"Is it true that your kind never gets nervous?" said the girl.
Cimorene gave her a glance despite being more interested in stretching. The girl was new, that much was obvious from the shining pommels of her weapons and that silly scowl on her face.
The question, however, was an old one, and Cimorene had long grown bored hearing it. "Not over dying, no. If you do, then you shouldn't be here."
Now the girl flushed. "I'm not scared. And I don't need some crusty old bones wrapped in a shroud to give me the guts to fight."
Cimorene said nothing. She had never been the mentoring type, and suspected that if the girl already wavered at this stage, then she would never rise above duels that settled petty grudges between lower-ranked pack members. Then again, perhaps the Lady of the Dead would turn Her eternal smile to the girl and grant Her favor. One never knew.
In the silence that followed, Cimorene straightened up and began shadowfencing. She had already dressed in her fighting leathers, including the backless top long notorious in her fights. Even though she never looked over while striking at the air, she still sensed the girl's gaze on the skulls tattooed on her back. She had been told they shimmered like moonlight. Her declaration of faith to the Lady.
The barren room they waited in suddenly vibrated from ceiling to floor as muffled howls rose, three thousand voices strong. The wolf packs of Crescent City, gathered to watch bones break and blood spill in their names.
The girl flinched and turned pale. Cimorene straightened out of her stance. They both recognized the significance of that cheer: the fight had just ended.
When the girl didn't move, Cimorene raised an eyebrow. "You'd better get to the entrance. It doesn't take them long to clean up the ring."
The girl nodded stiffly. "Good luck, if you believe in that sort of thing."
"I don't." Then Cimorene returned to her practice, trying to work out the stiffness in her left shoulder. And her knee still protested the more taxing footwork...
She didn't look up when the girl left, or when a new round of howls sounded, this time in greeting to the next combatants. Footsteps, thoughâthose caught her attention. There was no mistaking that stride. Somehow, even his walk dripped with authority. He stopped somewhere behind her, and for the first time that night, her heart lurched.
Still, she kept her expression nonchalant while turning to face Thane Frost, alpha-king of the Frosthound Pack. "You've interrupted me. That means I can blame you if I lose tonight."
He gave her a glare that would have turned any of his subjects into whimpering pups, but she only smiled and moved in to give him the traditional greeting. "Not that I would, my king."
Perhaps she added a sultry note to her voice, the one that always turned his eyes dark with lust. And perhaps she nipped at that strong jaw rather than merely nuzzled against it.
When she drew back, his eyes had indeed gone dark, but he also looked ready to kill her, himself. "You're not going out there. I'm retiring you from the ring."
It was a shock, and it wasn't a shock at all. Cimorene gave herself a breath to stay calm. "A king may do whatever he wishes, even if it's to make a fool of himself. But Larthas insulted your name; if you don't send me out to avenge it, what kind of reputation will you have? Will you ignore threats, next? Perhaps greet a rival pack's invasion rather than repel it?"
A muscle in his jaw twitched, but that was all. Ah, he had grown so serious of late. Ever since streaks of grey had appeared in his dark hair. When she reached out to run fingers through the one by his temple, he caught her hand, stroking the scar along her palm where a dagger had once stabbed through.
Despite the feather-light touch, his expression remained grim. "I'll replace you with Ambrose. He's already warming up."
"Ambrose isn't as good as I am."
"Maybe not, but he's younger."
"Twenty-nine is old?"
"It is when you've fought as often and hard as you have."
Dread wrapped cold fingers around her heart. So he had found out. She tried to bluff her way through, anyway. "Oh, my knee? It's fully healed, and I've adapted my style toâ"
"Your head, Cimorene." His voice still seethed, but something in his gaze softened. "The healers told me everything. How you're throwing up. How lights hurt your eyes. They say you've reached a point of taking 'noticeable' brain damage."
"You made them break their sacred vows?" She pulled her hand from his before he could feel it trembling. She hated feeling vulnerable, especially in front of him. She was supposed to be his dagger, his sword. The one weapon that would never shatter or miss its mark.
When he shrugged, the movement carrying an insouciance that only alpha-kings held for such things, she added, "And do you intend to make me break mine?"
"You mean prying your mind from that fucking death cult and giving you a chance to enjoy life? Yes."
She should have known their relationship would spiral to this. Alpha-kings always wanted more in the greedy way of a wolf gorging on a kill until its stomach threatened to split. The priestesses had even warned her about it just before she had stepped past the cloister walls, young and eager and so stupidly sure her heart would never worship anything but the Lady. She hadn't listened. She hadn't realized.
Finally, she said, "Don't do this to me. Don't take this fight away."
He scoffed. "Do you really want to meet your Lady Death so soon?"
"You are a fool." Her voice flared into a snarl, and she could feel how her teeth now pressed against her lips as sharp fangs. "I have fought for you for nine years. Do you think I'm one of those coy courtiers who show their affections through smiles and poetry? I bleed for your honor, you bastard, and treasure every moment of it. There is no finer way to die than in your name. Yours."
She hadn't realized she had stepped close to him again until his hand caught her chin. "And what if I want you to live for me?"
"As what? A scrubwoman cleaning up after your pack? That's all my body will be good for if I don't die by the blade."
"As my queen."
She would have laughed, but there was no humor in his face. Instead, his expression was the same as whenever he had been told an idea of his was impossible. He would offer that sly side-glance and make it happen, anyway.
"No one would ever accept it. You'd have a rebellion on your hands before the crown was even on my head. Although, I suppose it'd be apropos if my realm was a pile of corpses. Queen of Necropolis. The Lady would be well pleased."
"Fuck that hag."
"Fuck the pack."
For a long moment, they stared at each other, eyes glaring and teeth bared.
Then the crowd roared, shaking the walls around them. It could have only meant one thing, that frantic exhilaration that went on for heartbeats.
"A death," said Cimorene. The tattoos on her back burned, and she quickly turned away, bowing her head in prayer to the Lady.
When she looked up again, Thane had already performed a viewing spell on a nearby mirror. Rather than his reflection, the glass showed a view of the dueling ring. The combatant from the other pack screamed her victory at the crowd, her broken, gushing nose taking nothing away from the triumph on her face. As for the girl who had spoken to Cimorene only a little earlier...her face was pristine while she lay limp on the ground, but the healers frantically working on her midsection were covered in blood.
"She was disemboweled," said Thane, his voice flat. From his expression, he saw her face on that ruined body, not the girl's.
Then he looked over, his eyes gleaming. "You're not going to die for me."
"Of course I am. It's why you brought me into your pack."
She had meant to needle him into anger, to drive from his face that musing, tender look that always left her weak from head to toe.
It didn't work. "I know. All my advisers were against choosing you as the royal duelist. A skinny stick of a girl from a religious cult obsessed with death. You'd never be loyal to me, they said. Only to your skull-faced goddess. Were they right after all?"
Suddenly, it was hard to swallow. "You're demanding me to die old and crippled when I could die in combat and ascend to the Lady's sacred halls. You're demanding this of me, and I'm listening rather than stabbing you through. Isn't that answer enough?"
"If you wish it," he said, voice falling quiet, "I will throw everything I have into seeing you as my queen."
He would rip her heart in two. "And what gives you the right to take anything from Her?"
"What makes a god's desire stronger than mine? They don't even work to keep their realm."
It was that utter arrogance that had always drawn her to him. Some part of her often wondered if, like certain heroes of myth, he could fight the gods and win, too, if he ever truly decided on it. He was the first creature she'd met that made her consider the squalling of life rather than the calm of death. Of blood beating through veins, not spilling on the ground.
Why did her heart pound so hard as he watched her? This wasn't the same sensation as the sweet lust that ran through her whenever his tongue tasted her skin. Fear? No, fear was what she'd felt when that damned healer had told her the dizziness would grow worse if she kept fighting.
She closed her eyes as the chaos of her thoughts crystallized into a decision. "I need to take this fight."
The growl that came out of the alpha-king ended in a near whine. Despair cut off.
Before he could respond further, she reached for him again, nuzzling up until her face rested against his. "Let me defend your honor one last time. Let me go before the Lady and face Her judgment of my treacherous heart. And when I leave that ring, it will either be as a soul joining  Her...or as your queen."
He growled again, but this time more softly.
"Please, Thane." It was the first time she'd ever asked something of him.
Then one of the ringside assistants scurried into the room, too harried to notice how she stepped away from Thane, or how it took the alpha-king a heartbeat to regain his imperious posture.
"It's time," said the assistant, sounding breathless. "Do we still use Ambrose?"
Every part of her felt frozen until Thane answered. "No. Cimorene is ready."
There was no privacy for a goodbye, at least not one beyond what an impartial alpha-king would give his trusted weapon, and so she only bowed, gaze fixed on his, before following after the assistant.
Then Thane spoke. "Cimorene."
A glance back found him standing casually, hands in his pockets and face without expression. "Come back to me, and not in a body bag."
She smiled, wanting it to be his last memory of her if things came to that. "Of course, my king."
Then she continued down the tunnel, the growing rumble of the crowd igniting a lightness in her steps. She would fight, and she would win or she would lose. Perhaps the Lady would grant Her favor and allow her to live life rather than worship death.
One never knew until one found out.