Natalia noticed first. Her purple eyes locked onto mine with the intensity of a targeting laser, tracked down to my ribs, assessed the damage, calculated recovery percentages, and arrived at a verdict that apparently satisfied her because so of the tension left her shoulders. She didn’t smile. Natalia Kuzmina did not smile before fights. She compressed all available warmth into a singularity behind her sternum and used it as fuel.
But her hand twitched. Toward . Just for a second.
Skylar noticed second, which was unusual because Skylar noticed everything first. She pushed off the wall with that boneless feline grace that made her look like she was made of liquid shadow and walked toward us without hurrying. Her violet eyes moved between and Isabelle, processed the tactical implications of our partnership, and apparently found them amusing.
"Well, well." Skylar stopped three feet away. "The Stray Dog and the Abdicated Queen versus the Ice Queen and the Phantom Blade." She cocked her head. The motion made her pink highlights catch the light. "This sounds like a pay-per-view event."
"It literally is," I said. "Twenty million viewers and counting."
"Mhm." Skylar stepped closer. Close enough that I could sll clove cigarettes and whatever expensive thing she put in her hair. Close enough that Natalia’s temperature signature spiked on the edge of my Thermal Vision. Skylar tilted her chin up and looked at through her lashes with an expression that belonged in a bedroom at two in the morning, not a combat staging area forty minutes before a nationally televised fight.
"You know," she said, keeping her voice just low enough that Isabelle would have to strain to hear, "if you let us win, I’ll give you that sloppy toppy tonight."
My brain short-circuited for approximately 0.3 seconds.
"That’s bribery."
"That’s incentive." She ran her tongue across her lower lip. Slowly. With the deliberate pacing of soone who knew exactly what she was doing to my cardiovascular system. "And it’s not just . Natalia’s already on board."
I looked past Skylar to where Natalia stood. My girlfriend, my Rank Ten Covenant, my first and most dangerous conquest, t my gaze and gave the smallest nod. A confirmation. A promise. The kind of silent communication that only worked between people who had mapped every inch of each other’s bodies and psychological vulnerabilities.
Natalia’s mouth curled at one corner. Not quite a smile. More like the beginning of one that she refused to let form because she knew I’d find it devastating. Which I did.
"Both of us," Skylar continued, her fingers walking up the center of my chest, each point of contact sending the Nectar of Devotion humming through my skin. "At the sa ti. Your room. After the broadcast crews pack up." She tapped my sternum once, hard enough to feel through the combat suit. "All you have to do is throw the match."
A threeso.
With Natalia and Skylar.
In the sa room. Together. Competing to outdo each other.
My imagination produced a high-definition preview reel that included Natalia’s possessive grip and Skylar’s infuriating grin and the sounds they both made when they stopped pretending they weren’t desperate for more and the way their bodies would look tangled together with mine in the dark. Natalia’s ice-cold hands and Skylar’s warm mouth and the Nectar amplifying everything until rational thought beca a luxury none of us could afford.
There is a reason my weakness is beautiful won. The System knew it. Apollo knew it. Aphrodite had built an entire divine quest line around it. Every single person in my life knew that the fastest way to compromise Satori Nakano’s tactical judgnt was to put him in a room with soone who slled good and had dangerous eyes.
And now there were two of them making the sa offer at the sa ti.
The temptation was real. Not the hypothetical, philosophical kind of temptation that people talked about in ethics courses. The visceral, blood-pumping, pants-tightening kind that made my pulse hamr against the inside of my wrists. I could already feel it. The way Skylar would look at from beneath her lashes while Natalia grabbed my jaw and turned my face toward her instead. The silent war they’d wage over who got to be on top. The mont, inevitable, where one of them would break composure first and the other would make her pay for it.
My brain said yes.
My body scread yes.
Every molecule of Nectar in my system lit up like a switchboard at the re possibility.
But Isabelle stood four feet behind . I could feel her gaze on the back of my skull like a sniper’s dot.
Isabelle Okoye. The Abdicated Queen. S-Rank potential. Fujin’s chosen vessel. A woman who had rejected the most prestigious guilds in the country because she found them morally repulsive. A woman who had watched build this entire operation from scratch, who had seen every manipulation and lie and calculated seduction, who had walked beside into a Gate and trusted with her life.
If I threw this match for a threeso, Isabelle would beat my ass.
Not taphorically. Not emotionally. She would literally take that spear and introduce it to parts of my anatomy that I needed for the exact activities Skylar was currently proposing. Isabelle had standards. She had principles. She was one of exactly three people in this entire academy whose respect I could not buy, bribe, or seduce, and she’d chosen to partner with because she believed I deserved it.
Throwing a match to get laid would vaporize that respect instantly.
And worse, it would prove every single thing the Sentinels said about us true. That the Onyx Hounds were rejects who didn’t take anything seriously. That our Number One ranking was a fluke built on hype and social dia tricks. That Satori Nakano, the Stray Dog, was exactly what Julian Valerius always claid he was: a nobody playing dress-up.
I leaned down until my mouth was level with Skylar’s ear.
"Best offer I’ve gotten all week," I murmured.
She made a sound. Low and pleased.
"But I’m going to have to pass."
The pleased sound died.
"Because Isabelle would literally murder . Like, physically. With a spear. In the arena. On cara."
User Comments
0 comments from readers