Page 85 of The Pleasure Contract

Uh-huh. Just like he’d trained me to let my guard down and actually start to feel things for him.

The thunderous flap of drak wings can be heard behind me. I refuse to even look in the direction of the arena. I can hear either Puff or Lady make a screeching sound, accompanied by a loud cheer from the spectators.

There’s a thud behind me. The kind of thud that is very much the sound of someone’s hand smacking a glass window.

“I think someone’s got an admirer,” one of the lords I’d been talking to chuckles, his head inclining over my shoulder.

“Yeah,” I laugh nervously. “Don’t worry about him.”

“Don’t worry?” the older male blusters good-naturedly, nudging my arm with his. “I’m betting on your Northern Principality to win. So your prince better get back to playing instead of hanging around that window!”

He chuckles, but my head gets hung up on that ‘your prince’ phrase, the words swimming around and around in my mind like a whirlpool.

It gets to the point that I can’t stand it any longer.

“Excuse me,” I say to the small cluster of Xavianns I’d been talking to, before hightailing it out of there with Zek, and the feeling of a very familiar pair of eyes following me from the window.

“Lady Lois, Lady Lois!” Zek calls after me, but my heart doesn’t want my feet to stop. So I keep going.

I rush through some kind of utility hallway – nowhere near as fancy as the rest of the arena – sandy-colored breeze-block type bricks, and overhead pipes and vents. Next, I burst open a random door. It swings violently and almost knocks me out on the way back again. The room I step into is all wires and blinking lights. I think this must be what’s powering the terrain cells and all the arena technology. I don’t have time, nor the mental capacity, to marvel over the cleverness of it all. I just want to get out of here. I just want to breathe.

I head for the other end of the room, Zek close on my heels. He’s not calling my name anymore. Good. I can’t possibly turn around and explain to another soul why I can’t bear to look at Az right now.

Unfortunately for me, he’s very hard to avoid in the next room we burst into.

The room is very dark apart from a wall of glowing, floating screens. Some of the screens are larger than others. Two Xavianns are sitting at a large desk, pressing buttons, summoning various screens to the front, and sending others back.

“Northern just scored enough to release their second drak. Everything ready to go?” one of the Xavianns says.

“Yep. Go, go, go,” the other responds.

So this is like… the control center for the whole game?

“Dim lights on the fourth quadrant.”

“Dimming lights on the fourth quadrant in three, two, one.”

“Capital’s score allows for fog on Northern’s terrain. Turn on fog in the first and second quadrants.”

They’ve not even noticed Zek and I.

And I can’t help but stand still and watch the biggest screen of all – the one floating right in the center. It’s the one following Az around as he leaps off of his drak, grabbing hold of a hoop, only for Lady and Puff to circle back around so he can drop perfectly onto their back. The crowd loves him. Of course they do.

“Northern has scored. Award fifty percent of the third quadrant,” the worker orders his colleague.

They’re both very busy pressing buttons and turning dials when one of them pauses. He selects a screen from the back of the jumble of floating screens and brings it to the front. “Hey, what did Capital just conjure into play? Is that a-”

I cover my mouth, but the gasp escapes anyway.

The two Xavianns turn in their chairs to look at us, but I can’t look away from the screen.

Dropping my hands from my mouth, I feel numb and confused.

I feel so far away – almost detached from my body – when I blink at the puzzling image in front of me, trying to make sense of it.

I look to Zek beside me. “But-” Looking back at the screen, I still don’t understand what’s happening in that arena. “But that’s me?”

37