Page 158 of Of Bargains & Betrayal
“And I would appreciate it if you took your spectating elsewhere,” Maksym added. His lip curled as Enora blocked a blow but let out a pained cry at the impact. “Perhaps situate yourself somewhere she can seek your comfort easily again, and I don’t need to see your face. There is a witch waiting in my study to tend to her.”
My instincts were sliced jaggedly in three ways:
Do not take my eyes off Enora.
Race down to be at her side.
Punch Maksym square in the fucking jaw.
One, thankfully, willed my body into autonomous motion.
I left in silence, throwing open the door into the corridor and nearly flattening Gallan with it. The slimy leech had been there the entire fucking time, if I had to hedge a guess.
“Why am I not surprised to see you clinging to that door like vermin?” I grumbled as I ran, and Gallan came up just a pace behind me.
“There’s a witch waiting for her, back at—”
“I. Know.”
I flung open a door into a set of tight stairs that wound into the arena’s service halls. Plane stepping would’ve had me there in an instant, but I needed more than that blink to calm myself down.
“Fuck,” Gallan mumbled. “She’s going to be fine, you know?”
“Is she?” I snapped back over my shoulders as our hurried footsteps echoed up the staircase. “Because it fucking seems to me like—”
BANG. BANG.
The vetoes—they acted like flares when broken, leaving no doubt with their thunderous explosions. An ache settled into my chest, and I took the rest of the stairs twice as fast.
“We knew this was going to happen eventually,” Gallan panted behind me. “Someone was going to try to fuck her over. I went to the apothecary last week, spent a small fucking fortune on some tonics the witch said to get.”
No relief trickled into my body.
“I can’t remember what they were called,” he continued, “but she said they’d bolster Enora’s body. Make her pretty much impossible to kill. Something about her blood and aether that—ugh, I can’t remember the goddess-damned specifics. But she’ll heal up faster, too.”
“Forgive me for not having any confidence in that.” I pushed past two staggering, bloody-pulp contestants and down another short stretch of hall.
“Well, I’ll just go fuck myself, I guess,” Gallan scoffed. “And to think, I had the decency to cover for you while you were busy fucking your best friend’s betrothed.”
I felt a flit of energy in the air as he vanished and left me with that lovely reminder.
The gates from the pit swung into the hall, and Enora came staggering through, supported by two guards who carried most of her weight. I tried not to let my attention linger on the blood that trailed behind Enora’s dragging feet, or the steady stream trickling from her nose and mouth, or the wound soaking her hair.
“Give her to me, now,” I barked.
“Fuck,” was the only coherent word that left Enora as the guards shuffled her into my hold, and I swept her into my arms. Everything else came as a pained or gurgled grunt, but the scrunch of her battered face said enough.
I reached for the planes, felt the prickle of aether on my skin, and stepped us straight through to Maksym’s study.
“GODDESS BELOW!” came a shriek that sent me stumbling as brocade walls and dark furniture settled into my vision. “Not again.”
The aforementioned witch, a plump and ancient Umbrite woman, was on her ass in front of Maksym’s prized leather chaise, and not in a way that made it seem like she’d made herself comfortable there. Gallan was sprawled in an armchair by the dwindling fire, and I quickly understood the meaning of again.
“Sorry,” I winced as I adjusted Enora in my arms and grimaced further at the low moan she let out.
The witch was already scrambling up and fighting a blanket over the chaise. “Here. Here. Put her here.”
Enora gurgled out a string of what had to be curses as I set her gently onto its surface, carefully supporting her head while I lowered her against the arched back. True to my luck, I fought to stifle a gag as she coughed a concerning volume of coagulated blood onto both of us.
