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But not right now. Right now, he remembered me very, very well. He looked about ready to push through his buddies and approach me when he spotted something on my other side, hesitated, and returned to growling at me from a distance.
I bumped into someone but didn’t offer apologies. Doing so labeled you as weak and I was not in the mood to be confronted again. I hastily moved around the figure.
“No morning greeting?” a deep voice that I instantly recognized said.
“Cayggod,” I said, smiling up at him.
His smile reflected my own and he peered at me through his small spectacles. “You’re not enrolling for the competition today?”
I glanced toward the inmates already heading into the armory where they would suit up for the day’s events. I’d never entered the pits and I didn’t intend on doing so now either.
“You know me,” I said. “I prefer to stay out of trouble.”
“And yet, you willingly exposed yourself to one last night,” Cayggod said, pushing his glasses up his nose. “One might perhaps wonder why.”
I didn’t think I would ever get over Cayggod’s obvious dichotomy: his massive, muscular broad shoulders and his obvious well-read and soft way of speaking.
His question of why I had decided to fight last night when I had avoided it so well for the past ten years had run through my mind ever since I took action. And I still, as yet, didn’t have a good answer.
“I… couldn’t stand by and let him beat her for no good reason,” I said.
Cayggod didn’t blink. “Is there ever a good reason for him to beat her?”
“There’s always good reason for violence. Under certain circumstances.”
Cayggod nodded. “You’ll hear no argument from me on that front. But you didn’t answer my question.”
I know I didn’t, and I didn’t want to. The thought of anyone raising a hand against Lily made my stomach churn and my teeth grit harder than a trissic’s jaws.
“There’s a rumor going around,” Cayggod said.
“About me kicking Druin’s ass?” I said. “I heard them too.”
“No, not that. That’s not disputed. The rumor concerns the female Prize you rescued last night and Druin’s intentions toward her.”
My blood ran cold as I peered over at Druin. His chest was puffed out and his muscles bulged, fit to bursting from his armor plate.
Of course, I thought. He couldn’t let the fact I had beaten him stand. He had to fight in the pits, and prove his mettle or he would never hear the end of it. That was why he had pumped himself full of poisonous Quet-Dreai when he should have been recovering.
If he didn’t defend his crown, they would see him as weak and want to exploit it and take it for themselves. And after he beat them, he would go to the Prize Pool and…
I ran my hand through my hair and shook my head.
“You see the problem, don’t you?” Cayggod said.
“Yes,” I admitted. “He’s going to Claim her again.”
“And this time, he isn’t going to be so kind,” Cayggod pointed out.
I knew he was right. Still, I didn’t want to believe it. I’d rescued Lily because I didn’t want to see her beaten by that jjizzik krisk. I wanted to teach him a lesson so he wouldn’t think to harm another Prize, or at the very least, prevent him from hurting Lily again.
Instead, I had achieved the opposite. If Druin got his hands on her again…
My blood burbled with red-hot anger but I pushed it down, controlling myself and calming the maelstrom that threatened to overtake me. “There must be something someone can do. Thillak, maybe. He has the power to sway fights, to make the inmates throw in the towel…”
“Does Druin look like he’s in the mood to throw in the towel to you?” Cayggod asked.
I didn’t need to look at the beast to see his pure hatred. It was practically branded on the inside of my eyelids. His eyes were bloodshot red, the lines of anger on his face might have been carved from granite, the veins on his artificially pumped-up muscles straining to contain the strength within.
