Page 45 of Bonded To The Arena Master

“I know.”

Draxon opens the door and leaves before I can decide whether I want him to stay.

The guards resume their posts. The storm rolls over House Obsidius, rattling the basin and disturbing the grey water.

I stare at my clean hands.

Draxon abandoned me.

That truth remains.

It is no longer the whole truth, and I cannot force it back into the simple shape that sustained my anger for ten years.

14

DRAXON

Beatrix has claimed another room before the first morning bell.

The temporary apothecary occupies an unused preparation chamber two levels above the damaged solarium. It was designed for trimming metallic flowers before court displays, not compounding human medicines. Narrow counters follow the curved walls. The single window admits more red dust than light. Three recovered shelves stand beneath it, each crowded with jars Grolm's guards carried from the wreckage.

Beatrix stands at the central counter with her mouse-brown hair bound in leather and her sleeves pushed above her elbows. A shallow black bowl rests beneath one hand. With the other, she works a stone pestle through a thick green paste.

She glances up when my horns scrape the hanging frame above the doorway.

"That room was built for Matrons," she says.

"Matrons are shorter."

"A rare advantage."

Her voice holds less venom than it did yesterday. Less certainty as well.

I enter. The guard outside remains at his post. Beatrix objected to the escort before dawn, again while moving her salvaged stock, and a third time when Grolm inspected this chamber. Her objections altered nothing.

Korgath's attack failed. I will not offer him an easier second attempt.

The room contains evidence of damage the guards omitted from their report. Two jars have cracked and been bound with resin-soaked cord. Heat has curled the edges of a bundle of fylvek grass. A tray of small metallic cuttings stands in cups along the counter, most of them bruised or blackening.

Yet order has already emerged. Powders occupy the upper shelf. Dried plants sit below them. Tools have been cleaned and arranged by size. Beatrix imposes purpose upon ruin as naturally as a Volvath fortifies captured ground.

"What are you preparing?" I ask.

"Salve."

"That answer wastes both our time."

"Then ask a better question."

Her eyes return to the bowl. She adds a pinch of dull gold powder from a folded packet and grinds it into the paste. The sharp medicinal scent cuts through the charged air.

Ten years vanish too easily in this room.

I remember watching those capable hands separate goligan root from spoiled stock in a lower-market stall. The merchant tried to charge her for the entire basket. She proved half of it useless, forced him to lower the price, then sold him a remedy for the rash on his wrist.

She had been nineteen and impossible.

Now she is twenty-nine and more dangerous to the structures around her.