“Don’t move,” Myron growled against her ear.
She had no plans to move. He had her fully incapacitated. She hadn’t even heard him come into her room.
Stupid.
Utterly stupid.
Myron had made his intentions clear from the start, but she’d felt safe in Constantine’s house. She should have stayed alert. She should have done anything but what she had done tonight. Now, she might die for her own stupidity.
“And don’t scream,” he growled.
His insanity was clear to her in that moment, and she wasn’t going to provoke him. Well, at least not like this.
Slowly, he withdrew his hand from her mouth. His face came into focus. She could smell the alcohol on his breath. The sex that permeated his clothing. He’d been out with the others then and decided to kill her after his good time. Great.
“You’re probably wondering why I’m here.”
“I think it’s pretty obvious,” she said, meeting his watery gaze.
The knife dug in deeper. She coughed as warm blood trickled from the wound and down her neck.
“Shut your insufferable mouth.” He glared harder at her. “I have you under submission. I could kill you at any moment, and you’re still running your gods-damn mouth.” She met his glare without fear or apprehension. That was long past. She had left all of that in the sand earlier with Constantine. She would face this as she had faced everything else. “The general gave us all earnings and told us to have a good time. Everyone is still out there. It’s just me and you now.”
“And what do you plan to do? Kill me?”
“Eventually.” He relaxed his hand marginally, as if he were preparing to sit in for a while. “Andine women don’t fight.”
“I’m not Andine.”
“And you’re not a bloody Doma,” he snapped.
“I never claimed I was.”
“But they all treat you like one.” He glared as if it were her fault. “You come in as a whore, and within a few weeks, you think you can replace me? I’ve been here for years, working my way up into the general’s good fortune. I’ve been training with him for the last year to get into this tournament. You think one challenge and a week of training mean you’re going to win the whole thing?”
Kerrigan said nothing as he continued is ridiculous tirade, ripping into Constantine for his bad choices and even going as far as suggesting she was sleeping with him to get to this point. She couldn’t see how that would make a difference. If they were sleeping together, wouldn’t he be more inclined to keep her around than sacrifice her to the gladiator ring?
But with Myron’s focus obscured by his own need to be right, his hand slipped. She didn’t wait for another moment.
Her arm whipped up, cracking hard against his forearm and knocking the blade away from her neck. She gasped in a startled breath, ignoring the growing flow of blood. When she’d moved the blade, it had cut in slightly deeper on one side. Myron roared, and she ceased thinking about the pain.
He brought the knife down in one fluid motion. She rolled sideways to the other side of the bed. The knife plunged into her feather comforter. A plume of feathers exploded from the impact just as she dropped to one knee. Myron vaulted between her and the doorway, cornering her. She threw herself the other way across the mattress. All she had to do was outpace his drunk ass. But even inebriated as he was, he was still fast, and his legs easily covered the distance between her and the window.
“What did you think would happen here?” she asked, losing her temper at her second blocked exit. “That Constantine would see you beaten that soundly in a matter of minutes and allow you to throw your entire life away? Pulling you from the tournament was mercy.”
“I didn’t want mercy!” he yelled, throwing himself at her.
Kerrigan settled deep into that place that she’d entered only hours earlier. She dodged his blade and then the second strike. But the third came up out of nowhere and sliced straight across her chest. Blood spurted out of the wound, and she gasped in surprise. His movements were erratic at best, but he was fueled by self-righteous anger and that masculine need to be right. He had one mission here, and he wasn’t letting her leave until he finished his work.
She reeled, her back hitting the far wall. She coughed at the hit. Her focus wavered, and then he was on her again. She found an opening, pulling him into her guard and slamming his hand straight into the wall behind her. He yelped, the blade clattering to the ground between them. Kerrigan did the only thing she could think of. She kicked the knife under the bed and out of the way. He still had height and weight on her, but at least it was an even fight.
“You bitch!” he snarled.
Before she could process his fist coming toward her face, he cracked her as hard as he could in the nose. Her head thunked back against the wall. Her nose shattered. Blood spewed everywhere.
Her scream was a small thing but still louder than she’d planned. It hurt like a bitch, but she’d endured worse. She remembered her first training exercises with Fordham. How he had refused to let her get a healer for her wounds. He believed that if you always had someone on hand to heal you, then you never learned how to fight through the pain. Well, his training was coming in handy now.
Because Myron looked self-satisfied with his hit. He thought it was over. What an idiot.
She moved through her paces, ignoring the flare of pain, and thrust out with a kick to his side. When she got out from the his guard and away from the wall, she blocked his flimsy hits, and then dropped his legs out from under him. The same step she’d used in the ring.
“Do you yield?”
Myron grabbed her foot, yanking as hard as he could and sending her tumbling to the floor. He rolled over on top of her, pressing his meaty hands into her neck. She gasped as her windpipe was crushed.
“You … don’t … deserve … to live.”
Her hands scrambled at his, as she was desperate for more oxygen in her lungs. She used her weight to shift him just enough that he moved sideways, releasing one of her legs. She nailed him right in the crotch, and he doubled over in pain. He slid off her toward the bed. She rolled away from him, prepared to rush for the exit, when it suddenly burst open.
Danae rushed in. Her eyes went wide as she saw Myron come up with the knife again.
“Stop!” Danae yelled, throwing a hand out.
And something propelled him backward with the force of a wind tornado. Myron slammed backward, his head cracking hard enough against the wall to leave an indent. The knife in his hand plunged into his stomach on impact, nailing him to the wall.
Danae’s hand flew to her mouth. “No.”
Kerrigan took a step toward Myron, as if she could stop the blood from his scalp or dislodge the knife that held him in place. His eyes were open. He gurgled as more blood flowed from his wounds and out of his mouth. Then, his eyes fluttered shut, and he slumped forward.
Constantine appeared in the doorway then. He’d only been a few steps behind her, and he’d been too late.
He crashed to a halt at Danae’s side. Tears streamed freely down her face. Terror wrought into every inch of the Andine princess.
“Day,” Constantine said softly. “Go back to your room.”
“But Father …”
Kerrigan wanted nothing more than to make the last few minutes disappear.
“I will handle it.”
“I didn’t mean to,” she whispered.
Danae had forced the truth into Myron with the power of just one word. She had used magic that was inconceivable, even to Kerrigan. And she had saved Kerrigan’s life.
“Go,” he told her.
Danae took one last look at Myron before fleeing the scene. A slammed door sounded at the other end of the hallway.
“You will forget what you think you saw,” Constantine said.
“Myron tried to kill me.”
“I’m aware. And he paid for his folly. You nailed him to the wall when he attacked you.”
She met his gaze. That was going to be the official story. Better to make her the winner of this attack than to ever let them know what Danae was.
“You should go to her,” Kerrigan said. “Talk to her.”
“She’s fine,” he said. “She should have never come in here.”
“No. But she did. She saved my life.”
Constantine looked as defiant as ever. Only like he deal with another problem heaped on top of his problems.
“If you don’t have someone train her, this will keep happening.”
“Don’t talk to me about things you don’t understand.”
“I say it for her sake. She needs help, or she’s going to do something drastic.”
“She is my daughter.”
“And because she’s your daughter, you need to help her,” she pushed. “The magic is going to kill her if she doesn’t get it under control.”
“They will kill her if she is discovered.”
“It’s all the same thing.”
Constantine stormed forward, getting in her face. His magic was hot at the tips of his fingers. She didn’t back down. She looked at him with pity for the circumstances he had found himself in.
“I did not ask for your opinion! Go get cleaned up. We leave for the tournament at dawn. I will handle this.”
He gestured to Myron’s dead body still nailed to her wall. She could barely look at it. Only earlier today, he’d been celebrating, preparing to go to the finals. He’d attacked her out of jealousy and stupidity, but he hadn’t deserved to die. Constantine had tried to save him from that, and it had been his fate anyway.
“You didn’t even ask me what happened,” she said.
Constantine’s shoulders drooped. “I don’t have to. It should have never come to this.”
But it always would have and they both knew it.
Kerrigan lifted her chin and walked from the room. She heard sniffling at the other end of the hall, but Evander was already there, blocking her path to Danae.
She should have done what Constantine said—cleaned up and gotten ready. There were still hours until dawn, but she was no longer tired. Adrenaline would get her through the tournament tomorrow. So, instead of curling up in a corner for a few hours of shut-eye, Kerrigan walked the perimeter of the house like a ghost, trying to wrangle her thoughts back into a sense of peace.
But no peace came that night.
And tomorrow … the tournament would begin.