“Stay away from her!”
A guttural roar rips through the silence of the cellar. Startled, I jump, my eyes flying to the door to see Darian framed in the doorway. His eyes dart from the prone Kortyz to me, covered in blood, before settling on Zanyar’s back with a burning intensity.
“Step away from her.” His voice is like a flash of lightning.
Zanyar, however, remains unfazed. He doesn’t even turn to him. His focus is still solely on me. His eyes narrow a fraction, and a muscle in his jaw ticks.
Darian’s roar echoes again as he lunges forward, his hand attached to the hilt of a massive broadsword. “I said, stay away!” The veins in his neck are bulging with barely contained rage.
“Darian, it’s all right,” I cut in, my voice surprisingly steady despite the tremor in my limbs. I slip out of the space between Zanyar and the wall, filled with a strange sorrow that I don’t quite understand.
His gaze, intense and dark, follows me, but he remains rooted in the spot like a statue carved from cold stone.
“Come here,” Darian says, extending a hand.
My eyes flicker back to Zanyar. His gaze burns a hole through me, and a spark of something primal is still lurking beneath the surface. And for a fleeting moment, I… hesitate.
Should I go?
The sudden urge to stay by his side, to delve deeper into the moment that passed between us, is utterly unnerving.
What are you doing? Are you crazy?
The weight of the situation crashes back instantly. With a deep breath, I tear my gaze away from Zanyar and move toward Darian, who pulls me protectively behind him. The familiar scent of leather and tree trunk, his scent, envelops me like a comforting presence. Far different from the volatile, wild moment I’d just shared with Zanyar.
“Did he hurt you?” Darian growls.
I glance down at my blood-stained form. “No. This is Kortyz’s blood. Darian, we need to move. The night is wearing thin.”
I pull on his tunic, and the tension in the room stifles. Darian’s face hardens as he looks at Kortyz, but he quickly masks his anger. With a final icy glare at Zanyar’s back, he grips my left arm and leads me out of the cellar.
“Jamshahis are in these halls. Four of them.”
Without pausing, he pulls me along as the hallway stretches endlessly. Every cellar we pass mirrors the one I woke up in. It looks like we are running beneath the very bowels of the arena. We make several turns in the hallway as a faint, diffused light filters through cracks high up in the ceiling. When we reach a spiral staircase, Darian comes to a sudden halt, grabs my arms, and turns me to face him.
“Are you hurt?” he questions, his dark blue eyes searching my face and body.
A grimace contorts my face as his grip tightens on my injured arm and the throbbing pain in my shoulder spikes. Darian releases his hold at once.
“Nine hells, is your shoulder broken?”
“I’ll manage,” I grit out, fighting back a wince.
“That is not Kortyz’s blood on your face. Your jaw’s swollen purple, and your shoulder looks like it’s broken.”
“Darian. Let’s just get back to the inner ward. I’ll find a healer after this damned trial is over. We have bigger problems than my aching shoulder. We need to find Bahador and Faelas.”
“They’re in the arena, hunting coins,” he replies with a dismissive wave. “I left them to find you.”
I stare at him, speechless. I’m emotionally drained from the weight of the night, the fight with Kortyz, the near-death experience, and the encounter with Zanyar. The realization that Darian, a man I barely know, has not only risked his safety and his chance to collect his winning coins but also abandoned his friends to findmethreatens to overwhelm me with a surge of volatile emotions. I struggle to suppress the lump in my throat.
“Bahador and Faelas should have enough coins for both of us by now. Though it seems like you have swiped one yourself?”
“Two,” I whisper. “Took one from Kortyz and another from the other southern Myran.”
A full-blown grin erupts on his face. “Good riddance to the squealing oafs! I was wondering who would finally clobber them well. Turns out it would be our very own little wolf, eh?”
The urge to reach out to him, to get some form of physical contact to soothe my nerves, fights with the need to tamp down these strange emotions.
