Page 99 of To Wake a Kingdom

The gate opened, and Mare was striding along the floor of the arena, black skirts swirling. The large woman lowered her arm, confusion furrowing her brow.

“Get rid of her.” Mare gestured to the guards who’d emerged behind her. Without hesitation, they seized the woman, slit her throat, and dropped her to the floor in a thundering crash of metal plates and armor. Even the crowd recoiled in shock at this casual infliction of death.

Mare prowled closer, grabbing me by the back of the head, her hand fisting my hair. I arched in pain as she lifted me, and I reached for the hand clamped to my head.

Mare hissed in my ear, “I am not going to make it that easy for you, Princess. I am not finished with you yet, nor am I done with your suffering. When you do finally die, I promise it is going to bespectacular.”

She let go and threw me to the ground, where I landed face-first, coughing in the dust.

“Please, let me go,” I whimpered, hating the sound of it, but this had become the only language I knew anymore. Mare had carved out my dignity, bit by excruciating bit. “Please, I want to die. I want it to be over. I’ll do anything.” Wracking, shuddering sobs ripped through my body, tears mingling with blood and sweat and dirt. “Please.” I writhed on the ground.

The crowd had gone quiet as the blonde woman’s corpse cooled next to me. There was no joy in this, even for them. I was a pathetic bug, smashed on the sidewalk, with nothing left to give.

Mare leaned over me—a towering black inferno—her voice laced with lethal calm. “Be careful what you wish for, Princess.”

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Thistime,theydidn’theal or clean me. Instead, I was left alone in my cage for several days, filthy and covered in blood, my dress torn and hanging as limp as my hopes. Mare’s final words in the ring had suggested she was working up to something, and now she was leaving me here to wait and stew. I couldn’t imagine what else she had left to throw at me.

Maida’s footsteps came into view where I lay with my cheek pressed to the marble. He dropped to the ground, leaning against the bars. His arm held out, he procured an offering—a jug of water, passed through the bars as he peered over his shoulder.

I eyed him with suspicion.

“Go on. It’s fine. I promise.”

I crawled over and snatched it, taking a careful sip. It was sweet and cool and clear as a mountain stream. I tipped it back and began gulping it down.

He reached out and clasped the bottle.“Slow down, you’ll make yourself sick.”

Bottle pressed to my chest, I scrambled back, snarling. I had become the animal meant for this cage. Maida’s dark eyes widened in a flash of pity before it was replaced with something I couldn’t name.

“You shouldn’t have let her see you like that,” he said. “Knowing how much you want to die only makes her want to keep you alive.”

I knew it was true, but the fight in me now languished in a deep, dank cellar.

“What does she have planned for me?” I asked, afraid of the answer. “How will she torment me next?”

Maida lifted his powerful shoulders. “I don’t know, Princess.”

I took another sip from the bottle and groaned. My ribs ached where the giant woman had crashed into me, and a massive blue and yellow bruise was visible through the rips in my dress.

“Come here,” Maida said, waving me closer, but I shrank back. He raised his eyes skyward. “What’s the worst I can do? You want to die anyway. Maybe I’ll do you a favor.”

Unable to argue with that logic, I inched over to him.

Reaching between the bars, he placed a hand on my ribs, his palm so large and my body shriveled from malnutrition, it engulfed my torso. I exhaled a rough breath at the first warm and gentle contact I’d experienced in weeks.

His face softened as he concentrated.A soft golden light flared beneath his hand, and the pain in my side ebbed. “I can’t do too much, or she’ll know. But that should help.”

The bruising was still tender, but it no longer hurt to breathe.

“Why are you helping me?” I leaned my head against the bars.

Maida went to pull his hand away, but I grabbed it and held his forearm against me. I didn’t care who it was—I just needed to feel something that wasn’t cold steel in my hand, or hot blood from a wounded princess, or the unforgiving hardness of marble beneath me. I needed warm brown skin and a heartbeat to remember what it was like to be alive.

Finding whatever sliver of pity resided in his corrupted heart, he didn’t pull away. So I clung to his arm like it was a parachute and I’d been shoved off a cliff. His warmth seeped into me, nothing but this tiny scrap of kindness anchoring me to this life. Tears flowed down my cheeks, and I sobbed quietly, burying my face in the crook of his elbow.

After a while, I pulled back and let go, too beaten to be embarrassed.“I’m sorry,” I said, looking at the stained sleeve of his pale gray tunic. It was covered in tears and the dirt and blood that painted me like a stain.

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