
He fought both men simultaneously with brutal efficiency, his single arena sword a deadly extension of himself. He parried Horgath's overhead chop, using his momentum to unbalance him, then ducked Joric's swing, leaving a deep gash on his thigh. I watched, horrified and awestruck.
Joric roared, and both brothers attacked sloppily. Ronan, a master of violence, seized an opening as Horgath overextended. His blade plunged into Horgath's side, and the man collapsed, eyes wide, axe falling from lifeless fingers.
“Horgath!” Joric screams, his face a mask of grief and rage. He abandons all pretense of technique and charges at Ronan, his axe held high like a club.
It’s a fatal mistake. Ronan sidesteps the reckless charge with contemptuous ease and ends the fight with a single, clean, merciless thrust to the heart.
The second body thuds to the sand. The crowd, which had been jeering moments before, is momentarily stunned into silence, and then erupts into a roar of approval. The whole fight took less than a minute.
Ronan stands over the two corpses, his chest heaving, his sword dripping red onto the sand. Then his blazing blue eyes find mine, a silent, frantic question in their depths.Are you hurt?
I shake my head, unable to speak. The first round is over. We are still alive.
33
RONAN
His steel-blue eyes find mine, a silent, frantic question. I shake my head, unable to speak. The first round is over. We are still alive.
Two more fights.Two more victories scraped from the blood-soaked sand. We’re still alive, but the cost is mounting. My body is a roadmap of fresh aches and deep, bone-weary exhaustion. I lean against the grimy wall of the holding pen, my sword heavy in my lap, trying to catch my breath while the cacophony of the arena fades.
Corrina nurses a gash on her forearm from a stray axe. I saw it coming but was too slow to intercept. The sight of her injury and blood caused an unfamiliar, debilitating terror, unlike any fear for myself.
“Does it hurt?” I ask, my voice rougher than I intend.
She doesn’t look up from her work, carefully cleaning the wound with a strip of cloth. “Of course it hurts, you idiot. I was just cut with an axe.” Her voice is steady, but I can see the slight tremor in her hands.
“You did well,” I say, the words feeling inadequate. “You saw the second attacker coming from my blind side. You shouted. You saved my life.”
“And got this for my trouble,” she mutters, but there’s no real venom in it. She ties off the makeshift bandage with a practiced knot. “We’re a mess, Ronan.”
