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Morpheos was waiting.
He wasn’t as large as either of the other two people she had fought. Bigger than her, of course. Everyone was. But compact and full of muscle. He had a sword that nearly matched the one Constantine used. Already, she could see him stepping into the Andine flow.
She smirked and matched his steps. He startled only briefly, surprised to see she knew his people’s ancient footwork.
“Kurios has been teaching you well,” Morpheos taunted.
Of course he knew Constantine. The honorific on his lips sounded more like a sneer though. There was no love lost between the men. She hadn’t known they had a history. Constantine hadn’t mentioned that.
“He’s not your kurios, I suspect.”
She lifted her sword, pushing forward for an advantage. Morpheos met her easily. Their swords clanging in the humid air.
“My kurios wasn’t a traitor. He fought until the end to keep a Doma like you out of our homeland. Constantine rolled over and gave up.”
Kerrigan rolled her eyes. “Do I look like I have Doma powers?”
“You look just like him,” Morpheos said, pushing his advantage and leading her backward toward Vulsan. “The bastard sitting on a stolen throne, dripping with the blood of his enemies. The blood of my people.”
“Coincidence.”
She tried to regain the upper hand of the fight, but Morpheos was too secure. Even the crowd was surprised at how easily he maneuvered her into worse territory. Maybe Constantine had had a point about not messing around.
“I don’t believe in coincidences,” he told her as he dragged his sword across her exposed thigh.
She shouted in surprise, and he moved in closer, jabbing the pommel of his sword into her nose. The damn thing broke a second time, and blood gushed onto the sand. The crowd roared, not with approval, but certainly not outrage either.
Kerrigan needed a minute. She needed to regroup. With a blind dive, she rolled away from him and sprinted half the distance of the arena. The crowd booed her. She didn’t care. Her nose was still bleeding. She couldn’t win this way. She’d seen Morpheos fight. Had watched him wipe the sand with a Domaran man. There had been vengeance on his face then. She’d assumed it was because of the destruction of Andine. But she saw it here on his face now. He was full of vengeance. Nothing she could say or do would change his mind about the outcome.
Different plan. She wasn’t going to beat him this way.
She hated that Constantine was right. That any kind of taunt or tease or playing to the crowd was only going to make him more dangerous. Which meant that she had to fight … fair. She had to beat him at his own game.
Morpheos came toward her at a stomping pace. “No use running away. It’s just going to prolong your downfall.”
“You’re right,” she said with a smirk, blood on her teeth. Then, she swung her sword and raised it to meet him. “Let’s do this.”
The fight was bloody and brutal. He was a master at his craft. It was only that she’d had other training besides the Andine style that she survived at all. He would have destroyed her at his home fighting style. She kept him at bay by changing her footwork every few steps, causing him to startle and start over. Again and again.
Until there was blood in both of their eyes and both shallow and deep cuts running freely down their arms. Their stamina was failing. No matter that Morpheos had fought on battlefields, as she had. In the end, he wanted to win to prove something to the Doma. She had to win to help her people. His people were already defeated.
She choked on tears as she finally dragged him down, pushing him to his back, straddling his chest, and holding her sword to his neck.
“You … win,” he coughed out. Blood splattered into her face.
“Yield,” she begged.
He was a good fighter. He didn’t deserve this. None of them did.
“Never.”
She wanted to close her eyes, but he deserved more than that. She dragged the sword across his neck. Then, without a backward glance at Vulsan or the crowd, she kicked off of Morpheos and disappeared below. They chanted her name anyway.
Kerrigan couldn’t even watch Fordham’s win against Alderic. She listened to the bloodthirsty screams with melancholy and disgust. It was so much easier to be removed from the killing and cheer it on. It was another thing entirely to know your opponent so well that you could break them, even the best of them.
Fordham returned to the empty gladiator quarters after a lengthy battle. He was coated in sand and blood. She didn’t care.
She rushed into his arms, pressing her lips hard against his unyielding mouth. “Ford.”
“Kerrigan.” The monster was still crawling under his skin.
“My little princeling.”
He growled low. “Halfling.” He said the cruel nickname without the bite it had originally had. It felt so long ago when they had used those names for each other. How much younger and softer they had been.
