blood stains the soil red when sunlight dries the sand

life isn’t worth a thing if there isn’t a demand

I dream about tomorrow, but I’m too broken to stand

I have to drag myself across this desert of a land

excerpt from “Colosseum Dreams,” a Bathunian fight song

I jolt away the second I see Dune’s fist coming toward me. The blow glances off my throat, and my hands fly to my neck. I gag, cough, and step back in the time it takes Dune to catch his balance. I’m ready when the second blow comes. It doesn’t get close. Kolton has better aim, even when he’s tweaking and can’t see straight.

Dune aims a kick at my shin. The world stills as I evade him, and I focus on breathing. I’m no fighter, but I’ve known how to duck for as long as I can remember. It’s one of the things everyone learns on Leisure Street:

Stoners are nicer than drunks.

Pay the cats what they’re owed, or pimps will send collectors after you.

Watch the hips and the hands so you know when a blow is coming.

I watch Dune’s hips. I watch his hands. How long have I been dodging him? Maybe I can last the full fifteen minutes and the testers will declare a tie.

“Hey, bootlicker.” Another blow comes toward me. “Is it true your mother’s a whore?”

Some trainees resort to verbal sparring to catch each other off guard, but I didn’t think Dune was stupid enough to try it with me. I twist beneath the flailing arm that’s headed for my nose, feeling…bored.

“It’s true,” I confirm. “I’m not ashamed of the Whoreson matronymic.”

“Wait, what?” He heaves out a wet gasp. “Stop moving, dammit!”

“Then you’d hit me.”

“Come here!”

I evade another punch.

“Shan’t,” I say. “Sorry, big guy.”

He grabs. I dart away—not running, but staying just out of his reach. It’s a delicate balance. Straying too far from his massive limbs would be spineless. Getting too close would be suicide. If I can keep this up for another few minutes…

His leg smashes into the side of my rib cage. I double over. My knees buckle and my stomach hits the ground. He grinds my face into the sand, and—damn it—I can hear some of the lancers laughing.

This isn’t the impression I want to leave in Killián’s mind.

Dune grabs a fistful of my hair and yanks. My back arches toward him. He jams my face back down, and I inhale a mouthful of dirt. Dust fills my nose and my mouth, and a cough contracts my chest. I wriggle one of my hands free, but the rest of my body stays put. My fingers twitch. Hit the ground three times, I remind myself. Tap out.

And then I think, but why?

Killián got Ila an apprenticeship. He invested time, attention, and money into me. He deserves to see me try, but damn it, I’m not a fighter. I shouldn’t want to be a fighter. I’m still clinging onto the hope that Felicity will forgive me for enlisting if I don a healer’s cassock and avoid combat.

Ten, nine. One of the testers is counting down. Eight. I’ve been pinned for too long. I have—seven—seconds to decide what to do and I’m running out of time…

Six. I’m in a back alley on Leisure Street. I’m here on my stomach with a man on my back. He’s grinding against me. Pulling my hair. Five. My hips are pinned, and so is one of my hands. Ila’s nearby, probably screaming, maybe crying. Four. I need to subdue this bastard so I can get her home safe.

Three.

But how?

Two.

I twist so suddenly that my shoulder pops. Dune twists with me, his hand still in my hair. I grab his wrist with my free hand, digging my nails into veiny flesh. He yells, pulling back, and I drive my wounded shin into his groin. Sharp spikes of pain shoot up my leg, but it hurts him more than it hurts me. He curls in on himself. It’s a nifty trick I learned from the girls in the cathouse’s prep room the first time a john came after me. The few times it happened thereafter, I’d twist arms behind backs until tendons tore. There’s no need to do that with Dune. I don’t want to cripple him.

I shove him off me and slam my elbow into the sweet spot on the back of his head.

He drops like a bag of boulders.

That’s all it takes to subdue Dune Callisto of the Third Circuit.

I roll off him. Polite applause echoes through the stadium, but I can barely hear it over the sound of my own heartbeat. Dune’s eyes close. His chest heaves. Nausea slams against me, and bile hits the back of my throat. I swallow it down. Guilt rises in me, along with something else.

I liked how it felt when I decided to strike. I liked the headrush, the heartburn, the way my body moved.

For the first time in my life, survival wasn’t my only goal.

I wanted to win.

Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

Medics swarm us. Pull Dune to his feet. His eyelids flutter as they carry him toward the medi-tent. There’s a hand on my shoulder and another on my back. Lancers. I’m ushered away.

My neck torques toward the top box as I’m led out of the Colosseum. All four of the elites are watching. The older woman moves her hands like she’s saying something. Linden is talking to Segolé.

It’s hard to tell from this far away, but I think Killián is smiling.

###

I spend the remainder of the day resting—I’m surprisingly tired, and my body aches from the fight. Dune lurches into our dormitory around sunset, a damp rag pressed to the back of his head. The testers gave him points for his blows—I don’t understand the tally system—and they rewarded him for pinning me.

Most of our roommates didn’t make it past the first elimination. Osyrus is around—he drifted in to get his sword earlier—but I’m not sure who else made the cut. Caius, probably. Like Osyrus, his mother’s a swordsmaster. He’s guaranteed admission to épée school, and she had him trained.

To my surprise, Dune heads straight for my bed and plants his ass on my pillow. The last thing I need is another fight. I want to rest until the pounding in my head fades; it’s hard to open my eyes. Moving makes my neck ache.

“Romp with Lady Death,” Dune snarls. “You were playing with me.”

“I don’t know what that means,” I say wearily.

He drops his filthy rag on the burlap sheets and makes a rude hand gesture. I toss the cloth on the floor, then push myself into a seated position.

“You let the fight drag on for fourteen minutes,” he says. “You could’ve laid me out in two seconds—you were trained by a wrestler.”

“Unless play fighting with my sister counts as wrestling, I’m untrained.” I raise an eyebrow. “I got lucky.”

He shoves my head. “I don’t buy this whole goody-gumdrops act.”

I squirm away from his hand. “It’s not an act!”

“Cut the shit,” he says.

He flops across my bed. I hand him a flask of water. He takes a sip.

“Sorry I called your mother that word,” he says. “Didn’t know you were a Whoreson.”

“You don’t have to be sorry,” I say, amused and surprised. “I’m not ashamed of my family. You got something against sex work?”

“Dunno.” He takes another sip and gargles the water in his throat. “Damn. Everything hurts.”

I rub my bruised shin. “You did a number on my leg.”

“You did a number on my head.”

Fair enough.

We lay there for a moment, and then he says, “You want to get some candydrops and have a smoke?”

“I don’t smoke,” I say. “I can’t afford it.”

“First pack is on me. It’ll help your pressure headaches.”

Now it’s my turn to stare. “Who says I get pressure headaches?”

“You rub the back of your neck a lot.” He downs the rest of my water. “My dad does that, and he gets ’em. Candydrops help.”

The sporadic twang in my temple thrums down to my jaw. I sigh a long, drawn-out sigh.

“Okay,” I say. “Let’s do it.”

###

We buy cigs and a bottle of lime juice in the convenience store squished between the mess hall and an apartment complex. Dune flashes his swordsman bona fides—I guess you have to be fifteen to buy baccy—and pays. One pack costs a bleu, and I promise myself I’ll never get hooked. Twenty francs. That’s a week’s rent in the temporary housing unit. Dune drops the silver coin like it’s nothing.

“Follow me,” I tell him when the door jingles shut. “I know a spot.”

“Bathune’s curfew is 2200.”

“We have an hour.” I squint at the rising moon. “It’s a ten-minute walk.”

I take him down a back alley, and we cut behind the Colosseum. I’m limping, and his range of movement is stilted, but we make good time. We sit on a terrace just off Rue d’Azur. Azur Street. It’s a neat little spot I found during my explorations, and it looks over a mural of Yosif the Great on horseback.

Dune hands me the glass bottle.

“There’s no booze in this, right?” I ask.

“It’s juice, man.”

I uncork it and take a swig. The green liquid is bitter and salty. I gag, but that doesn’t stop me from taking another sip. My throat burns and my eyes water. It’s posh stuff, this lime juice. Dune rips open the grasspaper pack and hands me a cig. I take it, then rub the back of my neck.

“You’re sure these’ll help the headache?” I ask, not believing it.

“They help my dad.”

“It won’t make me high, right?”

He laughs, then realizes I’m serious.

“They sell them with malloweed, but that shit makes me paranoid,” he says. “This one’s cut with baccy and sophoria powder.”

“I don’t know what sophoria is.”

He rolls his eyes. “You’re kind of dewy, you know that?”

I don’t think anyone has ever called me that before. No one leaves Leisure Street with wide eyes, but I guess I do seem a little unworldly right now.

“Sophoria’s a drug,” he says.

“I figured that out myself. How do they make it?”

“You looking to start a cartel?”

“Kolton Diable, drug lord extraordinaire.” I hold out my hand like I want him to shake it. “You want in?”

He laughs, then thinks for a second.

“I’m pretty sure it comes from mutes.” He sees the look I throw him. “Mutant mushrooms. Not the Scaggurish breed—don’t worry. It’s super sweet-tasting, and you’ll get a head rush. You might get spacey, but it won’t make you high. There’s less than a quarter dose in these bastards.”

He shows me how to hold it, then strikes a match and lights the tip.

“Put it to your lips,” he says. “Suck. No—don’t exhale! Keep it in your lungs until it hits. Yup. You feel it? Okay. Breathe out.”

I cough, then I gag, then I choke, then I splutter. My head spins, and I wheeze out another breath of gray air. A sugary taste fills my lungs and throat, drifting across my tongue like a dancing pole girl. Light-headed dizziness yanks the pain away from my aching temples. The entire terrace sways back and forth in sluggish, lazy movements.

“Go slow.” Dune grabs my wrist. “You just took, like, three hits.”

Did I?

“Pace yourself, man.” He plucks the cig from my fingers.

I want to grab it back, but my arms feel like they’re made of metallite.

“You like it?” he asks, grinning.

Yeah. I do. Way, way, too much. For the first time in my life, I feel like a normal teenager. Akeeva would have a conniption if she saw me smoking, but Akeeva’s not here. I’m alone—no adult supervision, no little girls to look after, and a friend for company.

I reach for another.