Page 31 of On Broken Bonds

But that laughter is not directed at me. It’s directed at Thorian.

I glance at him, trying to read his reaction, but he stares straight ahead, his jaw ticking with such ferocity that I half expect him to crack a tooth.

Since we met, Thorian has done everything in his power to prepare me for the trials, for this and all that will follow. But right now, he doesn’t even acknowledge that I exist, let alone offer me some insight about the current onslaught of taunting, gasping laughter.

“Oh, that is good,” Valtor grunts out, his deep voice seeming to run the length of my bones. He wipes a tear from his eye, much like he did when I approached him and asked him to return my sister from her place as the Courted Prize. It makes me tense, this false show of mirth. “Thorian, you return to us once more! Huzzah! Someone roll out the finest ale!”

My mouth is dry, secondhand embarrassment pooling in my stomach. Just an hour earlier flashes in my mind, the expression on Thorian’s face when he’d tried talking to me during dinner.

“Look, Nyx, there’s something—” he’d said.

But Thorian never got to tell me what that something was.

“When was the first time you competed, Thorian?” Aqualis asks, her voice less soothing now, a sharp, restless edge creeping beneath the words. She reaches out to rest a hand against Valtor as though they are old companions. “Do you remember? How many times now?”

“This will be the fifth,” Eryndor says matter-of-factly from the far end of the line. He lifts his pen and studies the tablet in his lap as though consulting a record. “Seven years ago was the first. With the warlock.”

“That’s right,” Valtor booms. “Oh, how the magic wielder wailed when he was consumed by that chimera. But you escaped, didn’t you? Not a tear shed.”

The words strike me like a physical blow. Thorian had competed before? My thoughts begin racing so quickly I can barely keep hold of them. Thorian has done this before. Not once, but four times. And he never told me.

Why didn’t he tell me?

“The second time was with a vampire,” Soryn says serenely, leaning back in her throne as she taps one jeweled finger thoughtfully against her chin. “That poor drinker bled to death. Ironic, really.”

“The third and fourth were both with teams of shifters. Big, strong things,” Terranis grunts, crossing his thick arms. Several leaves snap loose from the vines curled around him, drifting lazily to the floor. He pays them no mind. “The fourth try, I’ll admit, even I thought the curse had broken. I thought Thorian might actually win. I was almost rooting for him.”

“Well, Thorian never truly loses,” Eryndor remarks, his shrewd gaze lowering to us. Then his attention shifts to me, and what I find there looks dangerously close to pity. “Only his partners do.”

A hollow sensation opens in my stomach. All his other partners died.

A thousand frantic thoughts crash through me at once. Why would he keep this from me? Did he think it didn’t matter? Did he assume I’d back out if I knew? Or worse, does he believe my death is inevitable enough that it wasn’t worth mentioning? If this is his fifth attempt, if every person who stood where I stand now is dead, then what exactly have I walked into?

“I wish you’d stop embarrassing me, son,” Valtor says, but there’s cruelty in his voice.

At first, I think the word ‘son’ is casual, the kind of mocking familiarity an old man might use in a tavern. Then Thorian jerks beside me as though struck, and understanding crashes over me.

There is nothing casual about it.

“Really,” Valtor says, leaning forward, his massive hands gripping the arms of his throne. “You’d think a demi-god would fare better in such a simple little game. A son of mine. Shameful. If only you had inherited sufficient power. If only you weren’t born… weak and useless.”

“Two years was nearly enough for us to forget your repeated failures,” Aqualis says, lifting her goblet for a long drink. “But I suppose desperation has driven you back. And now you’ve found someone even more desperate to drag down with you.”

When their collective gaze settles on me, every instinct in my body screams to step back.

I force myself to remain still, even though my thoughts are spinning too wildly to settle. He’s a demi-god. He has competed before. His partners all died. And somehow, despite all of that, he chose me.

What does that mean?

When their gazes collectively land on me, I can sense their pity. Thorian has competed before, competed often, and his partners never make it out alive. Surely, this means they’re thinking of me as simply more fodder for his efforts.

I bite my tongue and stand as still and tall as I can. There’s nothing else I can do.

For entertainment, Valtor and the others conjure a projection of previous games, Thorian’s previous partners, all dying in increasingly gruesome ways before me. Screaming, writhing. The vampire leaking enough blood to fill a bathtub.

At the conclusion of their little show, I’m certain they’re going to look at me with expectation, hoping for me to cry or wet myself. Or perhaps turn on Thorian for this withholding.

Of course I’m upset that he didn’t tell me. But surely, with how desperate I am, Thorian should have known that it wouldn’t matter to me? I don’t exactly have other choices.