Chapter 17: Chapter 17 - Repercussions

I had slept a little after I’d made my way back down to my room, the feelings Asled had given me, enough to light my dreams for a very long time. He had not only made me forget James, but he had made every part of me, his.

It wasn’t just the physical pleasure that had left me feeling restored, though that had been undeniable. It was the gentleness, the care, the way he’d asked permission at each step. The contrast between his touch and James’s violation couldn’t have been starker. With Asled, I’d felt present in my body again, safe in my own skin. For a few precious hours, I’d reclaimed what James had tried to take from me.

The light from the sun and the cold woke me. Were the furnaces even running? I’d never known it to be so cold.

I shivered.

When washed and dressed, at least I felt better, heading to the mess hall for breakfast.

I had seen Sal around, but not much. She dealt with one or two burns here and there, but that was it. She, however, spotted me, made her way over. “Mind if I sit?” she asked, but then sat anyway as I took a drag of coffee. “Do you need the morning-after pill?”

My coffee came out of my nose, and not in a nice way.

“Shit, sorry,” she said. “I’m not used to talking to people, but Leigh said you might need it.”

“What is it?” I asked, then on her blank expression said. “My Mom died….”

“Oh, it means if you had unprotected sex, that you won’t get pregnant.” She lowered her voice. “It’s not like the old drugs, but this works well enough.”

“He said I couldn’t get pregnant,” I added, doing my best force away the images of him with his neck tore apart.

The lie came easily, building on the fiction I’d already established. I hated the deception, but survival demanded it. Every interaction now required careful calibration, what did they know? What did they suspect? What story had I told to whom? One misstep in my narrative could unravel everything. This constant vigilance was exhausting in a way that physical labor never had been.

“Men lie,” Sal said and slid two pills across the table for me. “I brought it anyway, in case. Take one now, the other tonight.”

“Thanks,” I said and took the first pill, putting the other in a zipped pocket in my shirt, I mean I did still have unprotected sex, just not with James.

Sal dipped her head, then instead of walking away, stepped in even closer. “I don’t know if you need to hear this, but whatever happened out there. I’m glad he’s dead.”

She was truly gone before I could reply.

Her words lingered in the air after she’d left. I’m glad he’s dead. How many others felt the same? How many women had James hurt before me? Had he raped some of them? Killed some of them? The realization that his death might have prevented future suffering didn’t erase my part in it, but it offered a kind of grim justification. Perhaps Death and I had done what the community couldn’t or wouldn’t do for itself.

I don’t know what I expected to happen after that. Go to my room and do what? Leigh had said she’d still cover me for today, but should I go to Maggie myself?

I decided that was more than likely the best option, so I made my way across the yard to the main house where she lived.

Two guards on the doors glanced at me, and I just nodded. “I need to talk to Maggie about James.”

One of them turned to the door, slipped inside, and I waited. The cold seeped into my bones even though the sun was shining now.

When the door opened, there was someone else, but they bid me in. “Maggie is in with the others of the council, but she has agreed. Follow me.”

I didn’t know a lot of the people that were here, but I also didn’t want too, I’d vowed not to stay that long, I didn’t want to stay past this next week, if I could talk to Reece maybe we could…

Who was I kidding? I’d tried every day to get near to where they kept the ‘gifted’, but nothing but frustration came after I was turned away every single time.

The next door that opened up just led into what was probably a dining room for the house, it had been stripped of most of the past. Keeping it clean but bare.

The room radiated authority - not through ornate decorations or symbols of power, but through its deliberate austerity. These were people who controlled resources in a resource-scarce world, who didn’t need visual reminders of their status. Their power was demonstrated in what they chose not to display, in what they could afford to leave stripped away.

I acknowledged Maggie, but she didn’t even look at me, writing something down on her the pages of a book before her. “Time of death was late afternoon,” she said. “Multiple injuries led to James bleeding out. His clothes were ripped apart and strewn across the forest over. There were signs of a big struggle. I believe he might have even hurt the creature.”

The four other faces with Maggie’s never gave anything else away, just nodded with her as she continued to write.

The pen stopped, and Maggie looked up. “You were last to see him,” Maggie said. “What can you tell us, Cerys?”

I had rehearsed in my mind everything I wanted to say, but my mouth and those words wouldn’t form.

Every possible story flashed through my mind in an instant. The full truth, unthinkable. A partial truth, he attacked me, I ran, something killed him, dangerously close to suspicion. A complete fabrication - he angered me, we parted ways - potentially contradicted by evidence they’d already gathered. I needed something plausible, something that aligned with their findings but removed my agency from his death.

“James had taken a liking to you,” one of the other council members said. “He was often asking about you or Reece at our meetings.”

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

I looked at him and frowned. “Why Reece?”

“Your brother has shown great promise in among our gifted. He wanted to make sure we were doing our best by him.”

“And are you?”

Maggie laughed. “Still ever the tiger. Your brother is taking part in our first trials later today. I believe you’ve already gotten an invitation…”

I didn’t deny it. Instead, I found my voice. “James promised he’d look after me,” I said. “That, my beauty, outshone everyone here.”

There were a couple of snickers. “I was nothing more than a notch on his belt.”

“So, you left him in the woods afterwards, feeling what hurt, rejected?”

“Yes,” I lied. “I felt guilty and ashamed. I could give myself to someone and not see who they were underneath.”

“He was alive when you left him?” Maggie’s eyes never left mine.

“Yes,” I said. “He was taunting me, calling me names I don’t understand.”

“Like what?” someone else asked.

“Whore, slut, easy meat.”

“Sounds like James,” the first man replied.

Maggie didn’t look convinced. “We’re done here. Report back to Leigh. I know I’ll see you later today. Enjoy the games.”

I did the only thing I could. I dipped my head and left the room. Hearing their words.

“You really think she knows nothing of the beast that killed him?”

“She’s lying for sure, though I can’t see or feel anything from her. It wasn’t a bonded beast. She’s no gift at all.”

“Nothing for me either,” someone else said.

Their suspicion was palpable, but their conclusion gave me an unexpected advantage. They sensed deception but attributed it to normal human dishonesty - shame, perhaps, or fear of punishment. They couldn’t detect my connection to Death because they were looking for the wrong thing, a conventional “gift” or familiar bond. My protection lay in their inability to conceive of what I actually was.

I wanted to hear more, but my escort took me out back to the yard.

Shoulders slumped, I walked across to the furnace and down even if I wasn’t working. I could give the person there a little help. It was afterwards such demanding work, and I felt up to it.

Dust was the one working the fires. He was very good at it, and yet was also glad of the break while I filled in for a bit.

Leigh found me later as I was about to head to grab some lunch.

There we sat and ate while she talked. “Do you know anything about the arena?” she asked.

I shook my head.

“Basically, they pitch kids against each other to fight using their abilities. The kids then rank up according to their levels. The more they use their gifts, the stronger they become.”

That caught my interest. “The more they use them?”

“Yes, so like your brother, he will have been asked to show them what he can do, and practice and practice till he was at least a level they think he would survive.”

I put my spoon down, gulping at my glass of water. “He could get hurt?”

“Very much so,” Leigh said.

Fear for Reece momentarily overshadowed my own concerns. For years, my entire focus had been keeping him safe, keeping us both alive. Now he was being forced to fight for entertainment, to risk injury or worse while I stood helplessly by. The system that had granted him power had also made him a target, a resource to be exploited. The bitter irony wasn’t lost on me - the very gift that should have empowered him had instead made him a commodity.

My stomach twisted, but this wasn’t a stomach-ache. My period pain had almost gone, though I’d been feeling sicker. I put that down to the events of the whole last twenty-four hours. So I asked. “How long does this last?” I indicated down.

“For some, can be anything from 3 to 8 days. Depending how heavy.” She frowned. “You were pretty heavy, so if you think it’s finishing up, it possibly is, and it’s your first one. My first was only a two-day bleed.”

“Okay, yeah, I think it’s almost over, thankfully.”

Leigh cleaned up for us, and my nerves showed. “Toilet first though before we go,” I said.

She smiled. “You prob don’t want to use the public toilets there anyway. They’re usually pretty bad.”

I was quick, but no sooner had I been—did I want to go again. When we finally walked over to the other side of the complex, I could hear the excitement in almost everyone we crossed paths.

There was quite the queue as we got to the doors, but waited patiently till we reached two men checking tickets before letting them in.

“Coming to take all my money again,” the guard that held out his hand for our passes said.

“You know it,” Leigh winked at him, took her pass back and waited while he looked at mine.”

“This is a fake,” he said, and was about to call one of the others on duty over.

“Miles, she’s with me,” Leigh said, putting a hand on his arm. “She won’t be a problem, I promise you.”

“I can’t be—”

“Miles,” she squeezed, “her brother is fighting for the first time.”

“Reece,” I said.

“Reece is your brother,” he asked, then waved the other guard back off.

“Yes, have you seen him?”

“I’ve seen the little fucker fight.”

“He good?” Leigh asked.

“Good, that kid’s going places,” Miles said. “I’m betting on him today.”

A strange mixture of pride and dread twisted in my chest. Reece had clearly impressed them with his abilities, had gained recognition in ways I never could. Part of me was proud of him, proud that he’d found a way to not just survive but excel in this new world. But another part was terrified - successful fighters would be put into more dangerous matches, more valuable assets to be risked for entertainment and profit. His talent was both protection and danger.

“Oh really,” Leigh smiled. “Then I won’t.” She let go of his arm. “Come.”

I followed her and didn’t look back. “That was a close call,” she said. “Who gave you that pass?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “They dropped it in the shower room.”

“Well, next time they’ll have to do better, you need to warn them.”

“Maybe,” I said. I didn’t even know who they were to really thank them.

The thin corridor we were in opened up and into a massive, almost rectangular arena. People were finding seats at the front. I wanted to get as close as possible. But Leigh pulled me back.

“We need to see from higher up.”

“Why?” I asked but followed her up the steps still.

When she found somewhere to sit, she patted the seat next to me.

“Because I want to get a look at everyone in the crowd and watch those in the fights.”

I still didn’t understand, till someone came out from a set of doors at the far end.

He was riding a horse, and a beauty of one at that. “You have livestock here too?”

“Not just livestock, that’s Kar and his familiar, Cricket.”

Familiar….

Like I am not. Death whispered in my ear. Remember?

The weight of Death’s presence was becoming familiar, a shadow at the edge of my awareness. Not a constant companion, but something that seemed to appear when significant moments approached. I was beginning to understand that our connection was neither simple nor conventional—not a “familiar” bond as others understood it, but something older, stranger, more fundamental.

I felt a tiny weight on my shoulder and wanted to look. You may look, he said. I will let you see me—once.

I peered at my shoulder, and there was the tiniest bid with red eyes I’d ever seen. He floofed his feathers, and I felt the shift in his weight. You’re so small, I said.

What better size to flitter around? No one can see me…

Why are you here?

Because I am needed, he said.

Someone is going to die?

Yes.

The simple certainty in that single word chilled me. Not a possibility or a risk—a certainty. Death had come to collect, here in this arena where children fought for entertainment. And somehow, I was connected to this process, a conduit or perhaps an anchor for Death’s manifestation. The responsibility was terrifying. Would I be complicit in another death? Would this become a pattern, a price I paid for protection?

“Welcome to the first arena matching this year!” Kar called.

When I looked back to my shoulder, Death was gone.