Chapter 10

Mia

“ I told you that you’d enjoy today’s match,” Zake says in an irritating, satisfied tone. He slings an arm around the back of my chair and leans towards me. “Now you get to watch your ogre die.”

I didn’t want to believe it when Cragnorr stepped out of the dark tunnel inside the pit. The king had hidden what I could expect today, merely telling me I would have quite a lot of fun.

I knew then I wouldn’t like whatever he had planned. And sure enough, it’s the worst thing I could imagine.

That other guy looks mean and dangerous. Maybe it’s the way he holds himself like this is just another day, or how he casually carries an axe slung over his shoulder... but I’m afraid of him.

And I’m terrified of what he’ll do to my ogre.

“Cragnorr!” I holler. I don’t know what I plan to do or say, but I need to see him, to talk to him, to do anything in my power to stop this from happening. He pauses in the middle of the arena and gazes up at me with a forlorn look. Then, to my surprise, his eyebrows lower in determination.

He’s trying to tell me that he’ll win. I want to believe it, but this other guy...

Cragnorr and the burly man find their way to opposite sides of the pit. They circle each other, the man dragging his axe in the dirt and drawing a long line behind him. Cragnorr palms the hilt of his sword. He may look like a lumbering giant, but I get the sense now that’s only a part of him. When he whirls on the other man he looks fearsome, his big lower jaw jutting out, his huge tusks shining in the sun.

“You think you’re tough?” the bear of a man asks, lifting his axe. “Wait until I cut off one of your arms.”

My very skin shivers. Cragnorr isn’t a fighter. At least he has a weapon, but... I can’t stand the idea that this might be the last time I see him.

I have to stop this.

“Zake,” I hiss. “This isn’t going to be the fight you want it to be. Cragnorr’s not a killer.”

But the asshole only grins at me. “If he wasn’t one before, he’ll become one today.” He shrugs. “Or he’ll die.”

I curl my hands into fists, wishing I could just smack that look right off his face, but I don’t want to get my own head cut off.

“You don’t have faith in him?” Zake asks, picking a ripe berry from a platter next to him. “That’s sad. You’ll take his cock but you won’t back him in a fight?”

It’s not that I don’t have faith in him—it’s that I don’t want to see my sweet, peaceful ogre corrupted by violence. I don’t want him to have to change just to survive.

I look down over the arena as Cragnorr and the bear-man circle each other, neither wanting to take the first step. I can’t watch, but I have to.

For him.

Cragnorr

Bino snickers as we both pad around the edge of the arena. “Come on now,” he calls to me, beckoning. “Attack me, won’t you, big guy? I don’t want to have to come over there.”

I ignore him, keeping one eye on the platform overhead where Mia is being kept prisoner. She’s watching me with huge eyes, hands clenched into fists. There has to be an answer to all of this, a way out of here that doesn’t involve butchering.

I test the sword in my hand. It’s heavier than my hunting knife, but much sharper and deadlier. Wielding it shouldn’t present a problem, but humans are smarter than animals, and those are the only opponents I’ve faced before today.

Finally, tired of waiting, Bino leans forward and bolts across the arena towards me. He reels his axe back over his head, ready to deliver a powerful strike.

But he doesn’t move nearly as fast as I expected, and the trajectory of his weapon is clear enough from the positioning of his body. I take a single step to the side and he blows past me, hurling his axe into the dirt. Two more steps forward and now I’m along his flank, my sword raised.

I can’t shed blood in front of Mia. And I couldn’t live with myself if I killed this man just for this crowd’s entertainment.

So I aim my pommel and strike him with it in the back. He howls, stumbling forward.

“Damn ogre!” Bino roars, turning around to face me. His skin is red all over now—I’ve made him angry.

He charges again, and this time I raise my sword to meet the huge blade of his axe, gambling that I can best him in strength. Our weapons meet in a terrible clash of metal that bounces around the inside of my head. Luckily, I’m much bigger than Bino is, so as I press forward using my weapon like a baton, he slides backwards across the dirt, unable to overcome me.

I think of what he said about slashing someone’s ankles as a way to bring them down for good. Abruptly I release the pressure on my sword. With Bino’s full body weight leaned into his axe, the moment I pull away, he loses his balance and stumbles towards me. He extends one foot to catch himself, so I sweep my leg out and slam it into his shin as hard as I can.

“Fuck!” Bino shouts as he tumbles to the ground on his belly, his axe skidding away. I jump on him, slamming one foot down into the center of his back. He shrieks in pain, but I made sure not to hit him so hard that I broke anything.

Now he’s trapped underneath me, with no way to escape.

“Kill him!” a shout rises from the assembled humans overhead.

“Kill him!” calls out someone else.

Soon the cries are all unified: Kill him, kill him, kill him! They’re frantic, desperate for bloodletting. I look down at Bino, who now lies facedown in the dust.

“Get it over with!” he growls, turning his head so he can glare up at me with one eye. “End it already!”

Instead, I drop my sword to the ground with a metallic clank.

The air fills with the roar of everyone booing. The crowd is jeering at me, infuriated that they’re losing their bloodshed as I refuse to cut off Bino’s head.

“Fucking end it!” Bino hollers from his place trapped under my foot. But I’m not going to play the King’s game. I pull my foot off of him, and then pick up his axe. Without hesitating, I fling it against the nearest wall, where it buries itself in the dirt ten feet up. Now someone would have to be my size to reach it and pull it out.

Grunting with effort, the human man drags himself back up to his feet. His face is filled with rage.

“Are you trying to humiliate me?” he demands, stalking toward me. He has no weapon now, but that doesn’t seem to faze him. He lunges, wielding only his bare hands, and tries to wrap his fingers around my thick throat. But he’s slow, unfocused, and I think injured, so it’s easy to block him and throw him to the ground again.

Bino gags as all the wind is knocked out of his lungs. I need to put him down—enough for this fight to be over. So I lift my foot, aim for his chest, and slam it into him. He gasps and his eyes fly wide, then he curls up in a ball on the ground.

He’s not getting up anytime soon. The crowd roars even more angrily as I toss my sword away.

No one will be dying today.

Mia

“Damn it!” Zake slams his fist into the arm of his chair. “This is not what I got my hands on a fucking ogre for.”

Why did he do it? Why did Cragnorr let that man live? He’ll simply have to fight another day, and maybe next time, Cragnorr won’t be so lucky as to face off against such a simple-minded opponent.

My ogre with his soft heart. I don’t know what I’ll do with him.

Cragnorr’s soon seized by guards and led away, back into the dark cavern where he came from, the other man limps along behind. Then the door is closed once more as the crowd empties out, most of them grumbling. When we leave, Zake drags me along behind him as if I’m little more than an annoying dog.

“That bastard,” Zake growls when he finds his way into the tent to find the tables stacked with food. He sits down at the head, but this time, there’s no chair for me. He points at the floor. “As long as your boyfriend doesn’t perform for me, you’ll get the scraps.” To make his point, he tosses an apple onto the floor at me, and it rolls until it bumps into my knee. But all I can think about is what they must be doing down there to Cragnorr to punish him for today.

“What are you going to do with him if he won’t fight?” I ask from my spot on the ground. I shift as the ropes bite into my wrists. Now my nightgown is filthier than ever. “You can’t make him raise a sword. You should just let him go.”

He barks a condescending laugh. “Oh, don’t worry. I’ll find a way to make him draw blood.” He grins down at me with those yellowed teeth of his, and a gold cap glints in the light. “There’s a key for every lock.” With a wink, he takes a big swig of his beer, and slams the mug down on the table.

While the King devours his meal, I take stock of the camp. The big pit where the gladiators fought today appears to be at the center, which will certainly make everything more difficult. The high walls protecting the perimeter end where the hillside begins, and I wonder how hard it would be to climb. Cragnorr is excellent at climbing, and though the rock face looks steep from here, I think together we could scale it.

Maybe that’s our ticket out of here, if I can manage to get to Cragnorr. He’s being kept somewhere underneath the ground, near the arena. I just have to figure out how to get inside.

“Hungry?” the King asks, tossing me a rib bone that still has some meat left on it. But my hands are still bound, so I just glare up at him. He laughs.

“It’s not too late to give her to me,” Gru says. The tall woman with the braid sits on the other side of him, and gives him a disgusted look.

“So now you want to fuck the ogre’s slut?” she says, breaking a bone in half and sucking out the marrow. She glances at the King. “What are you going to do with her, Your Majesty?”

He frowns down at me, and I wish she hadn’t asked. Sitting on the floor is the least of my worries.

“I don’t know. She doesn’t do me much good now.” He cocks his head. “I wonder how long it takes for the stench of ogre to come off?”

“Never,” I say from my position on the ground.

The woman with the braid chuckles. “Good luck breaking this one,” she says. “Why bother, Zake? Like you said, she’s not queen material.”

He hmph s. “She’ll make a good toy once that ogre is dead.” A smile spreads across his face. “And we can arrange that soon enough.”

A heavy stone of foreboding settles in my stomach. Cragnorr walking away from that fight only put him in a worse position. Now the King is going to find a way to make him fight, and he might not survive it this time.

The woman with the braid stands up from the table and, tucking her hands behind her, pads over to where I’m seated on the floor.

“She’s filthy,” she says, surveying me. “Let me take her for the night, Your Majesty, and after tomorrow’s fight, she’ll be in prime condition for your claiming.”

Claiming ? “Nobody’s claiming me,” I say, pulling away, which only ends up with me flopping over on my side like a fish.

Zake’s eyes brighten at this as they all ignore me. “A purifying?” he asks. “Perfect. Exactly what she needs.”

The woman grabs my arm and hauls me up to my feet, then jerks on the rope tying my wrists together. “Come with me, little slut,” she says in a sing-song voice, like she’s trying to convince an animal to follow her across a river.

Maybe this is good luck. I’m going to be separated from Zake for the night, and maybe I’ll learn more about the camp—something that could help us escape this place. It sounds like tomorrow might be Cragnorr’s last chance.

I have to save him before that happens.