“Curious.” His eyes glanced up and down my body. He moved, circling me, and I didn’t wilt. Though he didn’t touch me, I could feel his gaze lingering on every inch of my young body.
“You are weak,” he said once he had circled me completely and reached my front. “Frail. You’ll never amount to anything. At least with the women, you may survive. You have no chance in the Firehold.”
I spoke through gritted teeth. “So teach me, Master Lukain.”
Chapter 10
“Brace,” Lukain said.
I blinked. “What?”
His fist flew into my stomach. I doubled over, knees buckling, and clutched a hand to my belly while coughing and groaning. My muscles seized, every inch of me contracting and fighting off a wave of nausea that rose in the back of my throat.
Master Lukain circled my kneeling, coughing form. “If you want to fight with the men, you have to learn to take a punch like one.”
With a snarl, I tamped down my pain and launched at him from my knees like a feral animal. My arms wrapped around his waist, trying to tackle him to the ground.
The grayskin simply turned his hips and flung me aside. I flew like a ragdoll, rolling on the ground before bumping against the stone wall.
My breathing was labored, body aching and pulse pounding. I stared up through grimy eyes. He had his arms crossed over his chest, his dark leather training clothes tight against his strong body.
“There’s that tenacity, at least,” he grumbled, “shining bright and impulsive, even if your logical mind doesn’t always catch up in time to keep you from doing something reckless.”
I wanted to steal the sword hanging off his hip and skewer him with it. The pain in my stomach, radiating out to the rest of my body, melded into a dull throb.
He crouched in front of me, his head tilting curiously. “You asked for this, little grimmer.”
“I asked to be sucker punched without preparation?” I grunted and sat up with my back against the wall.
He smiled. It was a tantalizing expression from such a beautiful, hard man. “Your adversaries in the Firehold will do the same if given the opportunity. We have to build you up somehow, Sephania.”
I could think of a thousand other ways to “build me up” that didn’t involve bushwhacking me. But I wouldn’t complain. It was what he wanted—bring out my weakness, see if I would give up.
“I can tell by the lack of light in your eyes you’ve been abused,” he said simply. “Don’t think I will be kinder to you than others have before me.”
“Even though I’m your property, Master?”
He smiled wickedly. “Especiallybecause you’re my property.”
I gnashed my teeth and stood with the assistance of the wall, sliding my palm up the cold, jagged rock. “Good. I don’twantyou to go easy on me.”
His smile disappeared. Once I was on my feet, he stood over me. “Is that so? Antones, in here.”
Lukain’s human lackey stepped into the small sparring room as if emerging from the shadows. Antones, affectionately referred to as Ant by some of the Grimsons, never went anywhere without his dark green cloak pulled over his head. Ant had been the one to free me and the other six prisoners from our ropes when we first arrived in the Firehold weeks ago.
“Yes, sir?” Antones said, his voice rasping.
Lukain stared at me as he spoke over his shoulder. “Who do we have in the rot-house?”
The rot-house was the aptly named prison cells in the southern caves of the Firehold, away from any others. People inthe rot-house were driven mad by silence or eventually atoned for their transgressions, typically through torture.
So far, I was lucky to not find myself there.
Antones said, “Peltos is a new arrival, sir.”
I recognized the name. He was a leering young man of about eighteen summers who always crudely blew me a kiss before stepping into the training ring with me. His antagonizing worked to draw a red curtain over my eyes, which was Lukain’s point: I needed to learn to control my anger and emotion so these bastard boys couldn’t defeat me before the fights had even started.
So far, I hadn’t bested Peltos in the ring. Most recently, he had beaten me with a hard thwack to my spine from his wooden sword, which left me in the infirmary for a week. When Lukain came to visit one of those days, he said I was lucky my back wasn’t broken.
