Chapter 53 House of Jester Night
Niklaus
The dome of soldiers is larger in size than I originally pictured.
A colosseum of cheering, laughing, drinking men with few women in uniform, pointing at the stage in front of us and kicking their feet up as they listen to the Ringmaster making demands of the inmates.
Blasts of fire shoot out from the ceilings.
Prisoners wait around the stage with mixed emotions wilting their postures or causing them to bounce on their heels in anticipation.
The draft in the air wafts the scent of burning coal and filthy soldiers who haven’t showered in days.
Deep reds, black, and bright yellow illuminate the stage stained with bodily fluids and burn marks.
“Looks like it’s the Fighter’s Gallows tonight,” Sophia shouts to us over the chanting soldiers and roaring flames. “The Ringmaster chooses your weapon, and you fight until someone is injured.”
“All of the inmates fight?” I ask.
Jack shakes his head. “They pick us at random.”
“Have you ever been chosen, Sophia?” Sapphire asks nervously.
“No. If I were to get chosen, I’d die. I don’t know how to fight. Instead, I volunteer to go to the Black Widow’s room. It’s not offered to every inmate, but they’ll definitely take you. We’ll raise our hands to have a sentinel escort us before they begin.”
“What’s the Black Widow’s Room?” I ask. I remember a chapter about the different Fun House Nights, but there wasn’t too much detail on them.
Sophia shrinks into herself, looking cornered in her own body.
“They give the women a medication and assign them to a room. They lie on a table, naked, and end up—touching themselves to relieve the intense arousal in front of a small audience of generals and commanders to view,” Jack explains matter-of-factly.
Sophia’s neck darkens with redness.
My vision turns red as I slash my gaze in Sapphire’s direction.
“I won’t need to do that,” she says absently, watching the stage get set up with racks of dull, stained weapons.
“I know it doesn’t sound very scary, but inmates die here. They lose limbs or are gutted on the spot. We’re safer in the Black Widow’s Room,” Sophia begs, touching Sapphire’s elbow.
They do lose limbs here. We know this devasting fact quite well.
“I can defend myself.”
Sophia steps back. “You can fight with a weapon?”
“She can do more than defend herself. Sapphire is a skilled fighter,” I say, keeping my voice even so the surge of pride stays buried in my chest.
“That’s incredible.” Jack looks her over with raised eyebrows.
“Sapphire? That’s your name? How beautiful.” Sophia’s warm brown eyes light up. “If I have children one day like you say I will, I do hope they will be skilled fighters too. It’s a monstrous world we live in, isn’t it? How wonderful that you have learned how to protect yourself.”
Sapphire’s forehead wrinkles as her eyebrows pull together. Her lips get pulled behind her teeth as she struggles to hold information in.
“Thank you, Sophia.”
The Ringmaster’s animated voice echoes across the overstimulating colosseum. The inmates quiet down to listen, being shoved together as the last lines of us are jam-packed around the stage.
“Goodluck. I’ll see you both back in our cages.” Sophia rubs a warm hand on the back of my arm and Sapphire’s, smiling reassuringly at us. I don’t know how that one smile manages to calm my nerves, but it does.
Sapphire steps toward her, ready to stop her from having to go to the Black Widow Room. But my hand catches the inside of her elbow, and she bulldozes me with the fiery eyes.
“Let her go,” I whisper, leaning into her ear so Jack can’t hear me. “If that’s what she normally does, then we cannot change it. Imagine if we changed the course of her life to end before she can give birth to your father.”
Sapphire doesn’t move as she plays that scenario out in her head. Then, with a frustrated breath, she pulls away from me and faces the stage again.
“You still mad at me?” My breath flutters a few strands of loose copper hair on the back of her head.
“You still an idiot for saying I can’t save my dad?”
I roll my eyes. “Still an idiot.”
“Then yes, still mad at you. Still hate you.”
Sapphire straightens her upper back as I move so close, my chest grazes her hair.
“Now what if I get called up on that stage to fight and get myself killed?” I taunt.
“I doubt you’d have a mark on you.”
I smirk. “Is that a compliment?”
“Absolutely not.” She crosses her arms, and the movement pushes her heavy breasts together under those shreds of dark red fabric. “It’s just a fact.”
I’m fucking confused as hell being this close to her as she compliments me, whether she meant it or not.
She has this natural scent at the top of her head that I’ve always noticed.
Every time our parents forced us to hug, I would close my arms around her reluctantly, and even though I would grimace at the insufferable act—I’d always breathe in her scent.
That paired with these muddled, disordered, inexplicable thoughts I’ve been having toward Sapphire.
There are these knots in my stomach that just won’t go away when I’m around her.
It’s a physical exertion not to look at her.
Maybe it’s a mental illness or trauma response I’ve developed since being thrown into these fucked up situations with her.
Maybe when we return home, I’ll be able to look at her and only feel that cool indifference or hatred again—no in-between.
“And if I get hurt? You going to feel sorry for me?” I ask, low and hoarse in her ear. I see the skin on the back of her arms pebble and raise.
“I already feel sorry for you,” she bites back.
I grin.
The fighting begins. First, the two inmates chosen are older gentlemen—mid-forties. They’re given a set of dull throwing knives and war hammer. The man with the throwing knives had no idea how to properly throw them, so he ended up getting his cheekbone shattered by the war hammer.
And Sophia was absolutely right. Sentinels religiously monitored us to ensure we were watching the blood and gore, not flinching away as the next victor cracks into bone until the inmate is screaming, unconscious, or dead on the platform.
“They aren’t trained combatants,” Sapphire says under her breath.
“No, they’re not.”
Servants mops up the stage of the last brutal blow.
Chunks of skin are splattered from the impact of a spiked maul.
The Ringmaster takes his time searching for the next fighters, only briefly interrupted as a soldier approaches his stand at the corner of the stage.
The young man with long braids and fresh scars painting across the left side of his face, cups his hand to the Ringmaster.
And his eyes land on me.
I knew it.
Those electric eyes are glowing with the need to entertain the crowd. He smiles wide like a clown who has just lost his mind. Cheeks pull back unnaturally. And he dips his hat at me, pointing and shouting something I can’t understand, eliciting a roar of excitement from the Breed.
Sentinels force their way through the mass of inmates, eyes trained on me.
“You’ll be fine,” Sapphire says nervously, losing all the icy edge she had for me moments ago. “Get to a sword, okay? I don’t care what they assign you. There’s a reason they say you could have fought next to my father, Niklaus. You are that good.”
I was never nervous about having to fight, but it’s clear she is. For me.
“I will be fine, darling wife. The inmates here aren’t trained the way we were.”
She nods, exhaling deeply to calm her nerves.
“Good luck.” Jack pats me on the back, stepping out of the way of the sentinels that roughly escort me to the front.
I walk up the steps confidently, not letting myself be fazed by the heat of the torches surrounding the stage, stomping soldiers, the screams of profanity, or the ripe smell of blood from under my bare feet.
Since I was a little boy, my mother and I would wake up before sunrise, and we’d duel with every kind of weapon.
I learn to throw axes, swing a whip so precisely I could split a grape in half from several feet away, giving Uncle Warrose a run for his money.
We’d throw knives at targets, fight with small daggers, wrestle, and of course, swing the sword until my arm was throbbing and numb from the weight of the metal.
It’s like she knew this was coming for me one day.
It’s like she planned to prepare me every day so I would survive here.
Even if I’m not assigned a sword, I’ll be okay.
And as I scan the mob of prisoners surrounding the stage, there isn’t a single man or woman that concerns me. Most of them already have preexisting injuries, probably from prior House of Jester Nights.
Like Sapphire said, I’ll be fine.
“Yiéxc seivész!” the Ringmaster announces, stomping his cane on the metal platform, clomping a boot with it in excitement.
I choose his wife.
“Wait…” I blink rapidly, watching the sentinels surround Sapphire. “No…”
“That’s against the rules!” Jack shouts, repeating himself in their language. “You cannot force man and wife to fight!”
I shake my head as they shove her onto the stage, hard enough to make her crash to her knees. And she looks up at me through a mess of copper waves and untamed curls.
How the fuck could this happen?
“No.” I glare up at the Ringmaster, gritting my teeth, and standing my ground. “I will not hurt her.”
Sapphire stands to her feet, unsure of what to do with herself as all eyes are on us. And it’s all too overstimulating to think straight. To search for a way out of this. To get Sapphire out of this. I will not fight her. I’d never raise a weapon against her.
The prisoners gasp and talk among themselves as the soldiers in the stands throw food and drinks, not hard enough to make it to the center stage, but enough to make Sapphire flinch.
The Ringmaster stares at me again, still grinning.
“They will take it out on your wife if you refuse to fight!” Jack hollers over the noise.
Sapphire and I lock eyes in horror.