I wondered if he thought my “talents” were wasted training with the boys, when I’d have a much better chance at survival with the girls.
“Pretty ones like you,” he said, flaring his nostrils, “are raped, bred, and made shelf pieces on the mantles of their vampiric masters until they’re needed for use again. Trophies. Conquests.”
His words struck me. My foot fell from the wall. I had trouble standing, and it had nothing to do with the welts burning on my legs.Why are you telling me this? To scare me?Working past a tight throat, I said, “Sounds like human men.”
Lukain hummed to himself, though not in a pleasant way. “Survive your first few matches in the Firehold and we might revisit the topic of why I hate the noblebloods. But it shouldn’t be that hard to understand given what you know about them, yes?”
I nodded, scared to be so close to him in the moment. There was a glimmer in his red eyes that spoke of untold danger . . . and excitement.
My innocence had been shorn long ago. Dimmon Plank made sure of it. Now, after months being here, I was starting to see Master Lukain in a different light—one that made my heart pound in my chest and my palms grow sweaty.
“You hate vampires more than the average grayskin,” I said, prying further, sinking deeper into his eyes. The gambit was a deadly one. “Why must I survive a few fights in the Firehold for you to tell me your truth, Master Lukain?”
He enjoyed my audacity. I knew that about him from the weeks we’d been training together.
Sure enough, a smirk curled the corner of his lips. It disappeared just as fast when he leaned in. “Because I don’t feel like wasting my words on a dead woman.”
With that, he turned and began to walk away.
He doesn’t think I’ll survive my matches.
I vowed to myself to prove him wrong.
Before he reached the door, I called out, “Wait, Master. I have a request.”
With his hand rising from the handle, he slowly turned. “You don’t get to make requests. I ownyou, not the other way around.”
His anger was burgeoning. I had to get the words out quick, so I bowed my head submissively. “I know, sir. I’m sorry. But it’s about a girl in the women’s quarters. Someone I know. She is being defiled by a peer.”
Lukain’s eyes lit up—though if it was for me asking for a favor, or for what I’d just said, I didn’t know.
“Have you seen this?” he asked. “Accusations are a dangerous weapon to throw around. Much different than wooden daggers.”
I stood up to him firmly—denying submissiveness to be the person he knew I was and that he enjoyed seeing.
“She doesn’t want to make waves, Master. All she wants is to learn how to defend herself. And I want to be the one to train her.”
Chapter 12
I tried to transfer everything I learned from Lukain to Jinneth, with a gentler hand.
For months, I became lost in my training. If I was going to be a slave-fighter, I wanted to be the best there was. I learned from Antones only ten percent of the fighters won their freedom—ithadhappened though.
I vowed to be part of that ten percent.
The first few months were strength and endurance training. Lukain would ask, “Are you ready?”
I would reply, “For what?”
And he would smack me with a wooden switch on the back of the legs, the stomach, the arms. Over and over, for weeks on end, until the abuse felt less like abuse and more like acceptance. The initial stinging pain from the wooden weapons Master Lukain hit me with dulled over time, until I hardly felt them.
Meanwhile, I ate like a ravenous pig, stuffing down my bodyweight in meat and potatoes and ale. I would work off the belly-filling sustenance and find Jinneth late at night in one of the faraway tunnels, showing her what new stances and foundations I’d learned.
Lukain started with endurance and resilience training because without those qualities, he assured me I would be doomed in the ring. Forget my peers—it was the people I would have to fight in the future, real adversaries, who would try to do me in.
My half-vampire master said I showed promise. He molded me into what he wished to see in a fighter, because he knew Iwould listen to his instructions and not complain when things became frustrating or overwhelming.
My life revolved around Master Lukain, Jinneth, and occasionally Antones and a few others I had conversations with. I made friends with the women, such as Helget, mean Aelin, and others. The young men only saw me as an enemy. As the months turned into years and I kept growing, thickening, and becoming more imposing, their looks became different.
