Between a mage and his best friend #2
Maksym had fallen silent, looking back over the arena, so I forced myself to do the same.
It was hard to hear much over the jeering thundering out from the patio beneath us, but the faint echo of swords battering shields traveled up, as did unmistakable bellows of pain cutting through it all.
The contestants were struggling badly, throwing all their weight into their blows, only to tumble down with their partners.
Sloppy, broken arcs of blades cut through the air.
One pair had forgone their equipment altogether and were locked in a grappling embrace; their fatigued bodies sagged against each other for support.
Death matches, as far as I was concerned.
I still hadn’t placed why the council would push forward like this—not just to spite Max—but it felt an awful lot like plain old bloodlust.
A thought quickly confirmed when one prospect faltered, sinking to his knees, and his Elixia challenger ran his blade right through the Umbrite’s neck without an ounce of hesitation.
The arena erupted as blue-black blood poured out from the wound, coating his pale gray chest, and his body slumped into the sand. Gold glinted up from between the trading hands of the council members below, and I turned back to Maksym with a sigh.
He flicked his fingers, and the sound of the arena dampened into a muffled rumble.
“You seem unusually tense,” he said, as if we were suddenly having a casual conversation on any old day, and I’d never been so grateful to be leaning against something.
“I’d hoped a day to yourself would’ve had the opposite effect, but it’s clearly not the case.
Did Enora do a number on you this morning? ”
Mina, take me. Was he really trying to joke?
Things were fucking dire in Maksym’s head if he was trying to lighten the mood with humor that I was about to undoubtedly sour.
The air took on a sweltering edge, and I had to look back over the arena. Two guards were busy hauling the Umbrite’s body from the pit, leaving a streak of black behind them. Another rushed out to make a hurried attempt at cleaning up the sand.
“No, not that.” I sighed. It took a long, long time for me to brave looking back at Max and the na?ve concern written all over his face. “I think I fucked up. Badly.”
His amber eyes narrowed in thought, and he tipped his head as he sank back into his seat. “I find that hard to believe. How so?”
It didn’t feel like it was my own voice that said, “I slept with her, Max.”
The muted rumble of the arena stretched between us for a goddess-damned eternity.
“You slept with her,” he repeated slowly—too slowly—as that concern gave way to something ice-cold in his face. “As in, you fucked Enora? Was it before or after I was busy getting my ass ripped to pieces by the council I’m pretty sure is plotting to unseat me? During it, maybe?”
And just like that, I knew I was unfathomably fucked.
All I could do was nod.
Putting words to anything else would have been so much worse.
His brows winged up, and he let out a displeased scoff I was ill-prepared for the bitter slice of. “Well. That was only a matter of time, wasn’t it? Old flames and all. Can’t say I’m surprised.”
No, but he was pissed.
Not understanding, nor jesting, as I had foolishly assumed he’d be.
The displeasure simmering beneath his surface was palpable, and I braced myself for how it might combust. “Look, I am sorry. Okay? I did not expect—”
“Save it.” Maksym bit out those two words so roughly, I tensed as he kicked his feet up on the railing in front of him. “Her last match is coming up soon. I’m more worried about her surviving than I am about dealing with your mess right now.”
He flicked his fingers again, and the sound barrier came crashing down.
My mess.
That came as such a poorly justified relief. If his ire was only directed at me, I’d gladly take it a thousand times over. It appeared neither of us was immune to Enora’s siren song.
Enora’s next match did not come up soon.
We sat through three more agonizing bouts, separated by tension so palpable, it should’ve been forced to pay a quarterly tithe.
Maksym did not cast a single glance in my direction, scathing or not, while he slumped in his seat and watched the fights with an indifference disrespectful to the competitors.
Even when the patio below and arena around us erupted at one grievous act of violence or another, he didn’t flinch. A muscle in his jaw worked, though, and his knuckles blanched every time he flexed his fingers around the skull-carved end of his armrest.
Fuming. Absolutely fuming. But in a way that was so unique to him.
In anticipation of the moment he’d erupt through that slowly fracturing shell, I had slunk my way to a seat a handful away and lowered into it. Not a single one of my muscles relaxed, and I spent more time watching him than I did the matches.
Despite the tension, I did not have regret anywhere in my heart.
A touch of guilt, maybe. Even a sliver of remorse over how I’d dropped it on Max when it was clearly the last thing he needed.
But I could never regret her, and I refused to blame myself for feelings that never ceded, even after I’d spent fifteen years smothering any last trace of them.
The moment I’d laid eyes on her again, it was like they had never left.
That boyish infatuation that used to eat me alive.
The desperate urge to make her laugh, to see her room-tilting smile and the warmth in her hazel eyes.
Even when she’d been curled up in her cell, purging those toxins from her body, the urge to comfort her was agonizing.
And that was why I’d been adamant with Max that she had to leave.
No good would ever come from the complete helplessness I felt around her.
But, of course, my king thought he knew better, thought he understood an ounce of the history Enora and I shared, sunken into our hearts like thorns that were impossible to remove.
And now, he was going to marry her.
My best friend was going to marry the woman I’d once thought I would marry, if the cards had fallen right.
But I did not regret a second of the moments I’d spent with her, acquainting myself with every inch of her body.
Would I be damned for that? Probably. My soul was already destined to slave away for Mina when the time came anyway.
“Here she comes.” The first words Maksym had uttered in an eternity, and they were so void of emotion, I looked at him before I considered setting my attention on the now-silent arena.
He was finally standing, knuckles pale again as he gripped the thin metal cap of the railing, and I took a cautious post a few feet from him. When I finally braved a glance out at the pits below, all the air in my lungs stalled.
Enora was in no condition to fight.
Her path out from the gate was a slow hobble, supported heavily by the tip of the short sword she dragged through the earth beside her.
Even her shield was limp in her other arm—both her weapon and protection too large for her half-Odessan frame.
Bruises already bloomed across her face and her bare arms; slashes of skin and crusted-over cuts decorated her legs.
When Gallan had said her first two matches were draws, and that he’d thought they were unfair, I’d foolishly thought that meant fate had taken kindly to her. But if this was the pulp she’d been beaten into, I was terrified to see the conditions of her partners.
Still, it was inexcusable that anyone sent her into another round in that state, and my fear only compounded when her challenger emerged from the other gate—Soteris.
Suspect number one in the damage to Enora’s room and one of the longest tenured Elixia in service, he was vicious to an unacceptable degree.
He was the type who got off on fear and violence—a once crucial quality in the king’s most elite guard in days that had long since died.
While he had a few wounds of his own, there was no limp or falter to his step, no weapon too heavy for him to wield.
And he was going to kill her.
“Max,” I snapped, “you cannot let her fight like this.”
He let out a huff and shook his head, not lifting his attention from Enora as she and Soteris took their stances in the pit. “She had a chance to forfeit, and she refused.”
Of course she fucking didn’t.
Would Maksym have, if his fate was tied to seeing these trials through to their completion?
It wasn’t like a disqualification meant she’d just be eliminated from the Agōn Ferr—her success was mandated by the council as her only path from execution.
I could not fathom the political nightmare we’d have if she did not see it through.
“Then you need to intervene, my liege. Veto this round.” There was no stopping the way I bit the words out one by one to him.
Maksym turned, and tension snapped back through him. “I. Can’t.”
Oh, we weren’t going to play this passive game anymore.
“You can’t? Or you won’t?”
His eyes flared, the amber fully ignited, and he stormed at me, pinning my body against a stone pillar with my collar fisted in his hand. “If you think so low of me that I would willfully endanger a completely innocent woman, my bride—”
A distinctly feminine cry of pain echoed off the arena, and Maksym released me with a curse. I rubbed at where his knuckles had ground into my chest and let out a shaky breath. Whatever had the arena deathly silent was not something I wanted to see, but my feet forced me over.
Enora was staggering up from her knees as blood poured from a wound to her head. Soteris circled her, like the predator he was, and I had to look away, like the coward I was.
“Malakai has my veto.”
I almost didn’t hear Maksym—or was positive I didn’t hear him correctly, at least. “What?”
“He owes me. Owes her. Embervale would’ve been a mess that day.” Maksym would not lift his eyes from the arena. “I cannot be seen vetoing her. I can’t give her favor like that.”
But Malakai could.
Two vetoes from within the king and his council were what was deemed fair.