Etian strode through the lower corridors of the pit house, a pair of his father’s Thorns flanking him. Familiar guards and staff members bowed to the prince as he made his way toward the stairs.

From inside the arena came the roar of the crowd and the stench of blood and animal and offal. Thanks to the endless, dragging meeting with the Council of Northern Lords—which had achieved nothing, of course—he’d already missed the opening dyrefights.

He hated to miss a day at the pit house. There was too much an observant swordsman could learn from the brutal, animal styles the beasts favored. Ever since Etian had been named heir apparent, however, so much of his time had been spent attending to the useless figurehead duties of acting regent that his attendance at the fights was flagging.

Left to his own devices, Etian could cut through the tangle of governance in an hour. But his father, likely concerned that his successor would gain too much power in his absence, allowed no independence of action. Everything must be carried out exactly according to the nightly, overly detailed dispatches Hazerial sent. Without word from the king, no business of the throne could be done.

Etian felt like a fettered warhorse.

When he wasn’t telling nobles to wait until the king returned or carrying out the meticulously comprehensive orders his father had sent, Etian was training in the royal blood magic. That at least offered a challenge. Of course, with that taking up the remainder of his nights, he’d had to cut the time he slept each day in half to make up his lost hours of sword practice.

He had considered forsaking the sword to focus his efforts entirely on the blood magic. Vorino, his usual sword tutor, had even been sent with Izakiel under the assumption that Etian would leave behind his bladework.

It would be sensible. The warrior god Josean was known for his stark, single-minded approach to everything, and while Etian had been blessed at birth by the warrior god and was often touted as Josean’s second coming, he didn’t want to fall into the same trap it was said that the deity had. If Josean had learned to divide his attention effectively, he would have ruled the universe alone. But because Josean could not split his focus equally, Eketra had managed to thwart his plans by ensnaring him with her daughter. Josean’s failure was a cautionary tale Etian wouldn’t ignore.

If blood magic was to become Etian’s primary weapon when he took the throne, he would hone it to a sharpness that surpassed his sword, not dull his sword to make the blood magic seem sharper.

After all, if Izak had done it, he could.

His brother would have laughed aloud at the sentiment and agreed. The former crown prince had never given the impression that he’d worked very hard at mastering his birthright, and yet mastered it he had, and at such a young age that Etian’s newly acquired magic tutors overflowed with praise and disappointment for Izak.

“So talented!” they gushed. “Yet so apathetic. Such tragedy.”

Etian didn’t put his faith in talent. Anything that could be surpassed by sweat and determination was too brittle a foundation to rest on.

As he jogged up the steps, he stabilized his sword with a hand on the hilt. At the top, he swung left, passing curtained archways owned by nobles and the wealthiest members of the upper class. Most families of consequence kept a box in the pit houses, since it was well known that more alliances were made there than at court.

Now and again, curtains shifted and bright, smiling faces attempted to catch his attention. Etian couldn’t remember ever seeing so many young women at the fights before he was named heir. The Eketra-blessed noble parents must lay awake at night scheming to get a daughter on the throne.

Time wasted. There wasn’t a noble girl in Siu Rial with brains of her own.

Luckily, Etian had brought along Ruis and Gander, a pair of Royal Thorns who enjoyed the dyrefights as much as he did. As desperate as most of these courtiers looked, even their parents’ scolding wasn’t enough to make them approach those menacing brawlers.

During feasts, in the halls of the palace, and after court was another story. If he were even slightly less disciplined, a week of their hollow, practiced fawning would have had him begging his father to be stationed in the west fighting pirates.

King Hazerial had briefly considered sending him to lead the forces on the coast, but Etian had been forced to oppose the idea. Based on the prince’s study of the Pirate Wars during Mikuel II’s reign, nothing short of the king’s royal blood magic would defeat the cordon of warships the pirates kept between the shores and the open ocean. If the cordoning fleet fell, the rest of the oceanic nomads would follow, but a swift initial coup was vital. Otherwise, they would be defeated as soundly and swiftly as Mikuel II had.

Unfortunately, Hazerial had seen reason and agreed.

Etian stopped suddenly outside his box.

His curtains were closed.

The Thorns picked the implications up as quickly as he did. Gander kept watch over the crown prince in the corridor, while Ruis drew his sword and ducked through the heavy draperies.

In moments, he returned, blade sheathed.

“The Princess Kelena, Your Highness.” He held the curtain aside for Etian to enter.

His younger sister watched him approach with huge, frightened eyes. She’d taken the seat he usually sat in, the one at the farthest left side of the box, with the best view of the arena. As she never came to the fights, she couldn’t have known that seat was his.

“Kelen.” Etian gave her a perfunctory bow. Her tense, ready-to-fly posture did not ease at his use of the boyish nickname Izak always hung on her. He took the seat beside the princess as if it were an everynight occurrence for the pair of them to sit together and watch dyre tear one another apart.

As if someone had stabbed her with a pin, Kelena leapt to her feet and sank into a deep curtsy. “Crown Prince Etianiel, please forgive my—uh—my lapse in deference.”

“Just don’t let it happen again.”

She dropped her head lower. “Never!”

Light, she thought he was serious? She was shaking.

Etian tried a smile. He wasn’t as practiced with those as Izak was, and it showed in the princess’s frightened confusion.

“I was joking, Kelena,” he told her, letting the unfamiliar expression drop. “Sit down.”

The girl hastily scrambled back into her seat and turned to the fight below. Her eyes were pointed in the right direction, but they didn’t move with the action. She wasn’t watching the combat. She was waiting for him to say something.

The silence opened like a chasm between them.

If Izak were there, he would have kept them both talking. The elder prince could make conversation with a stone wall. Etian didn’t even know what princesses liked to talk about.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“So, you’ve come to watch the fights?” Idiotic thrust in the dark, but the opening move was made. Depending on how she countered, he would find a better angle of attack.

Kelena’s head jerked in a tight-necked nod.

“I’ve never seen you here before,” he tried.

This time a headshake. Agreeing that she’d never been? Disagreeing that he’d never seen her here?

“Why are you here?” Was that too blunt?

“Mother.”

Etian scowled.

“Where is the—” To call Jadarah any of the names he and Izak reserved for the mad queen would have been a misstep. He knew nothing of Kelena’s feelings for her mother. She was just a child. It was conceivable that she felt some sort of love for or misguided loyalty to the harpy. “—the queen?”

“Gathering the blood of the dead dyres.” Kelena’s hands twisted around one another, knuckles ice white. “She says it has singular properties.”

Meanwhile she had left a defenseless child without a single Thorn for protection. No wonder the girl was scared.

“She’s teaching you…” What did one call what Jadarah did? Murder orgy divination? “…to speak to the strong gods the way she does?”

Kelena shuddered.

Abandon that angle of attack.

“What do you think of the fights?” Etian asked, nodding down at the new pair being set on each other.

Kelena swallowed. “I thought dyre were always beasts when they fought. I didn’t know some of them remained men.”

Either Jadarah had not brought the girl early enough to watch the beginning of the previous fight or Kelena had sat there the entire time with her eyes shut.

“They haven’t transformed yet. Some do it immediately, others wait until it fits their strategy. Still others don’t change into beasts at all. There’s one who never changes. He’s one of the best, I suspect because he’s able to keep all his faculties.”

That last bit was pure conjecture. When Etian had asked the dyre, it wouldn’t tell him, wouldn’t even look his way. It had just paced its cage. The workers in the pit house cages said that one could speak but never said a word.

Kelena continued to wring her hands. She clearly hadn’t heard a word he’d said.

Blood sprayed below. This fight would be over quickly. Etian had watched the dominant dyre fight before, usually in full panther flesh. The bleeder was new and too slow, crossing his feet when he circled. In an instant, the dyrepanther transformed, manlike flesh tearing away in flags and replaced by fur and tooth and claw.

Inevitably, the bleeder tripped over his own steps. Kelena gasped as the dyrepanther tore into the bleeder’s throat. A fluttery moan escaped from the princess. Her hands finally stopped twisting and covered her mouth as if to hold in further sound.

Gently, Etian took hold of the girl’s elbow and turned her to face him. Her huge, dark eyes glittered with tears.

“Kelena, you don’t have to watch if it upsets you.”

She shook her head.

Etian sighed. “No what? Because if you’re saying it doesn’t bother you—”

“No, she must watch.” The mad queen strolled in, that lackwit grin on her face. “Her queen ordered her to take in every shred of the festivities.”

“To what end? She obviously finds it disturbing.”

“Drink it in, Kelena,” Jadarah purred. “Fill your belly with it. Feel it festering. Aggravating.” She sank onto a chair in the second row and leaned over the prince’s shoulder. “Awakening.” She let out a low moan that made the hairs on the back of Etian’s neck stand up. “Arousing.”

The scent of dried blood and feminine sweat and body odor assailed him. The mad queen never bathed. How her Thorns could stand it, Etian didn’t know. She was gorgeous from a distance, and despite her age she barely looked a handful of years older than he was, but in such close quarters even her beauty wasn’t enough to cancel out her rancid stink.

He grimaced and pulled away, letting her arm drop onto his seatback.

Jadarah chuckled, and Etian realized he’d misstepped. Revulsion was just another weapon to the mad queen, and he had let her see that her strike had landed.

Recover. The mad queen had taken one point. He had to take one back.

Kelena’s teeth chattered, but she wouldn’t disobey her mother. She stared through wide, watery eyes at the dyrepanther gorging on the meat of its dying opponent.

Etian couldn’t countermand the queen’s order that the princess watch the carnage. Hazerial allowed Jadarah complete authority over Kelena so that only the king himself could overrule her. Which he never did.

The mad queen’s Thorns, however, were an unguarded target. Etian could feel them behind him, watching over their mistress, never more than a sword length away.

Sex was one of Jadarah’s weapons, but for the Teikru-blessed, sex was also a weak point. A life in Izak’s shadow had taught him that much.

“Queen’s Guard, you are dismissed from the royal box,” Etian said. “Get out or I’ll consider your presence an act of aggression on the heir apparent and take appropriate action.”

“You can’t order my Thorns around!” Chipped, blood-encrusted nails dug into his shoulder, their sting barely dulled by his clothing.

“I won’t have armed men loyal to someone else standing over my back. Unless you plan to assassinate me, they can wait in the corridor. Gander, Ruis, escort the Queen’s Thorns out.”

“Yes, Your Highness.”

Shuffling bodies. Etian didn’t take his eyes from the fight below, but he felt the dynamics of the box shift. He waited, on guard, for her next attack.

A huff of laughter. A tug of his lenses. The queen pulled the eyeglasses off his face ineptly, chuckling to herself as she held them at arm’s length and studied them.

Etian scowled, but otherwise pretended he didn’t care. He didn’t need to see to defend himself; he’d learned to fight blind while Jadarah was still carrying Kelena in her cursed womb.

“The baby prince is a big boy now that he’s going to inherit the Blood of the Strong Gods. Big, tough, and chosen.” The mad queen fitted the glasses onto herself. “And blind as a bat, too.”

To his left, the blur of crepe and silk that was Kelena rustled. Dyre blood pooled on the sandy arena floor below, visible only as a spreading shadow on a distant tan landscape.

“Someone who didn’t know better would say the blind prince never saw a thing in his life.” Jadarah hooked the glasses back on his ears aslant enough that he had to catch them or let them fall to the floor and crack. Hot, rancid breath tickled his inner ear as she whispered, “But I do know better, don’t I, Etianiel?”

Parry.

“You’ve never shown your face at the pit house before,” he said. “Why are you here, in my box, less than a week after my brother was disinherited? I assume you have a reason other than torturing the princess.”

Jadarah gasped, the sudden sound making Kelena flinch. “My daughter! My darling, you were alone with this brute without a chaperone! Did he touch you?”

“Don’t be disgusting,” Etian snapped.

“One man’s disgusting is another man’s enticing,” the queen purred.

Little Kelena trembled, face pointed rigidly forward as if she could avoid hearing this conversation by dint of will.

Etian’s temper flared. “She’s been in full view of everyone in the arena since she sat down. That seat has the best view of the pit—that’s why I usually sit there—which conversely makes it visible to the rest of the arena.” Burn it all, the harpy had gotten him on the back foot, forced him to defend himself. He should have turned the attack around on her. “Ask anybody here tonight,” he finished lamely.

“For a blind prince, you certainly know a lot about where the best view is,” Jadarah said. “Do you have a spy hole into your sister’s bedchamber, too? Have you been watching her undress as well?”

“You vile wench, I would never—”

“Never what, blind prince? Never watch a woman slide out of her clothing?” Jadarah’s hand crept across his chest and down. She sighed in his ear. “Never spy from behind a hidden panel in the wall while a woman enjoys a moment of private ecstasy?”

He batted her blood-encrusted hand away, sickened by her and, worse, by his body’s response.

Etian didn’t believe that the strong gods spoke directly to the mad queen, even if she did sacrifice scores of half-developed fetuses to them. But she couldn’t be guessing. Her details were too perfect. Somehow, she knew.

But it had only been one time, and over a year ago. Immediately after, he had known he could never go back into that hidden passage, never look into the mad queen’s room again. And he hadn’t. So how did she know?

Had she told his father? Was bringing it up now a threat that she would?

Etian could protest that he hadn’t even known where that view port looked in when he’d opened it, that he’d been exploring the castle’s old passages to alleviate the boredom until his next sword training, and that seeing the queen within had surprised him as much as anyone.

But he hadn’t slammed the port shut immediately and walked away. Lust had overrun his judgment, panting, shaking, staggering lust, and he’d stayed.

From the burning spots on Kelena’s porcelain face and the terrified, unblinking stare directed at the arena below, her mother’s words had already convinced her that he was a deviant. Any further attempt to shield the girl from that underhanded witch would only water the seeds of mistrust.

How had Izak made it past Jadarah’s twisted bullying and Hazerial’s attempts to pit the royal offspring against one another to actually befriend his younger siblings?

Etian couldn’t see it, and Izak was gone, so he couldn’t ask.

He had to make a tactical retreat. Live to fight again. Preferably on a day when he had a weapon against the mad queen.

“I don’t know what sort of lunatic nonsense you’re spouting, but if you refuse to shut up and let us watch the fights in peace, I’ll have Gander escort you back to the palace. And I’ll grant your daughter free rein to leave the pit house whenever she likes.”

The heat of Jadarah’s soft, puffing laughter tickled his neck. “Oh, I’ll stay quiet, Etianiel. You and I—we’ll stay very, very quiet, won’t we?”