Iris's ribbon of blood hovered.
The ribbon a hand's width from her sternum did not feel like the ribbons she had watched his lovers accept.
It felt like something else.
The prompt sat in the back of her skull and asked the same question it was asking everyone else. The Bloodfather wished to wele her into his family. Did she accept.
The answer in her mouth was not the answer her allies had given. The Vex-shaped, pink-cheeked, breathless yes was a yes for women who had wanted to be his wives.
She did not belong in the same answer Vex had given.
Iris's mouth twisted around the start of a no.
Then a voice arrived in the back of her head.
The Child of Reckoning's eyes flicked sideways toward Ayame.
The mental address landed in Iris's skull through [Master's Link] without anyone in the courtyard registering the silent exchange.
A vein at Iris's temple began to throb.
Ayame's address sharpened.
Iris hissed, but a scrap of memory rose up from underneath the throbbing veins on her forehead. Back when she faced Azura, a veteran fighter of the Consortium, and she was getting her ass handed to her.
Until the offer of [Subjugation] arrived in her head...
Then the voice of the man who had done so much for her while asking for nothing in return.
Sixty-two points of Vitality had threaded into her body through the bond she had said yes to.
She had pulled herself off the sand on the back of his strength. She had smashed Azura into the floor of the arena with bare gauntlets until the body stopped moving. When she had sat up panting on the corpse and looked toward the stands, she had found him there.
Sitting like the king of the world.
Two of his women on his lap working his arms over. His elven healer at his shoulder, busy rejuvenating him. He had already chosen which fighter on his end of the bracket would win, and the buff was the proof.
He had raised a thumb in her direction.
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