ArcKnight (The ArcKnight Chronicles #1)

Chapter Seventeen

Part II

Ephrem

The night was unforgiving. I wiped the blood blurring my vision and staining my sweat a crimson red. I was losing my edge. It had been a busy evening, beginning at sunset, and had continued well into the night. My muscles strained as I picked up another weapon that had been tossed to me from the sidelines by the pit master's assistants. The Pit was nonstop commotion until the last of the fighters were worn out and spent and the reigning champions were paid to the last dime. I wouldn't be getting paid. This was my indentured servitude, paying for dues already owed; I was a slave until I'd met the requirements for freedom. I was six fights away from it, and every minute elated my soul with thoughts of the endless possibilities for the future.

I wanted to return home. To see the streets of the MarkTier palace once more felt like a distant memory, a dream I kept repeating in my mind. It was the only thing keeping me going. It was my fuel on nights like these when all the amateurs took their turns attempting to take me down and make me bleed. I was the top champion, of course. Undefeated and unyielding. A prized gladiator to parade about the city streets before a night of hellish fighting.

Just a pawn. A trophy prince.

When the last duel was over and I held my foot over the last fighter's neck, ready to press down with a lethal pressure, I would finally return from the place my conscience fled during these fights. The call to end the fight had been given, and I'd let the fighter go, which was fortunate for them as I had killed countless many before this one. It was second nature to kill without remorse, without a thought to who the fighter was. I didn't care. Their blood was the currency for the freedom I desired.

My brother had left me here to rot. It was a bitter truth, and I remembered it with each passing of the sun across the sky and through the eternal nights when things were quiet and there were only my thoughts to keep me company. That, and the spray of stars in the heavens. It was the only time I felt like myself.

I wasn't lost. I knew who I was and what I had to do to keep going. It was keeping the poisonous rage from tainting my soul with its hate.

It was nights like these I remembered the reason I had to go on. Thoughts of her would flit through my mind, reminding me of what could have been. The girl was my betrothed, Princess Lilliana, and I'd watched her grow up from afar on the rare occasions her face would flash on the screens above which constantly played the world's affairs and kept me awake at night. It was her face I'd search for when I glanced toward the bright rectangles displaying the chaos of the world.

The fighters all slept in the same common room full of uncomfortable cots, but the pit masters saw no harm in allowing us this one outside pleasure. Maybe they thought it was better that the fighters didn't remain ignorant and should know what was going on in the world. I didn't know if it was to keep us docile or to keep our heads filled with the horror of life outside these walls. It was baffling. Not all the fighters that fought in the pits were slaves; some did it to gain a better life and earn money.

Not me. I was once a prince. A lowly second born prince who'd never rule the wolf shifter pack I'd grown up in, but I was a prince nonetheless. Instead of living in the lap of luxury, I was stuck here paying a blood debt owed by my brother, Etan, the future ruler of the MarkTier pack.

In his place, I fought. In his place, I spent blood, sweat, and tears. Enslaved until I'd fulfilled my quota of contracted matches. Only then would I be free to leave and maybe, just maybe, seek my betrothed. My brother had broken a sacred rule of the Pit. Fights weren't to be interfered with. If it was, the fighter becomes the property of the Pit Master. I'd intervened to save my brother's life. If he died, he'd never become Alpha of the MarkTier wolf pack.

But he would never serve a day of his life in the Pit. Instead, I had served and bled his penance.

Things were never simple when it came to the royals of the wolf packs living in the city of Temple. Nothing ever was in this supernatural hell. Little had I known that once I completed my term here in the Pit, I'd never return to live as the pampered prince I once was. Instead, I was assigned a high-ranking position within the MarkTier Outlands Legion and never truly live as a royal again. My future was marked null and void, with a large black streak across it, and replaced with the destiny of an outsider; a castaway.

Nevertheless, I was still me. Still Ephrem, second born of the MarkTier wolf pack's royal stronghold, and I would persevere.

Why? Because she was out there, and I was destined to find her again.