Page 155 of Of Bargains & Betrayal

Maksym sank back with a defeated sigh. “This day just keeps getting better,” he muttered. “Let me know what needs to be replaced, and I’ll castrate whoever’s responsible later. It’s the least of our worries right now.”

My fears he’d already learned what had transpired between Enora and me settled a bit, but only enough to make way for a deluge of other concerns.

“She’s fought already?” I cast my attention over the lower arena pit, divided into multiple rings, but there was no sign of her.

“Twice.” Gallan walked past me and toward the doors. “Bright-eyed shifter whelps from the city. Both draws, which I think were unfair to her. I’ll be back soon.”

Smart man, escaping while he could.

Maksym didn’t even acknowledge Gallan’s departure.

“Three rounds total?” I asked him.

“Yeah.” He’d propped his elbow on the arm of the throne and rested his forehead on his fingertips as he shook his head subtly. “Thank Mina she already taught me how to prepare her people’s fallen.”

I couldn’t help but wince, and I noticed then just how disheveled Maksym was.

Completely unbound hair he’d clearly been raking his hands through.

A shirt so rumpled, it must have come straight off the floor—without its laces, too. Not a glint of a ring or ear cuff in sight, and mud-splattered boots.

My king may not have been the most showy man with his appearance, but there was a well-defined line of standards he held himself to. I’d only seen them slip a handful of times in our fifteen years of friendship, and not once since he’d taken his father’s throne.

Guilt flared in my chest, and I was eager to find a thread of positivity. “Two draws, though. That means she will not be disqualified, right? Even if she loses her third?”

Maksym was quiet for a moment before he straightened, and his voice was a little hoarse when he spoke. “The council has chosen to depart from tradition this year. Participants won’t be faulted for draws, but they must win one of their three bouts or see it vetoed. If they don’t, it will count as disqualification.”

Well, fuck.

“The council…thinks I’m distracted. That I’m losing my grasp.” Maksym didn’t entirely sound like he was directing his words at me, but I sank back against the railing and gave him my attention. “They tore into me yesterday. About her. About that fucking letter. About the shit in the Wastes—” He gestured a hand vaguely, but I knew what he meant.

Odessan scouts had been spotted across the Wastes in the week leading up to the Agōn Ferr, making erratic movements that made little sense. Given that, and the clear-as-mud threat Maksym had received on paper from their tyrant boy king, allegedly, we were bracing ourselves for an inevitable unknown that clearly had more than just the two of us on edge.

“And just look at them all down there, drunk in their fucking revelry, like we aren’t playing with lives.”

The patio just below Maksym’s was where the lords and council liked to sprawl themselves for these events. Waited on hand and foot with refreshments and food. Placing their bets and throwing around more money than the commoners would make in a lifetime. Jeering and heckling, as if they were people of any true consequence.

“I asked them to consider postponing the rest of the events. Delaying them, at least, until we get better intelligence.” My attention snapped back to Maksym and the utterly detached look on his face. “And this is what they did instead.”

Despicable.

An ask by their king not only rejected, but thrown back in his face.

I suspected that by the end of the Agōn Ferr, the council chambers would be painted with dark fae blood, and Maksym’s hands would drip with it. He’d vowed up and down not to be an oppressive king like his father, to never rule with an iron fist, but there was something to be said about being used as a rug, too.

Still, it wasn’t the time to broach an ounce of that, especially not while I had a festering bulb of guilt sprouting inside me at frightening speed.

Maksym had fallen silent, looking back over the arena, so I forced myself to do the same.

It was hard to hear much over the jeering thundering out from the patio beneath us, but the faint echo of swords battering shields traveled up, as did unmistakable bellows of pain cutting through it all.

The contestants were struggling badly, throwing all their weight into their blows, only to tumble down with their partners. Sloppy, broken arcs of blades cut through the air. One pair had forgone their equipment altogether and were locked in a grappling embrace; their fatigued bodies sagged against each other for support.

Death matches, as far as I was concerned.

I still hadn’t placed why the council would push forward like this—not just to spite Max—but it felt an awful lot like plain old bloodlust.

A thought quickly confirmed when one prospect faltered, sinking to his knees, and his Elixia challenger ran his blade right through the Umbrite’s neck without an ounce of hesitation.