Page 156 of Of Bargains & Betrayal

The arena erupted as blue-black blood poured out from the wound, coating his pale gray chest, and his body slumped into the sand. Gold glinted up from between the trading hands of the council members below, and I turned back to Maksym with a sigh.

He flicked his fingers, and the sound of the arena dampened into a muffled rumble.

“You seem unusually tense,” he said, as if we were suddenly having a casual conversation on any old day, and I’d never been so grateful to be leaning against something. “I’d hoped a day to yourself would’ve had the opposite effect, but it’s clearly not the case. Did Enora do a number on you this morning?”

Mina, take me. Was he really trying to joke?

Things were fucking dire in Maksym’s head if he was trying to lighten the mood with humor that I was about to undoubtedly sour.

The air took on a sweltering edge, and I had to look back over the arena. Two guards were busy hauling the Umbrite’s body from the pit, leaving a streak of black behind them. Another rushed out to make a hurried attempt at cleaning up the sand.

“No, not that.” I sighed. It took a long, long time for me to brave looking back at Max and the naïve concern written all over his face. “I think I fucked up. Badly.”

His amber eyes narrowed in thought, and he tipped his head as he sank back into his seat. “I find that hard to believe. How so?”

It didn’t feel like it was my own voice that said, “I slept with her, Max.”

The muted rumble of the arena stretched between us for a goddess-damned eternity.

“You slept with her,” he repeated slowly—too slowly—as that concern gave way to something ice-cold in his face. “As in, you fucked Enora? Was it before or after I was busy getting my ass ripped to pieces by the council I’m pretty sure is plotting to unseat me? During it, maybe?”

And just like that, I knew I was unfathomably fucked.

All I could do was nod.

Putting words to anything else would have been so much worse.

His brows winged up, and he let out a displeased scoff I was ill-prepared for the bitter slice of. “Well. That was only a matter of time, wasn’t it? Old flames and all. Can’t say I’m surprised.”

No, but he was pissed.

Not understanding, nor jesting, as I had foolishly assumed he’d be.

The displeasure simmering beneath his surface was palpable, and I braced myself for how it might combust. “Look, I am sorry. Okay? I did not expect⁠—”

“Save it.” Maksym bit out those two words so roughly, I tensed as he kicked his feet up on the railing in front of him. “Her last match is coming up soon. I’m more worried about her surviving than I am about dealing with your mess right now.”

He flicked his fingers again, and the sound barrier came crashing down.

My mess.

That came as such a poorly justified relief. If his ire was only directed at me, I’d gladly take it a thousand times over. It appeared neither of us was immune to Enora’s siren song.

Enora’s next match did not come up soon.

We sat through three more agonizing bouts, separated by tension so palpable, it should’ve been forced to pay a quarterly tithe.

Maksym did not cast a single glance in my direction, scathing or not, while he slumped in his seat and watched the fights with an indifference disrespectful to the competitors.

Even when the patio below and arena around us erupted at one grievous act of violence or another, he didn’t flinch. A muscle in his jaw worked, though, and his knuckles blanched every time he flexed his fingers around the skull-carved end of his armrest.

Fuming. Absolutely fuming. But in a way that was so unique to him.

In anticipation of the moment he’d erupt through that slowly fracturing shell, I had slunk my way to a seat a handful away and lowered into it. Not a single one of my muscles relaxed, and I spent more time watching him than I did the matches.

Despite the tension, I did not have regret anywhere in my heart.

A touch of guilt, maybe. Even a sliver of remorse over how I’d dropped it on Max when it was clearly the last thing he needed. But I could never regret her, and I refused to blame myself for feelings that never ceded, even after I’d spent fifteen years smothering any last trace of them. The moment I’d laid eyes on her again, it was like they had never left. That boyish infatuation that used to eat me alive. The desperate urge to make her laugh, to see her room-tilting smile and the warmth in her hazel eyes. Even when she’d been curled up in her cell, purging those toxins from her body, the urge to comfort her was agonizing.