“Have the guards bring the other bull. The festivities in the arena today were fine, but I’ve decided I’d like a little more.” A lascivious smile curved her lips. “The winner will be rewarded, of course.”
The handmaiden bowed and darted toward the doors. Azarion wondered which poor bastard besides him had been dragged up from the catacombs for the empress’s entertainment.
Dalvila gestured at the guards. “Unchain him. He can’t adequately fight or fuck while trussed up like a pig.”
He stared into the distance while one of the guards unlocked his shackles and pulled the chains aside. He wanted to rub his throat and wrists but stayed as he was, his hands clasped together between his knees, his head lowered.
The empress stared at him with reptilian interest.
She repulsed him at every level, yet his cock stiffened at the sight of her nubile body and the lust in her gaze.
Beautiful, soft, and perfumed, Dalvila of Krael could raise an erection in a corpse, and Azarion wasn’t immune to her physical charms. He couldn’t be. He’d learned quickly that to displease her in bed courted imminent death.
He returned from every encounter either light-headed from the euphoria of having survived or bloody and nearly retching from the agony of her attentions. Who knew what this night held for him?
An image rose in his mind’s eye, of a dark-haired woman—the tall agacin with her condemning gaze and bitter fury. A woman filthy from the road and the catacombs, yet still far cleaner than this predator in her perfumed silks, perched before him on the makeshift throne like a spider.
He blinked away the memory and the hope the reluctant agacin offered. Distraction now could get him killed, and he had no intention of dying tonight, even if it meant taking the life of another for the pleasure of a queen whose touch made his cock throb and his skin crawl.
Dalvila swung her leg down and rose from the chair. The sense of threat made every hair on Azarion’s body stand at attention the closer she sashayed toward him. The soldiers on either side of him tensed. His skin prickled when one of her fingers skated over his shoulder before sliding down his arm. The cloying scent of flowers, underscored by the musk of aroused woman, made his nose twitch. Her round breasts bobbed, sheened in perspiration.
“The private games are much superior to the public ones,” she purred.
As if on cue, the doors opened once more to admit another cluster of guards surrounding a man two hands shorter than Azarion and twice his size in mass. No doubt a fighter brought in from one of the numerous gladiator schools and transported to the capital for the empress’s pleasure.
Dalvila always referred to her gladiator lovers as bulls, and the one striding toward them lived up to the name. His close-cropped hair rose on his round skull like hackles, and the veins in his thick neck throbbed under his skin. The beefy shoulders bulged, as did his massive arms, and he moved with a lumbering gait that, while ungraceful, spoke of immense strength and speed.
“Lovely,” the empress said and clapped her hands, her delighted smile avaricious. She curled a lock of Azarion’s hair around one finger. “Time to please your mistress, bull.” She nodded to his guards, who hauled him to his feet.
Blood roared through his veins, and his heart thundered a beat in his chest that echoed in his skull. For one moment, he met Dalvila’s gaze. His stomach clenched, as it always did when he looked into her eyes.
Bards had written and sung odes to the empress’s beauty, including her blue eyes. Azarion was sure none had ever peered into their depths. Behind the blue lurked . . . nothing. Only an abyssal emptiness, as if the goddesses had created a child and forgot to bequeath it a soul. His gaze flickered away, back to the less lethal fighter waiting to break him in half. The sight of his opponent didn’t make Azarion’s spirit shudder the way the empress did.
He toed off the simple sandals he’d donned in his cell. The chill of the marble floor made his feet flex. His breeches and tunic followed, leaving only the loincloth knotted at his waist. Now he matched the other man, almost bare and weaponless except for his own strength and cleverness.
The guards enclosed them in a makeshift circle, swords drawn to deter any notion about breaking through the living wall to escape.
The empress clapped her hands together. “Begin!”
Azarion dropped into a crouch, forgetting Dalvila, forgetting the guards, and especially forgetting the agacin waiting in his cell. All that mattered now was the man facing him, as intent on winning this fight as Azarion was.
The gladiator charged him, his strategy obvious. Brute strength to conquer his adversary. Azarion’s counter was just as straightforward: keep away from those grasping hands and stay on his feet long enough to wear his opponent out, then go for the death blow.
He spun out of the way, but not fast enough. The man’s shoulder caught him high in the chest, throwing him off balance. He stumbled but kept his feet, pivoting in time to take a direct blow from a head-butt. The hit took him to the floor, knocking the breath out of him as his adversary landed on top of him. His hands wrapped around Azarion’s neck and squeezed.
Neither as heavy nor as muscular, Azarion used the leverage of his long legs to break free, swinging one over his opponent’s shoulder and wedging it against his throat, pushing back until the other man was forced to loosen his suffocating hold to keep from falling backward.
They clashed again, wrestling and grasping in a tangle of sweating limbs. The man went for Azarion’s neck a second time. Again, Azarion dodged him, repeating the move several times. His plan was working until the empress added an unexpected challenge. The crack of a whip sounded close to his ear before a hot pain tore down his back in a scorching line. He flinched away from it, directly into the gladiator’s deadly embrace.
The fighter whooped in triumph, only to shout his surprise when the whip kissed the back of his thighs, bringing him to his knees, Azarion still in his grip.
“Stop boring me,” the empress snarled, and struck again, this time catching Azarion across one shoulder with the lash. He glimpsed her face, pink with fury, spittle glossing her full lips.
The fighter wrapped himself around Azarion, his bulk belying his ability to act like a constrictor squeezing its prey. Azarion writhed in his grip, managing to free one arm. He curled his fingers into a tight fist and clubbed his adversary on the side of the head, hard enough that he rocked sideways. It wasn’t enough to dislodge him, and Azarion struck him again, this time full in the face.
There was a crunch of bone, and the other man jerked back as blood gushed from his nose and split lip. He let go to take a swing, his knuckles plowing into the underside of Azarion’s jaw.
Both men tore into each other, exchanging blows and crashing together like two bulls caught in the mating rut. The empress followed their movements, calling out encouragement or curses, and inflicting pain with the arbitrary flick of her whip.
The marble floor within the makeshift arena was slippery with sweat, blood, and saliva. Tired from a day battling for his survival in the Pit, Azarion’s muscles screamed for rest. He staggered from a brutal blow and felt a vague pop in his left side. The agony that followed turned the breath in his chest into a wash of fire. If he didn’t end it now, he’d lose this combat.
A surge of power, fueled by desperation and sharpened by pain, pumped through his battered frame. He broke free of his opponent’s persistent grip, twisted behind him, and caught him around the neck with one leg. His position and the hard grip of his thigh defeated the fighter’s efforts to break free.