ChaPter 2 - Carnival of Souls by Melissa Marr

36
“You can’t beat me, and I won’t throw the fight.”
“I know.” She smiled sadly at him.
“At least leave the collar off,” he pleaded.
“No.”
Belias shook his head again. Aya hadn’t ever made his
life easy, but this was beyond unreasonable. He was fond of
throttling his opponents. With his strength, it was a reliable
way to incapacitate a fighter, maneuver them into an unforgiving
position while they were unconscious, and then when
they regained consciousness invite them to forfeit. It was legal,
albeit not a crowd-pleaser. A lot of far less humane things were
legal, too. Those were the crowd-pleasers. The fight rules were
pretty basic: at least fifth blood had to be drawn before a kill,
no outside aid, stay within the designated fight zone, and try
not to die.
Fifth blood will be harder tonight.
Killing Aya wasn’t going to happen, and he was certain she
couldn’t kill him, either. That meant that their fight would go
until one of them had no choice but to forfeit. He felt a pang
of regret for bribing the judges so that he could fight Aya, but
better that than have someone else eliminate her by killing
her. He’d had no doubt she’d make it to the final rounds,
but now most of the remaining fighters were good enough to
defeat her. She needed to forfeit before she faced a fighter like
Kaleb or Flynn.
“It’s time,” Aya said as she laid her falchion just inside the
edge of the ring.