SICK HEART Huss, JA (best way to read e books .TXT) 📖

were two or three. Most of his sons are probably dead, or they will be soon.

Cort, too, must have dozens of slave girls somewhere. He’s been in more fights than any other man in the history of this sport. When he was younger, his father used to make him fight three or four times a year.

I hiss when they rip the strips of wax off between my legs. But that is a small pain and it’s not enough to make me forget that I’m not really a prize, am I?

God knows, neither of them needs another girl.

They are here for their continued existence. They are fighting for their lives, they are not fighting for me.

The continued waxing makes me wince and hiss over and over. But soon that part is finished and when I get up off the table, the body painters immediately begin. I don’t know how they will decorate me. I don’t actually care. Not one decision about my life is mine to make.

I don’t know exactly what Cort and Pavo will look like tonight, but I’ve seen pictures in Ring of Fire.

If a fighter has tattoos, they like to paint those in something that glows. If they don’t, they make the designs up. The rest of their body is painted black. So when they are fighting in the dark, you can only see the glowing tattoos or symbols.

They reduce us to non-humans as often as possible.

How else would they live with themselves?

My body will be painted white with dozens of unsettling symbols in red. I don’t know what the symbols mean—slave girls don’t need to know that kind of stuff. But I do know they have meaning.

I will be the opposite of the men. My symbols will be invisible in the dark—the red will not glow. But the white will.

It’s intriguing and I almost wish I could watch myself from a distance. See me the way everyone else will. Almost like an out-of-body experience.

I keep still as they airbrush my skin until it has a pearl shimmer to it. I reposition when they ask me to, lifting a leg or an arm. And then, when that paint is dry, the artists begin creating the designs.

Spirals and spinning circles. Black suns and pyramid eyes. Arrows pointing to chaos. Stars, and pentagrams, and upside-down crosses.

To honor Pavo, they paint a snake eating its own tail around my right breast.

To honor Cort, they make one side of my face into a skull. My eye is outlined in deep black. My cheek becomes a jawbone showing teeth.

My hair starts out in two long ponytails. But they twist them up and secure them on top of my head like horns.

When I look in the mirror, I am evil personified.

And it fits, I think.

Everything about this night is going to be evil.

A group of teenage boys dressed up in slave attire—shirtless with gold skirts—escort me through the halls when I am done.

Two flank me on either side. They are young, because they are only my height. The two in front and the two behind are older. Maybe fifteen.

The younger one on my left whispers, “I hope Pavo wins.”

“Yeah,” the one on the right says. “You do not want to know what happens to the girls Sick Heart takes home.” I glance at him with frightened eyes. “I hear he kills them.”

Then the other one says, “I heard the same thing. He kills them all.”

“But don’t worry,” the one on my left says. “We’re all rooting for Pavo. He’s the favorite tonight.”

“He’s got a cheat,” the other one snickers. “And everyone knows it.”

“Shut up,” an older boy in front barks. “Quit talking to her.”

“It’s true,” a boy behind me echoes. “We all know that Pavo’s team hid a weapon on the platform.”

“You don’t know shit,” the boy in front says.

This whole time we are walking upstairs. But we stop at a large double steel door and then the two slave boys in front pull it open and step aside.

Immediately I am bombarded with the flashing lights of cameras. Dozens of men take pictures while reporters yell questions at me.

My two flanking escorts take my hands and lead me through the chaos. Disgusting, sweaty bodies reeking of the hot stench of oil and ocean push up against me.

“Just follow us,” the one on my right says. “We’re not stopping here. They want you on the platform right now.”

The boys who were behind me are now in front, pushing the crowd out of the way. The camera flashes stop and darkness takes over.

There is no moon tonight. And every light on the ship has been turned off.

Everything around me feels both empty and full in the same moment.

Then we are climbing another set of stairs. At the top I realize we’ve already reached the Bull of Light’s helicopter pad. Two spotlights come on, but not regular spotlights. Black lights. And my skin glows an unnatural bright white under the purple haze.

Both of my slave boys squeeze my hands. Then they lean in and kiss me on the cheek that’s not painted like a skull.

“Good luck,” the first one says.

“Pavo for the win,” the other one says, making a fist.

And then they leave me there, under the spotlights.

I breathe heavy and hard for a few moments, then almost fall into a panic when the spotlights go out. My heart shudders inside my chest. Because it’s all happening too fast and I don’t know what to do.

But of course, that’s not really true. I only have one job here. I am to stand in the center of the round helicopter platform and not move until the fight is over.

But then what?

What happens to me after the fight?

Men in the crowd begin to scream at me from the topside. They are much closer than I imagined they would be and when I look up, I can pick out a few individual faces as the black spotlight passes back and forth across the crowd.

I scan them, wondering what