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"You know what's the worst? I let you in." A droplet rolls down her narrow cheek and she swipes it away, staring at my hand. "I've been okay for years without a single friend. I've survived. And now I feel like you've murdered the only friend I ever had. I hate you because I want my friend to comfort me…and he doesn't exist."
Her crying breaks me. I reach out and brush my knuckles lightly along her arm. "Mina. Please. It's not me. I swear it's not."
Even as I say it, though, I don't know if I'm lying. My memories are a mess. How can I not remember things as important as this? Shouldn't a gladiator remember his fights? His glories? Shouldn't I remember touching a female other than her? But when I rack my brain, trying to find evidence of these things, all that is there is Mina. Mina touching me in the shower. Mina in the bed with me this morning, making soft sounds as I ground my cock against the cleft of her ass.
She'll never let me touch her again. Just like in her story, Mina can never love the monster.
Mina is distant all night. She doesn't want me to touch her, or even talk to her, and I eventually give up, because my repeated attempts to convince her that I'm not a monster just make her more upset. The foods she chose for us remain uneaten, and when she will not join me in the bed, I don't force her. Instead, I take the blanket and carefully wrap it around her in her spot in the corner. I lie flat on my back on the mattress and pick through my memories, trying to find something—anything—that will tell me that I am not the monster Mina thinks I am.
Regular bouts are battles to the death. Two gladiators enter the arena pit, using the weapons of choice that their owners have provided. Unarmed bouts are increasingly popular, where one or both gladiators are given no outside weapons. As such, the gladiators are free to use what they can to take out their opponent. A match is considered a “win” if one opponent is killed, knocked unconscious, or asphyxiated into a stasis state, dependent upon the species. Loss of limbs does not indicate the end of a match.
Each lord may have multiple gladiators in his stable, but only one roster will be entered into a competition. Each roster should include six mid-level gladiators, one prize gladiator to head the stable, and three slaves to be donated to the competition for use in matches and/or as prizes.
A win will give a stable five points, a tie three points, and a loss one point. Points will be detracted if a gladiator should go rogue and attack anyone other than his opponent. The penalty list is as follows: ten points detracted for attacking the lord of a stable, five points for an announcer, five points for each audience member wounded…
The litany of rules chugs through my head, all of them useless. There are no faces assigned to these words, no memories, no nothing. They do not feel as if they belong to me. They are just words in my head.
Mina wakes up before dawn and heads toward the antechamber, heading out to get our food.
"You'll come back?" I say, and my voice is as desperate as I feel.
"I don't have a choice." She still won't look at me. And when she returns a short time later with my favorite foods and hers in a slave bowl, it feels as if the wall between us is back again. We're no longer friends and companions, she is telling me silently. She is my slave, here only because I wanted her.
I should be kind and insist that they send her back to the kitchens, with the rest of the cooking and cleaning slaves. But if I am as awful as she says, why not own it? So I keep her.
We are both silent as I head out for the day's training. She sits in her normal spot in the sun, surrounded by clone guards, at the edge of the training pit. I try not to watch her closely, but it's clear I am distracted. My opponents have shock-stick clubs this day, and they pound on me relentlessly, sending fire up my veins with every score. The trainer in his armor shouts at me to concentrate, but I only snarl at him and return to my starting spot, ready for the next bout. All the while, I watch Mina. She is expressionless, her dark brows the only color in her small face.
The trainer turns to see what I'm looking at, and he scowls when he realizes it's my female. "Get her out of here," he says to the guards. "She's a distraction today."
