DOOM RETURNED TO the camp with a brace of rabbits and paused to scan the campsite out of habit. He grinned to see Tiwaz trying her best to mend one of the few shirts that fit him. The stitching was terrible, crooked and uneven. She held it up to examine. “It’s awful.”

“It’s beautiful for your first try,” he told her with pride for her effort. “You can’t be master of everything under the Empire’s sun inside of a day. You’re doing great.” He hung the pair of rabbits in a branch above before sitting across from her. “Maybe I can start teaching you to read later.” She made a disagreeable sound, balled up the garment and threw it at him. He caught it, shaking his head. “You are not a gladiator anymore, Ti. Reading and writing are useful.”

“You already know it. I do not need it.” She stood, trying to reach the rabbits, grimacing as it pulled at her still tender abdomen. He retrieved them, handing them to her. Deftly, she began to skin them. He had been unsurprised at her skill and dexterity. If a task involved a weapon, she took to it like a fish to water. “You need more clothes. Most of what you have is barely fit to make bandages from, much less wear.”

He shrugged. “What we have will do for now. You know extreme temperatures never bothered me. I could go about naked and not notice the cold or heat. You are the one who needs more clothing, especially since we’re heading to the colder north. You are more sensitive to it than I am.” He turned his attention to the fire, poking the wood unnecessarily. “Our allies didn’t give much for you. They believed you were going to die.” He closed his eyes. “So did I for a while.”

She stopped, staring into the flames. “Doom, tell me what happened the day we escaped to when I woke up in that little cave near the beach. Exactly what happened.” Her hands clenched, the only outward expression of the turmoil of emotions she hid behind an iron façade.

Doom hesitated, both not sure where to begin nor wanting to remember. “How much do you remember?”

“I remember Alimar wanted me to kill Tambek.” Her eyes glinted with hatred. “I did not want to kill anymore. Not for Alimar’s entertainment or anybody else’s. Arena law dictates no death if the opponent has yielded. He couldn’t make me break the rules, even to protect you.”

His eyes darkened with remembered anger at her tortured expression. “So that is why he kept having me beaten in front of you.” She closed her eyes and nodded. “That was when the death matches began.”

“He always forced me to kill with his magic. I tried fighting the compulsion spells, but I couldn’t…” She shook her head sharply. “I hated feeling weak and helpless. I feared who it was I would face next. It hurt so much.” In a quieter voice, she rasped, “But I remember nothing after Zuneer came for me that day. Tambek…”

“You didn’t kill him,” he assured her. “But it must have taken everything you had to throw off the compulsion spell. Urbin told me exactly what happened while Zuneer arranged our escape. You had gotten Tambek on his knees but you held back the death blow. You were shaking with the effort. When you swung, you missed him and threw the sword away.” He closed his eyes. “And you told Alimar no.”

A faint, mirthless smile touched her lips. Her voice filled with bitter sarcasm. “I imagine he was not pleased.”

He snorted. “That’s an understatement. He was so furious, he didn’t even use magic except to jump to the sands. He…he beat you with his bare hands. By the time he was done…” His voice drifted off, throat tightening. She looked up at him. “It was…not a pleasant sight. You just laid there, not moving. I thought…I thought I was alone.” His teeth bared in remembered fury. “I wanted to kill him.”

Tiwaz’s expression clouded. “Why didn’t you?”

He looked away with a sigh. “Because I didn’t want to believe you were gone. I had never seen you so…so broken. Not like that. I only wanted to hold you to life a little longer. It was foolish, I know. We always said if one of us died, the other would go after him. For all any of us knew, you were already dead. But I couldn’t think. I just held you.” He got to his feet, walking away a few steps, his back to her. “But you were alive still. Somehow, impossibly alive. Revenge became secondary to keeping my promise to you.”

“Promise?”

“That we would be free. I did not think you would live much longer. All I could think was I had to get you somewhere safe, away from Griffin Isle and away from him. So your last breaths could be taken in freedom before…” He closed his eyes, shaking his head hard to dislodge the memories. “Nothing else mattered except for my promise to you.”

Tiwaz was silent for several minutes, her expression troubled. “How did you get away without Master…” She stopped, shaking her head as she corrected herself. “Without Alimar finding out?”

“We had help. Urbin and Zuneer at first. Urbin hid us in a lost temple under Shurakh Arln. They use it to hide supplies for those times Alimar would deprive them for punishment. I cleaned and bound your wounds.” He hesitated a moment, rubbing the unusual coins tucked in the bottom of a pouch on his belt, and skipped telling her about the strange dream he’d had. “Zuneer arranged with a man named Juran to get us off the estate and to a ship called the Trade Winds. You know the rest.”

She shook her head. “No, I don’t. I remember nothing up until I woke up with my abdomen aching but without wounds and being maddeningly exhausted.”

Doom turned back to stare at her. “But you woke up. I told you the captain was going to take us to the Southern Wildlands, but you insisted we couldn’t. You don’t remember?” She turned her face away, shaking her head. “When we got off the ship, I left you with the supplies while I looked for shelter. A wild pig-thing tried to make off with the bag of our food and you found the strength to attack it.”

“Did I win?” she asked in a dull voice, staring at the flames again.

“Did you…? Of course you did. You killed it, but not before it had gored you.” She looked up at the catch in his voice. “When I told you that only death had beaten you, it just made you angry. You tried attacking something, and I thought…You nearly died in my arms, but you weren’t dead. I watched your gut wound close.”

He turned towards her completely when he watched the color drain from her face and her voice barely audible. “Magic? Magic that wasn’t Alimar’s healed me?”

He knelt on one knee and took her hands in his. “I have no idea, Ti. I assume so, but I don’t know where it came from.” He squeezed her hands gently. “I don’t know how or why you survived, but you did. Instead of dying free, we have the chance of living free. If I have been overprotective, it is because within the span of only a few weeks, I nearly lost you twice. I do not want to tempt Fate and risk losing you again. You are the only friend I have. The only one I ever had.” He watched her expression with concern, touching her cheek. “Ti?”

“I remember…Death. I saw Death. It tried to take me and I…” He pulled her into his embrace, holding her close. “I was dead! But Death couldn’t hold me. I wouldn’t leave you.” She embraced him fiercely tight, the emotions that she had suppressed so aggressively welled up, a sob ripped from her throat. “Forgive me. What I did to you, my friend—”

He stroked her hair soothingly, hushing her. “It’s all right, Ti. Everything is all right now.” Releasing her, he picked up the skinning knife and pressed it back into her hands. “Now do you understand why I want to stop so you can rest? I do not know how or why we got this chance, but I want to make sure you get to experience freedom finally.” He squeezed her shoulder. “You deserve at least that much for everything you suffered.”

She looked at his bandaged wrists, bare of the matte black shackles he’d broken days ago. Her eyes turned to her own wrists, glaring at the hated gold of their former master. “Not yet,” she stated in a hard, toneless voice. She put the knife aside and got to her feet, fists clenched. “I am not free yet.”

“Ti, what are you doing?” he asked, following her to the exposed boulder near their camp. She grabbed a large rock, rested one arm on the boulder, and began to pound the shackle. The rock slipped many times to scrape her flesh, blood welling up through the abrasions and bruises darkening around them. “Ti!” he shouted in alarm. “Stop, you’re hurting yourself!”

“I will be free!” Tiwaz stated, each word punctuated with the pounding of the rock, repeating it in litany. Blood began oozing from under both metal cuffs as she continued her heedless beating of the symbols tying her to the past. Doom could only watch helplessly, wincing whenever she hit her herself. The blows came slower and weaker, her breath catching in despair that she failed. “I will be,” she began, the rock slipping from the shackle on the final word, one bracer striking the other. “Free.”

Doom jerked back, raising an arm to shield his eyes as blinding light flashed and the sound of metal shattering nearly deafened him. He went to the sobbing woman lying across the boulder, helping her sit up. As relieved as he was that she was free of the magic-imbued shackles at long last, he felt his stomach lurch at the sight of her wrists. He could not bring himself to touch the grotesquely twisted flesh, oozing putrescence and blood. Movement just under the skin made it appear as though something alive coiled beneath it.

The memories flooded back of when Alimar had taken her away and she returned with the shackles, her symbols of shame. Gathering her in his arms, he carried her back to camp. “Oh, Ti. What had he done to you?”

Nearly unconscious, head resting on his shoulder, Tiwaz smiled, putting her bloody hand on his chest. “It doesn’t matter,” she murmured. “I will be free.”