CHAPTER 28
TOVEN WAS QUICK TO BEGIN.
“Stones, Collin! Too excited?” He bellowed a laugh, tucking Briony behind himself subtly.
Slowly the others caught on. Collin had squeezed his glass too hard.
That’s all it was.
“You’d think he’d never been sucked off before!” Canning barked, and Lorne snickered. Collin smiled down at his hand in confusion.
The fear seeped out of her as those awful words came back to her.
Cordelia had been husked. Completely drained of her magic, her heart unable to produce more. She was alive, but barely.
Tears gathered in her eyes, and she turned her face away to let them fall.
She couldn’t mourn Cordelia here, now.
Kleve came back in from the other room, arms full of bottles, and took in the scene. “What’s all this glass?”
“Excellent point, Kleve.” Canning turned malicious eyes on the women.
“Ladies, on all fours! I want every piece of glass collected and every boot kissed.” He wove his fingers together behind his head and smiled at Toven specifically.
Toven’s fingers twitched on Briony’s waist as several women immediately dropped to their knees.
Briony was still trying to calm her heart and focus on tucking Cordelia away in a book on a low shelf in her mind’s eye.
She began to go to the floor, but Toven’s hand on her wrist stopped her.
“What’s wrong, Tove?” Lorne said. “Do you think your heartspring is too good to do our cleaning?”
“I do, actually,” he said. “I don’t usually let sixty-five thousand gold drop on the floor.”
Briony glanced between them. Every other woman had gone to her knees.
“It’s strange to me how you let her act like a gold-blooded princess still,”
Liam said, examining his reflection in his spoon.
The room quieted, holding its breath. The only sound was the tinkle of glass as it was collected under the table.
Toven released her wrist with a look of disdain. She fell to her knees quickly and crawled under the table, feeling small pieces of glass dig into her palms and knees. She took a deep breath and centered herself, relishing the first moment without eyes on her.
When she looked up, several of the women were working fast to collect the fallen food and broken glass, but Cecily was frozen. She was curled over her knees, a palm to her mouth, and a silent screaming sob choking her.
Briony watched as the woman between them—a dark-skinned woman in a silver collar—wrapped herself over Cecily and squeezed her body tight on every shuddered inhale.
Jellica Reeve was across from Briony, her gaze vacant and her mouth parted as she seemed to take in more air than she could possibly need on every breath. She had a palm full of glass.
The conversation hummed to life again, and Briony began reaching out with shaking hands to collect anything she saw on the floor.
Her eyes blurred as Cecily took a gasping breath.
She had a sudden memory of Cecily’s laugh, breaking through the dining room at school. It had been wild and jarring from such a small body.
Briony reached out for a stray grape, brushing fingers with another person. Before she could retract her hand, pale freckled fingers grabbed hold
of her tightly. When she looked up, the strawberry-blond maid was focused on her, squeezing her hand, grounding her.
Briony wanted to ask a thousand questions about this young woman’s life before the Eversun palaces and where her brother was and if she’d almost gotten out.
Another hand took her other and squeezed. She looked to her right. The dark-skinned woman was still curled over Cecily as her breathing calmed, but she’d reached out, connecting herself to Briony.
As Briony looked around, she found every woman slowly squeezing another’s shoulder, hand, wrist, support vining among them all. Octavia and Jellica and five other women she didn’t know were holding tightly to one another, as if they could all infuse Cecily with what she needed to stand up and sit back down on Collin’s lap. It almost felt like magic—this connection, this contact. Tears pooled in Briony’s eyes at the thought.
And as quickly as it begun, it was broken. Briony found her hands empty but for the glass and grapes, missing the vine already.
When she came to her feet, she discarded the rubbish and picked shards out of her palms with a hollow feeling in her chest.
Before she could decide if she was to sit in Toven’s lap again or not, a soft
bell rang in the courtyard below.
Canning clapped. “That’s our cue.”
Jellica stumbled forward, clutching onto him in relief.
All the men but Canning rose from their chairs, and Briony hoped it was almost over. Her eyes were tired with unshed tears, but she sniffed them back.
“Best of luck in the arena,” Lorne said, taking Octavia by the waist.
“Toven, you’ll sit with us, of course.”
Toven passed a hand through his hair and said, “I’m afraid not. My father is to be home this evening. I need to be there to greet him.” His hand drifted to the small of her back, ready to guide her out.
“I knew he wouldn’t,” Lorne slurred to Liam.
“Come now, Toven!” Canning gestured dramatically. Jellica had fallen into his lap again, only this time she straddled him. “I’ve already won ten
gold from Kleve. He bet you’d never bring her to dinner.” Canning smiled and pointed his thumb to Lorne. “This one says we couldn’t get her into the arena, but I know one day you’ll jump in.”
The way they grinned made Briony’s stomach churn. Toven forced a smile and fiddled with the ring on his middle finger.
“Perhaps another time.”
The men glanced among themselves. Canning smiled over Jellica’s shoulder as she peppered kisses down his neck, panting with desire.
“What time is your father due home?” Liam said, his tone deceptively casual.
Toven paused, and Briony wondered if he was trying to figure out the time. “Half past twelve. So we—”
“Plenty of time!” Lorne clapped Toven on the shoulder, as if the deed were done. “You’ll see Canning in the first round for certain!”
Toven’s hand was tight on her back, sending tension up her spine. “I suppose we have twenty minutes.”
“Ahem, speaking of...” Canning said, trailing off suggestively. Briony realized Jellica was unbuttoning Canning’s trousers eagerly.
Briony swallowed back bile and looked away. He was going to have sex with her before he fought in the arena, because it would give him a boost of Sacral Magic. Briony had gathered that much.
Lorne knocked on the door, and the guard opened it from the outside.
Briony took note of the extra precautions they had taken for their clandestine dinners.
They made their exit, the men laughing at Canning and Jellica, the women’s eyes turned away. They wound back down the stairs and into the entry hall again. The crowd had thinned, but there were still enough eyes on all of them as they passed like a royal cavalcade. Several people were mingling in the garden, having hushed conversations over sloshing drinks.
As they walked through the garden that Briony used to read in on hot summer nights, she faintly heard the crowd over the sound of the water trickling through the fountains. They passed her father’s old gallery, an
ornate building perched at the top of the cliffs, hosting original paintings, sculptures, and weapon designs by Vindecci himself.
She summoned what was left of her control. Think of a lake with still waters.
They were headed to the amphitheater, where lectures and plays and great speeches had been made for centuries in Evermore. It isn’t an arena! she wanted to scream. It’s a palace for art and philosophy and science.
As they reached the arched stadium entrance, the woman from the beginning of the night—Ilana—stood with a tray of champagne and scotch.
“Gentlemen,” she greeted with a wide smile. Her lips were still violently red, her hair still falling in perfect waves.
Lorne plucked a scotch from her tray. “Ilana, dear,” he cooed. “You look ravishing. When are you finally going to come home with me?” He stroked her arm.
“Flattery will get you everywhere, Master Vult.” Ilana winked at him and turned to offer the tray to Toven. “But you know the Barlowes wouldn’t allow it.”
Briony stared at her, filing that information away as Toven pressed another glass of champagne into her hands. Her eyes fell on Ilana’s silver collar as the pretty woman batted her lashes at Toven, then Finn, and glided down the line with her tray.
Toven led her through the passageway under the tiers of seats and into the circular arena. Sand lined the floor where at least two hundred people stood drinking and socializing before finding their seats. Every step closer to the middle made Briony feel sicker.
Toven and the others moved to an area that was apparently being kept clear for them. There were rising benches to sit on, but the men remained standing and socializing. General Tremelo was sitting near the front with Gains and Canning’s mother, Genevieve Trow. She cast her gaze around the amphitheater, finding Katrina on Caspar Quill’s arm, expression empty. In the front, across from Briony and Toven, Phoebe teetered on tall heels next to Carvin. She looked exhausted, but Briony felt cold dread inside of her as Phoebe laughed at something Carvin said.
Carvin smiled down at her and pressed a kiss to her lips that Phoebe returned.
Briony’s ribs felt stuck. Was Phoebe on Canning’s elixir? Her behavior was nothing like Jellica Reeve’s, but how was it that Phoebe looked almost natural on Carvin’s arm?
Briony stared across the arena, begging Phoebe to look at her, to prove that she was still behind the shy smile and fluttering lashes.
She never glanced her way.
After about ten more minutes, Mr. Vein, the same man who’d hosted the auction, entered the arena to thunderous applause.
“Ladies and gentlemen of Bomard,” he greeted, his voice amplified. “As you remember from last week, Mr. Carvin is our reigning champion.”
The crowd hollered, and Carvin waved, wrapping his arm around Phoebe’s waist. She sipped her champagne glass and smiled at the crowd.
“He and his golden heartspring will take this week off, as you know—but!
Who will he face next week?”
Briony’s head pounded with the screaming. She felt like she was back at the auction, with Mr. Vein’s gleeful voice riling up the crowd.
Canning Trow entered the circle with Jellica trailing behind him. The crowd whooped, and Genevieve Trow whistled for her son. Jellica’s gaze was cast down, and her dress was wrinkled from where it had perhaps been pushed around her hips.
Across from Canning, a fair-skinned woman with cropped black hair swaggered into the ring. A thin man with a pallid face and a silver collar followed her.
Briony didn’t know exactly what was coming, but she knew that it was how Cordelia had been husked. Canning and the woman stood at opposite ends of the arena, their heartsprings standing behind them.
When it began, Briony didn’t understand. They were battling. The woman and Canning fought each other almost playfully. Canning laughed as he shielded against an attack, and the woman dodged a slashing cut with a grin.
They went round and round, and the crowd screamed for them as the attacks
became ever more elaborate, the sparks from each feint and counterattack lighting the skies in vivid color.
Toven wrapped an arm around Briony’s hip and watched without interest.
A man came around taking bets, and Toven lazily put fifty gold pieces on the woman.
Barely five minutes later, Briony saw a change. The woman’s heartspring at first wobbled, then skittered to his knees, as though faint. The crowd screamed, but Jellica wasn’t far behind. Soon, both heartsprings had to sit down on the ground, unable to stand.
“What—what is the purpose?” she whispered to Toven. “Do they fight until one of them is husked?”
Toven leaned into her and pointed out the edges of the arena lined in black sand. “If either of them steps out, the other wins. The fighters have to decide if it’s worth it to husk their heartsprings.”
Tears filled Briony’s eyes as she imagined Cordelia, draining in front of crowd. There was no telling if she would access her magic again. Some people never did.
Jellica Reeve began to sob, and Briony could see her mouthing Canning’s name, begging him. It was all for show. With the collars, the heartsprings didn’t need to be physically near the Bomardi when they fought. Jellica and the man were in the arena just so Bomard could enjoy watching them drain.
Canning and the woman were locked into position, each of them pushing against the other from across the circle. Canning’s hands were outstretched, his fingers curling. The woman was snarling.
Both fighters began to slide backward in the sand, the other’s power pushing them close to the edge of the ring. The woman’s heartspring fainted, and suddenly the woman dropped her hands in defeat, sliding backward and out of the ring.
The crowd went wild, and Canning threw his hands up in the air. Jellica was pale, crumpled to the floor, but she wasn’t husked. Neither was the man.
The woman had stopped in time, but Jellica and the man would have to rest now, possibly for days.
The crowd pressed in on her, jostling her shoulders as tears fell down
Briony’s face.
All of this for sport. A display of power that meant nothing. No war was fought tonight. No heartspring served their master for a greater purpose.
Briony shivered; all they were to these people were hearts to drain.
She found Ilana moving through the crowd with a tray of hors d’oeuvres and fruit, another woman following her with drinks. Mr. Vein called for any other competitors.
Somewhere in her mind’s eye, there was a lake. A clear lake, the water still and unmoving.
Briony’s stomach squeezed, and vomit pumped into her throat. She swallowed it down and stared across the arena at Phoebe, who was smiling softly at everything Carvin said to the man next to him.
Toven whispered to her that they would leave shortly, and she blinked slowly at the sandy floor of the place she used to come to for a connection to her people’s culture.
A pair of champagne heels attached to tan legs crossed into her view.
Ilana with the tray. She offered to fetch Toven a drink, and he declined, saying they were leaving soon.
Briony barely heard them, slightly swaying on her feet. An overwhelming exhaustion pushed at her eyelids. How was she to move forward from this?
How were any of them to move forward from this?
“Miss Rosewood?”
Looking up to find Ilana still hovering, her vision cleared when she blinked. She frowned, confused to be directly addressed. Toven had turned away slightly, in response to a greeting from a passing friend.
“Anything to eat?” Ilana asked, long lashes batting slowly at her, her arm lowering to offer Briony the basket of fruit. “Grapes, perhaps?”
Briony stared down, finding a vine of thick, burgundy grapes calling to her from another lifetime. Something that used to mean something when spelled out on a dungeon floor.
Her mind cleared like a shock. She looked up with wide eyes. Ilana plucked one singular grape and extended it to her with a soft smile.
Briony took it, tucking it away quickly in her hand as though hiding a
stolen good. Her heart hammered against her ribs.
She searched for Ilana again, but she’d moved away.
Could she possibly know what grapes meant to her? Could she know what had transpired in a dungeon where Briony had no voice, only fruit, but she’d needed to tell the women that they weren’t alone. That others would rise.
Could Ilana know?
In the center of the stadium, another pair of fighters were preparing.
Another pair of heartsprings stood waiting to be drained.
Briony sought out Phoebe across the arena and jumped at the shock of meeting her eyes for the first time since the dungeon. Phoebe’s arms were wound around Carvin’s shoulders as he kissed her neck, but she no longer smiled contently.
Staring into Briony’s heart, Phoebe released Carvin with one hand, opening her palm to reveal a plump, ripe grape. She pushed it between her painted lips, her eyes burning with the fire of a revolution.
