Chapter 2 #2
He scoffed. “Don’t know what you’re talking about.” He tried to close the door on me, but I threw up a hand to hold it open, and he looked shocked I’d been able to stop him from shutting it in my face.
“Does Xerxes still run this ring?” I asked. “Tell him Lysander is here.”
The man furrowed his brow. The name I’d given obviously meant nothing, but if Xerxes was still here, it would mean something to him.
This time I let him close the door on me. I sensed the man was perimortal, but I was sure I could get into his head if he tried to turn me away. I didn’t think I’d have to, though.
Indeed, the door flew open a minute later, and a man at least a foot and a half shorter than me appeared there. He was bald with bright blue eyes that traveled up my form as if trying to believe he was really seeing what he thought he saw. A wide smile split his face a second later.
“Lysander!” he said. “I thought you’d forgotten about us.” There was utter delight written across his face, but not the delight of seeing an old friend. It was the kind of delight he might’ve had if I’d shoved a sack of coins into his hand.
I smiled. “Never.”
“Come in, come in!” Xerxes said, ushering me inside. “Cuddy says you want to fight.”
“That’s right,” I said as I brushed past the guard and followed Xerxes down the hall. “Do you have any opponents worthy of my time tonight?”
He smirked. “I have at least two I think might give you a challenge.”
I looked bored. “We’ll see about that. When do I go on?”
“I’ll put you in right after the current fight finishes,” Xerxes said. He turned to the man named Cuddy, who was still standing by the door looking dumbstruck. “Send word to our elite patrons that Lysander is back,” he ordered, and Cuddy sprang into action.
I’d discovered this place almost by accident a few decades ago, and I came occasionally when I needed to blow off steam. Or I had in the past. It had been a while since I’d been back.
While the people of Callanus and Solandis knew me, I was far less recognizable in the cities of Polaris and Derridan.
The people in those territories knew the Nemesis Incarnate by reputation, but they had no idea what I looked like.
As Cyra could attest, most people pictured me as some sort of monster or an old, gnarled wretch.
As long as I wasn’t dressed like a lord, Xerxes and his patrons were none the wiser.
That’s what I told myself anyway. People may still have suspected I was nobility – it was hard to fully hide – but I doubted they knew it was one of the Lords of the Triumvirate they watched in the fighting pit.
I hadn’t even told Samhail about this place, but purely for selfish reasons.
I’d quickly become one of Xerxes’s top fighters once I got my foot in the door, and that came with a certain amount of prestige here.
I knew all that would change the second Xerxes got a look at Samhail.
I also knew he’d pit me and Samhail against each other at some point, and while I didn’t mind fighting Samhail during our training sessions, fighting him in a secret, underground combat ring where patrons bet huge sums of money on the outcomes of the fights was another story.
It was probably moot anyway. In our younger days, Samhail might’ve been tempted to fight, but he was less eager to prove himself nowadays. He didn’t have to. Anyone who knew him knew not to fuck with him, and those who didn’t know him learned quickly, if they were foolish enough to test him.
“Wait here,” Xerxes told me as we stopped at the entrance to the surprisingly large arena.
There was a round pit sunk into the center of the room with a dirt floor.
All around it rose concentric rings of chest-high barriers that the audience leaned over to see into the pit.
I couldn’t see the fighters currently in the ring, but I wasn’t sure I’d recognize them anyway.
Xerxes employed a few regular fighters he could use whenever he needed them, but his bread and butter was actually the fighters like me who came only occasionally when they felt either like doling out some punishment, or – as in my case sometimes – receiving it.
I’d come here nightly for weeks after my father had died to let the physical pain dull my mental anguish for at least an hour or two.
A roar went up from the crowd, half cheers and half jeers, as the winner of the current fight was crowned, and Xerxes surged forward to speak to the fight master before she announced the next round.
Fuck. I’d forgotten about Delia.
Xerxes stopped next to a tall woman with long black hair and smooth caramel-colored skin as she bent to listen to hear him over the din of the crowd.
A couple seconds later, she jerked up and swung around to look at me in the doorway.
I couldn’t tell from here if she was furious or happy to see me, but I guessed it was probably the former.
Delia was attractive in a way I’d never been able to put my finger on.
The angles of her face seemed too sharp at first, but they only made her more intriguing the longer you looked.
Even the scar that ran down part of her forehead, through one eyebrow, and down her cheek gave her a certain strikingness that was difficult to ignore.
She was also the last woman I’d fucked before I met Cyra. Or perhaps more accurately, she’d fucked me.
Delia hadn’t hid her interest in me when she began working for Xerxes about five years ago, but sex wasn’t usually my priority when I came to the pit, so nothing happened between us for a long time. I didn’t discourage her when she flirted with me, but I also didn’t do much to encourage her either.
It didn’t matter. One night when I’d just barely won my fight, I’d gone into the room where the fighters waited for the healer to tend to them.
I was in bad shape and could hardly move, and I’d flopped onto the table to lay on my back.
After a few minutes, Delia had entered and locked the door.
Without a word, she’d undone my pants, pulled out my cock, and taken me into her mouth.
I doubted I would’ve stopped her regardless, but I didn’t have the energy to try, and my cock was the only thing that felt good at that point.
When I didn’t resist after a few minutes, she took off her own pants, climbed onto the table, and rode me until I passed out.
I woke up later, mostly healed, with my cock tucked back inside my pants.
The healer – a man with just enough power to be called such – admitted Delia had paid him well to give her twenty minutes alone with me.
It was the last time I’d seen her. I’d stopped coming to the fighting pit after that, not because of Delia, but because I’d been tied up with Revenmyer and the Triumvirate. Then Cyra had arrived at the Citadel, and thoughts of any other woman in my bed had become a thing of the past.
It had been nearly two years now since I’d seen the woman.
I walked over to where Delia and Xerxes stood.
“Delia, it’s good to see you,” I said.
The look she gave me was benign enough, but her fury drifted off her like smoke.
Delia was perimortal, although not very powerful, so her mind was open to me if I wanted to read it.
I didn’t need to, though. Her thoughts were splashed across her face like paint on a canvas.
The next time she had access to my cock, she’d do something far less pleasant than put it in her mouth.
Fair enough.
“Lysander,” she said, her tone saccharine. “You’re not dead after all.” Then she added so only I could hear, “How disappointing.”
She didn’t give me a chance to say anything further before she jumped down into the pit and addressed the crowd.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” she said, “we have a special treat for you tonight. Back after a long absence is one of our favorites here in the pit, our own wayward son, Lysander!”
I jumped down into the pit as the crowd roared its welcome.
Even as I looked around, more patrons slipped into the arena, the preferred clients Xerxes called when he had something special for them, the ones who had the means to drop everything and get here almost immediately to shell out huge sums of money.
I didn’t acknowledge the crowd, but I couldn’t help soaking up their excitement, their fervor. Part of me had missed this. And that worried me.
“And his opponent,” Delia went on before the crowd dampened their enthusiasm, “is a fighter you know well…Malachi!”
The noise in the arena amplified twofold as the crowd showed their appreciation for Malachi. I didn’t know the name, so he must be new, and I looked around to see who would jump into the pit.