"I know."
"You're bleeding a lot."
"I know."
I stood up, my hands twisting in the fabric of the dress, what little there was of it. The question I needed to ask sat on my tongue like poison, but I forced it out anyway.
"Where do you want to do it?"
He blinked. "Do what?"
Heat flooded my face. "You know. Sex. Where do you want—"
"No."
The word was sharp. Final. And he looked... offended?
I shook my head, making sure my ears worked. "What?"
"That's not why I won you."
"Then why—" If not for sex... I didn't even want to think of the alternative.
"To protect you." He said it like it was obvious. Like there could be no other reason.
My mind went blank. "You don't even know me."
"Knowing someone doesn't mean they don't deserve protection."
"Then why would you—"
"A friend asked me to find you. To help you." He moved toward the bed, each step clearly agonizing. "Nansar. He said you'd be coming to Fange City. Said you'd need protection."
Nansar. I knew the name. Duke Ako's son, who been a party to his father's assassination attempt and sent to Palaydium for his crimes. He'd been instrumental in rescuing Admiral Blackwood's daughter Chloe and earned a pardon.
"I don't understand."
Ahrick lowered himself onto the bed with a groan that sounded like it came from somewhere deep in his chest. "The others—the fighters in the pit. They would have hurt you." His eyes met mine, and there was something fierce in them. Something absolute. "I couldn't let that happen."
"Will you hurt me?"
"Never."
The word hung in the air between us.
I believed him.
I didn't know why. Didn't know anything about him except that he'd nearly gotten himself killed to win me.
But I believed him.
"Do you work for the Prime?" I asked, trying to piece together how this all fit. If he was some kind of agent, perhaps the Alliance operative the Prime had mentioned.
Ahrick laughed. The sound was rough, humorless, and it made him wince as it pulled at his injuries. "Of a sort."
The way he said it—bitter, mocking—told me everything I needed to know about how he felt about that arrangement.
There was history there. Whatever connection Ahrick had to the Prime, it wasn't loyalty. It seemed something closer to a leash he was trying to slip. Like me.
