Chapter 5
Enslak
The door opened.
I knew that sound. Metal scraping. Boots on stone. Guards bringing me back. The hose. The slop.
Always the same.
But something was different.
The scent.
Not Zarlak. Not the stink of rot and waste and hatred. This was something else. My nose twitched, pulling in air, trying to make sense of what my broken mind couldn't process.
Flowers.
The word surfaced from somewhere deep. Somewhere I could barely reach anymore. A memory of something green and growing. Something from before the pits. Before the collar. Before everything became blood and pain and fight-sleep-fight-sleep-fight.
Flowers.
And underneath—something else. A sweetness that made my chest feel strange. Made the constant tension in my muscles ease just a little.
Female.
The knowledge came without thought. Without words. Just instinct. Recognition of something my body understood even when my mind couldn't hold the concept long enough to name it.
I stood in the center of the cell, blood dripping from wounds I'd taken in the arena. Couldn't remember what I'd fought. Something big. Something with teeth.
Did I win?
Must have. I was here. It wasn't.
The figure that entered wore Zarlak's shape. Zarlak's face.
But everything else was wrong.
The movements looked the same but felt different. Softer. Careful instead of careless. And that scent. That impossible scent that made something in my chest unclench. Made the fog in my head thin just enough that I could almost think clearly.
I watched as not-Zarlak approached and waved the guards away. Waited for the hose. For the cold water that would blast away blood and gore. That would make my wounds scream.
It didn't come.
Instead, not-Zarlak reached for something else.
A cloth. Soft. Clean.
The first touch made me flinch.
Not from pain.
From shock.
The touch was gentle.
I didn't understand. Couldn't process it. My mind tried to categorize the sensation and failed. Nothing in my existence had prepared me for gentleness. For care.
The cloth moved across my shoulder, wiping away blood. The pressure was light. Careful around the deep gash where something's claw had caught me.
My breathing slowed. The constant readiness to fight, to defend, to survive eased. Just a fraction. Just enough that I could feel how tired I was. How much everything hurt.
Not-Zarlak moved around me, the cloth never stopping. Never rough. Wiping away the evidence of the arena. Tending to wounds that usually went ignored until they healed on their own.
Or killed me.
I stood very still, afraid that if I moved, this strange dream would shatter. The real Zarlak would return with his hose and his hatred.
Then not-Zarlak did something that made my world tilt sideways.
She spoke.
The voice sounded like the real Zarlak's, but underneath, just at the edge of my hearing, I caught something softer. Musical.
And the language—
The language made something deep in my chest crack open.
Vaktaire.
I knew that word. Knew it the way I knew my own heartbeat, even if I couldn't remember what it meant. The sounds were familiar. They felt right in a way nothing had felt right for—
How long?
Time didn't work anymore. I couldn't hold onto it.
But long. Very long.
The words washed over me. I struggled to catch them, to hold them long enough to understand. My mind was too broken. Too fractured. The language slipped through my thoughts like blood through claws.
But I caught pieces. Fragments.
"...must hurry..."
"...here to help..."
"...take you home..."
"...your family..."
Family.
The word made something in my chest twist and ache. I didn't know what it meant. Couldn't remember.
But the sound of it. The shape of it in the air.
It meant something. Something important. Something I'd lost.
I wanted to speak. Wanted to respond. Wanted to tell this gentle not-Zarlak that I understood. That I heard her. That something in me recognized the truth in her voice, even if I couldn't remember why.
But words wouldn't come.
They used to. I knew they used to.
But somewhere in the endless cycle of pain and blood, I'd lost them. Lost the ability to shape thoughts into sounds that meant anything.
So I did the only thing I could.
I nodded.
Just once. Slow and deliberate. So she'd know I understood. So she'd know I heard her.
Not-Zarlak's scent shifted. Something warm and pleased mixed with the flowers. She touched something at her throat, a scarf, my eyes registered, though I didn't know why that mattered, and spoke again.
More Vaktaire. More words I couldn't quite catch but felt in my bones.
"...the collar... remove it... must stay very still..."
The collar.
My hand moved to my neck automatically, fingers finding the metal band that had been there so long I'd forgotten what it felt like without it.
DNA-coded.
I knew that somehow. Knew that only my flesh could touch it. Knew that if anything else did, if anyone tried to remove it, we'd both die.
In the arena, I'd learned to fight around it. Every opponent. Every creature. Every blade, they were all secondary threats.
The collar was the real danger. More lethal than any weapon they could put in my hands or turn against me.
I'd watched others die when their collars were struck. Watched them and their opponents disintegrate in a flash of light and heat that left nothing but scorched stone.
The crowd always roared louder for those deaths. The spectacular ones.
So I'd learned. Learned to keep my neck protected even when it meant taking a blade to the ribs. Learned to twist away from strikes that came too high. Learned that survival meant treating the collar like an exposed artery.
Because that's exactly what it was.
One wrong hit and everything ended.
The guards knew it too. They'd use it. Threaten it. Hold their hands near the metal just to watch me freeze. Just to watch the fear override every instinct to fight back.
Now this female, and I knew she was female, knew it with certainty even though she wore Zarlak's face, was telling me she'd remove it.
Fear spiked through me. Sharp and cold and more real than anything I'd felt in, well, how long?
If she failed, we'd both die.
But if she succeeded—
I didn't let myself finish that thought. Couldn't.
Hope was more dangerous than any creature in the arena.
She pulled something from her clothing. A tool. Long and metal. Thin as a claw but straight. Precise.
"Sit," she said in Vaktaire.
I understood that word. Knew it.
I sat.
The stone floor was cold and filthy beneath me. I didn't care. I kept my eyes on her. On the tool in her hand. On the careful way she moved closer.
"Very still," she said again. "One wrong move..."
She didn't finish.
Didn't need to.
I knew what one wrong move meant.
Death for both of us.
I went absolutely motionless. Every muscle locked. Every instinct that screamed at me to move, to fight, to never let anyone near my throat, I forced it all down and became stone.
She knelt beside me. Close enough that her scent filled my nose and cleared my head more than it had been in—
Maybe ever.
The tool touched the collar.
My heart hammered against my ribs. Every nerve screamed danger. Screamed threat. Screamed that I should move, should run, should do anything but sit here and let someone manipulate the one thing that could end me in an instant.
But I didn't move.
I trusted her.
I didn't know why. Didn't understand it.
But something in me, something deeper than thought, deeper than the broken fragments of my mind, knew she wouldn't hurt me. Knew she was trying to help.
So I sat.
And I didn't move.
The tool slipped into a seam in the collar I'd never noticed. She worked slowly. Carefully. Her breathing steady and controlled. I could hear her heartbeat, fast but not panicked. Focused.
Minutes passed.
Or maybe hours.
Time didn't work right anymore.
The tool shifted. Adjusted. Pressed. Released.
My neck ached from holding so still. My wounds throbbed. My muscles screamed for movement.
I didn't move.
Then, click.
A sound so small it was almost nothing.
But I felt it. Felt the collar loosen. Felt the weight that had been there for a century shift.
She worked faster now. Movements more confident. The tool clicked again. Another loosening.
Then the collar fell away.
It hit the floor with a clatter that seemed impossibly loud in the silence of the cell.
I couldn't breathe. Couldn't think. Couldn't process what had just happened.
The collar was gone.
My hand moved to my neck. Touching bare pelt where metal had pressed for so long. The sensation was so foreign, so impossible, that my mind refused to accept it.
Free.
The word surfaced from somewhere deep. From before. From when I'd been something other than this.
Free.
The female made a sound. Relief, I thought. Though I couldn't be sure. She tucked the tool away and stood, then held out her hands to me.
I stared at those hands. Trying to understand what she wanted.
Then it clicked.
She wanted me to take them. To hold them.
I reached out slowly. Carefully. Afraid my claws would hurt her.
But she didn't flinch. Didn't pull away.
My hands—massive and scarred and stained with blood that wouldn't wash away—closed around hers.
Soft.
That was the only word my broken mind could find. Her skin felt nothing like what my eyes saw. Not Zarlak's cold, rough texture. Something else entirely.
What I held in my hands was soft. Impossibly soft. Like something precious. Like something that shouldn't exist in a place like this.
I liked it. Liked the feel of her hands in mine. Liked the way her scent grew stronger when I touched her. Liked the way something in my chest eased, like a wound I didn't know I had was finally starting to heal.
She spoke again, her voice gentle. "Come with me. We have to go now."
I understood. Not all the words, but the meaning. The urgency.
I stood, still holding her hands. She led me toward the cell door.
It opened.
Beyond it, instead of the corridor I expected, the one that led to the pits, there was another passage. Dark. Hidden.
A passage I'd never known existed.
She led me into it.
The darkness swallowed us both.
The smell hit immediately. Sewage. Rot. Filth worse than anything in my cell. The passage led down, into tunnels beneath the facility.
I could see as well in the dark as in the light. One of the few gifts the augmentations had given me. I watched the water running through the center of the tunnel, thick and foul and wrong.
She moved forward. She was going to walk through it. Through the filth.
Something in me rebelled.
Not the beast they'd made me. Not the fighter in the arena. Something older. Something that remembered what it meant to protect.
I stopped and released her hand.
She turned, confusion in her posture. Fear clouding her scent.
Before she could speak, I bent and lifted her.
She made a small sound of surprise, but I was already moving. Cradling her against my chest as I stepped into the tunnel. My feet sank into the river of filth.
But hers stayed clean. Safe.
She was so small in my arms. So light. So fragile.
I would keep her safe. Would protect her from the filth and the dark and anything else that tried to hurt her.
The thought was clear. Clearer than anything had been in, how long? I didn't know. Didn't matter.
What mattered was her. This female who smelled like flowers and spoke in the language of my memory and had freed me from the collar that bound me for a century.
She directed me through the tunnels, her voice soft in my ear, telling me where to turn. I followed without question, my feet finding purchase on the slick stone, my body moving with a grace I'd forgotten I possessed.
Time passed. The tunnels twisted and turned. The smell never improved.
But I didn't care.
I was carrying something precious. Something worth protecting.
And for the first time in longer than I could remember, I felt something other than pain and emptiness.
I felt purpose.