This isn’t some welfare scheme.

This isn’t some stepping stone to the outside world.

This is a death sentence.

That’s why the reporter is here. It’s her job to make sure everyone knows where we stand when this is over.

Maart is already on the mats when I exit my house. Alone.

They don’t even care that he’s there. No one actually cares about this fight. They expect Maart to win, they expect the record to be set straight. They expect to drink and party in my house tonight. They might string my dead body from a tree to make it a little more dramatic, but unlike the fight on the ship, this one is not a big deal.

The reporter is only here to record my death for the next issue of Ring of Fire.

This fight is nothing to these men but a restructuring.

What happens in this camp, and others like it around the world, it’s just… business.

Udulf and Lazar are both standing in front of the ring, smiling and laughing with drinks in hand, the ice in their crystal glasses rapidly melting. Patting each other on the back. Chatting up their peers and ignoring Anya, who stands among them, but is not one of them. All of them sweating in the sweltering heat as I walk towards the ring.

They don’t even acknowledge me. This is just another afternoon get-together. A little bit exotic because it’s my training village and none of them, save for Udulf and Lazar, have ever been here before. But this place is seriously not much to look at.

I glance over at the small hut, just behind the crowd of owners, and find Zoya, Rasha, and Irina standing on the porch. They will watch from there. Then I glance to the opposite side of the ring near the encroaching jungle, and see Rainer, and Evard, and all the other fighters. Only Sissy, Ling, and Cintia catch my eye and nod.

I don’t nod back.

This fight looks nothing like the last one on the ship. There are no drums, there is no dark sky under a new moon, no body paint, no spotlights, no slave boys, no one in my corner at all.

There are no expectations here aside from death and rebirth.

But that’s OK. I have lived with the threat of death for as long as I can remember. This is just one more day in the life of the Sick Heart.

I hop up in the ring and stand a few feet away from Maart and it takes several long seconds before the owners even notice the fight is about to start.

Insult, upon insult, upon insult.

Maart and I walk towards the center of the ring and bow. And while we are looking down at our thumbs, he says, in a low voice, “Finally. Something really worth fighting for.”

And when I look up to agree, he punches me in the face.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE - ANYA

Cort is his usual cool, collected self as he walks down the steps of his porch and makes his way towards the center training ring.

Everything about a fight day is significant. Every decision has purpose. And isn’t that how they like it? These sick men who prey on children in the shadows?

But they do it in the light of day.

Oh, none of them are giving interviews about their pedophilic tendencies. Not to the masses, not even the Ring of Fire reporter wants to hear that shit. But these men are far, far, far too smug and confident in their untouchable status to hide their depraved, immoral, deviant behavior. And why should they? They are proud of it.

But it’s always hidden in plain sight.

That’s why the fight on the ship had the drums, and the dark moon, and the symbols painted on my body. That’s why there were black lights to make us glow. That’s why we were naked. That’s why there were slave boys dressed in gold.

They thrive on that shit. It’s like a secret handshake to them. It comes with a wink and a nod. And they all laugh and wink and nod back.

Take Cort’s name, for example. Udulf’s peers all know Cort was his biological child, just like we all know that Evard and Ainsey are Cort’s children. And Udulf gave Cort a different surname because Cort is no one to Udulf. He is nothing but a slave.

He told me that himself just yesterday morning.

Cort’s mother was of no consequence to Udulf. He has no idea who she was. Just some slave girl, maybe no older than a child herself when she gave birth. I’m not sure about that. But it doesn’t matter. The only point is Cort’s actual name. Van Breda.

It doesn’t make much sense unless you have other clues, because ‘breda,’ as far as I know—and I’m pretty fucking good with languages—can’t be translated into anything meaningful. It’s a Dutch city, but that’s not meaningful. You have to look at Pavo’s last name to really see what they are doing here with the surnames. Pavo’s surname was dripping with symbolism. It means ‘bloodline’ in Hungarian.

Tags: J.A. Huss Romance
Source: readsnovelonline.net