Page 52 of Thief of Hearts

Which would be pankration.

The name meant “all strength” or “all power.” It was supposed to be the ultimate test of fighting skill. Warriors from all the neighboring nations were trained in this martial art so that if they were ever in the position of having lost their weapons, they would still be able to defeat their enemy.

Pankration was weapon-free and a combination of wrestling and boxing, although the hands weren’t covered with leather as they were during a boxing match. There was no biting or eye gouging allowed, no striking the groin or butting heads, and—thanks to one particularly gruesome encounter—no ripping out anyone’s internal organs. But other than that, everything was permitted.

The fighter’s only goal was to incapacitate their opponent by any means necessary, which made this sport especially brutal and violent.

And the brutality was why I had been raised on it. I had spent my entire childhood doing pankration with members of my family and the other warriors my age. It became more fun after my battle-favored ability manifested and I stopped losing the matches.

There were only two ways for the fight to end—either with someone being rendered unconscious or one of the competitors indicating their submission by raising a finger or tapping out.

No one wanted the fights to end in death—given that there were so many competitors here from so many different places, it would have been foolish to possibly invoke war by killing an opponent through recklessness or maliciousness. If I’d had to bet, I would have wagered that pankration was the reason Daemonians were no longer allowed to compete. They never submitted and they wouldn’t stop until their opponent had been completely destroyed.

Which meant at least one of the people in the match would die.

I left the room and headed to the arena. All the other competitors wore loincloths and I had on a fighting tunic. The announcer was speaking loudly, explaining the rules and that the competitors would be drawn by lots for each round, then the winners would battle each other until there was only one competitor left.

Which would be me.

The Epirian pushed past me and I called out, “Levern! Good luck!”

His shoulders noticeably tightened but he didn’t respond. It must have driven him to madness that everyone else would think I was being kind and only he knew that I was insulting him.

He had most likely stayed quiet because of his encounter two days ago with Zain. Perhaps I needed to rough him up a little so that he would know to be scared of me as well.

The announcer said that there would be a third way to lose—if a competitor was held to the ground for ten seconds without being able to get up, then they had lost.

I’d never heard of that as a finish to a pankration fight. They must have been very concerned about someone getting accidentally killed.

Then the announcer called out that there would be judges for this event as well. The judges would vote on the winner if two opponents became too exhausted to continue.

And then, to my utter shock, he said that the judges had the power to stop a fight at any time and declare one competitor the winner.

My hackles rose. Was that because of me? Would I be unable to win because the judges would vote for my opponent regardless of how well I did?

I would have to take out my competition as quickly as I could so that the judges wouldn’t have the opportunity to keep me from my prize.

Lots were drawn, the matches announced. I wasn’t in the first round, but they called out the fake name Zain had been using, the one on those documents he had stolen in order to enter the tournament—Theogenes.

I started making my way over to where he was fighting, wanting to watch him in action. A match nearby made me stop for a moment.

A shorter, stocky man fell to the ground. Usually that was an issue, as it would be easy for his opponent to get him into a match-ending stranglehold. But this was a feint, something his competitor didn’t seem to realize. The stocky man pretended like he was in distress to get the much bigger man down on the ground, where he easily used his arms and legs to hold the bigger man in place for ten seconds, making him the winner.

I was about to continue walking when another match grabbed my attention. Both of the men were on the ground wrestling, but the man on top was repeatedly trying to punch the other. His punches had no strength behind them.

Fool, I thought. He needed his body mass to power his punch and couldn’t access it while lying down. If he were standing, his gambit might have worked. If nothing else, he should have used his knuckles to throat punch his opponent. It wouldn’t require much power and would have impaired the other man.

Pathetic. He does not deserve to be competing!

The voice was my grandmother’s. She and my mother used to criticize my technique and the mistakes I had made while fighting.

A memory surfaced that I had forgotten.

It was me as a little girl, fighting back tears, and being yelled at by my grandmother for being soft and weak. I hated the way she and my mother spoke to me. Hated how mean they were “for my own good.”

Would I have done the same thing to Minha?

It would have broken her sweet little spirit.