Page 15 of Her Manticore Master
I sit perched on silk cushions at Valdris's right hand, my emerald gown cut scandalously low to display the sapphire necklace that marks me as his favorite. The weight of the gems feels like chains around my throat.
"You look radiant tonight, my dear," Valdris murmurs, his pale fingers trailing possessively along my bare arm. "Green becomes you."
"Thank you, Master." The words taste like ash, but I deliver them with a perfect smile.
Around us, the other women play their parts with practiced ease. Lysa reclines on burgundy silk, her smile never quite reaching her eyes. Zara feeds grapes to a drunken lord, her movements fluid and graceful, but her gaze is distant, unfocused. We are decorations. Beautiful, expensive, utterlydisposable decorations, and the performance is exhausting. The laughter grates on my nerves, the music a dull thrum beneath the surface of my carefully banked rage. I catch Zara’s eye for a fleeting moment, and in that shared glance, I see the same bone-deep weariness I feel. It’s a silent acknowledgment of our shared prison, a moment of connection so brief it might have been my imagination. But it’s enough to remind me that I am not alone in my quiet desperation.
"Your manticore has been quite the earner," Lord Caelum says, his voice slurred with wine. "I trust you'll be putting on another show for us soon?"
"Patience, my lord," Valdris replies smoothly. "The best spectacles require anticipation." He looks at me, a cruel glint in his pale eyes. "Isn't that right, my jewel?"
"Of course, Master," I say, my voice honey-sweet. "The crowd so enjoys a good breaking."
Trumpets announce the gladiators' entrance with unnecessary fanfare. A dozen fighters file into the great hall, their bodies cleaned and oiled for display, though iron collars still mark them as property. Most keep their eyes downcast in practiced submission.
Ronan is not most gladiators.
He walks among them like a caged wolf, his steel-blue eyes sweeping the assembled nobles with undisguised contempt. He's magnificent, I realize with a stab of unwanted awareness. Not pretty-boy handsome like the pleasure slaves, but beautiful in the way a storm is beautiful—dangerous and wild and absolutely untamed.
"Behold my champions!" Valdris announces, rising from his throne with theatrical flourish.
Polite applause ripples through the hall, but I see the way the nobles' eyes linger hungrily on the displayed flesh. I also see the way the other women in the harem watch Ronan. It’s not just thesimple, girlish admiration they usually show for a new fighter. This is different. Their gazes are sharp, intense, filled with a dangerous, hungry curiosity. They are not looking at a man; they are looking at an idea. They see his untamed spirit, his unbroken will, and in him, they see everything they themselves have lost.
“He’s magnificent,” Zara breathes beside me, her voice a low, reverent whisper.
“He’s a beast,” I counter, my voice sharp.
“Yes,” she agrees, her eyes still fixed on him. “He is. And he’s not pretending to be anything else.”
The truth in her words is a sharp, unpleasant sting. We are all pretending. He is not.
His gaze sweeps the hall and finally lands on me. Something electric moves between us. Hatred, yes. But underneath it, something else. Something that makes my pulse race traitorously.
“The famous Corrina,” he says, his voice carrying clearly across the suddenly quiet hall. “I wondered when I’d have the pleasure.” His tone makes "pleasure" sound like an obscenity.
“Ronan, isn’t it?” I reply with silk-wrapped venom. “How... rustic.”
“Enough,” Valdris cuts in sharply, but there’s amusement in his pale eyes. “My fighter forgets himself.”
“No,” Ronan says quietly, still holding my gaze. “I remember exactly what I am.” The words are a challenge, a declaration of war. And I can feel the shift in the air around me, the sudden, sharp intake of breath from the other women. He is not just defying me. He is defying all of us, and our gilded cage.
“He’s going to get himself killed.”
The words are spoken by Lysa, back in the relative safety of our shared quarters. We’ve retired for the night, the banquet finally over, and the pretense has been dropped. The otherwomen are not fawning over Ronan’s shoulders or his rugged looks. They are dissecting his defiance.
“Of course he is,” Zara says, her voice laced with a bitter cynicism that is all too familiar. She methodically removes the jewels from her hair, her movements sharp, angry. “That’s what Valdris does. He finds the spirited ones and breaks them. It’s his favorite game.”
“Remember Elara?” Mira whispers, her voice barely audible. We all fall silent. We all remember Elara. She was the harem favorite before me, a fiery girl from the southern provinces who had a laugh like wind chimes and a spirit that refused to be tamed. She had defied Valdris one time too many. One day, she was simply gone. No explanation. No farewell. Just an empty space on the silk cushions that was quickly filled by another beautiful, broken girl.
“He won’t break Ronan,” I say, the words a fierce, quiet conviction. “He can’t.”
“He will,” Zara says, her voice flat. “He always does. He’ll throw bigger and bigger monsters at him, wear him down, until that fire in his eyes is nothing but a dull ember. And then, when he’s finally broken, he’ll get bored and have him killed in some meaningless fight.” She looks at me, her dark eyes filled with a shared, hopeless anger. “That’s how the story always ends, Corrina. You know that.”
“Maybe this time it will be different,” Lysa says, but her voice is thin, a fragile wisp of hope in the suffocating reality of our lives.
“Hope is a poison in this place, Lysa,” Zara snaps. “It’s what keeps you smiling when you want to scream. It’s what makes you accept the jewels and the silks as a fair trade for your soul.” She throws a heavy sapphire bracelet onto her vanity, the clatter of it unnaturally loud in the quiet room. “I’m done with hope.”
Zara’s bitter words hang in the air long after she has swept from the room. I remain at my own vanity, staring at my reflection in the polished bronze. The woman looking back is beautiful, but hollow. A perfect shell wrapped around nothing but survival instincts and carefully banked rage.
