Gentle Chains (The Eleyi Saga Book 1) (28 page)

The room is quiet for a long moment, Henri standing over my sister’s
prone body, Sadi shocked into silence.

Finally, he shakes his head a little and sighs to himself. “I thought
she had finished with these little rebellions. I suppose she needs more
training.” He turns and says softly, “Brielle isn’t for sale.”

Sadi is shaking with anger at my side. “You can’t beat her for talking!”

Henri looks a little surprised. “I can, actually. Brielle knows my rules.
She broke one, knowing the consequences. She is my
slave
and I can do
anything I want to her. I can execute her without cause.” His eyes slide to me
and he smiles, a vicious, cold smile. “What do you think one Eleyi can do to
stop me?”

“Nothing,” I say, strangely calm, and she jerks around to look at me.
“I’m not going to do anything. My sister made her wishes clear.”

“No,” Sadi snaps, and I do something I never have—I shove through her
mental walls, screaming, -
Let it go.-

She flinches, and I turn to the Ja. “Will she fight soon?”

Henri shrugs. “Two days from now.”

I nod and take Sadi’s arm. “Come on.”

Tin and Brando follow us as I do the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I
walk away and leave my sister behind.

Chapter
31

Juhan’tr

“I don’t understand,” Sadi says. Again.

I twist to stare at her. “I need to talk to Chosi. Without her owner
listening.”

“Then do it. There is no reason for me to go to an arena display.”

“I can’t,” I growl. I’ve been trying to reach my twin since that
ridiculous lunch, but Chosi has her mental walls shoved so high I can’t touch
her without forcing myself on her mind, and I’m not willing to do that. “Can
you do this for me? Just once?” I demand, and Sadi softens.

“Fine. We’ll go.”

“No. Absolutely not,” Brando says. “It’s not safe.”

“It’s no more dangerous than Renlarte,” she points out. I wonder if
she’s told him about the attack, but his mind stays light and I assume she
hasn’t.

“Go with us. I don’t care. But I won’t be responsible for anyone’s
safety but Sadi’s.”

She looks at me sharply, and I feel the questions rolling off her. I
ignore them and give her a cocky grin. “Get dressed, Sadi. We have somewhere to
be.”

Brando watches me as I adjust my black boots, and I finally straighten,
staring at him. “What?”

-If
anything happens to her, Eleyi.-

-Save
your threats,-
I cut him off.
–I’m more than capable of protecting the lady.-

I stride past him, and hope that I’m right.

Chosi’le

“You realize how important today is, don’t you?”

“Yes, Prator. You’ve drilled it into my head.”

He gives me a sharp look and I smile. He can’t touch me—not until this
is over and the Senator has been impressed. I want to push him, but I let it go
and ask, “I heard the Ja was buying more draken.”

Prator looks at me, and I arch an eyebrow. It’s a blatant dig for
information, and I think he’ll refuse for a moment. Then he shrugs. “He’s
impressed with your success. It’s time to add to the stable, see our profits
increase.”

I nod and a mind sweeps through the arena, searching. I feel the moment
he finds me, feel the determination filling him. I glare up at Prator. “Why
didn’t you tell me Juhan was still here?”

Prator shrugged. “Because you are just a slave. Maybe if you warmed my
bed, I’d feel differently.”

I give him a withering glare, but my focus is on my brother. “He’s
coming down here,” I say, panicked.

Prator frowns, but Meinia shifts.
-It
is your brother. He won’t hurt you.-

-He
wants to take me from you. To take me home.-

The draken is silent for a heartbeat, and then,
-Staying for us is not something any of us would ask of you, Chosi’le.-

I shiver. That name—it belongs to a girl who was free and impulsive and
had a brother who thought about her before anything else. A girl who is gone.
I’ve fought it for so long, but the dirty truth is that I like the arena. I
enjoy dancing on the sands, chasing the high of the crowds. I love my draken,
and the quiet of their caves. I even like my small rooms in the back of the
jakta.

And I can’t forget the image of my brother protecting his
consort
—his owner—on a planet of whores
while I mourned the death of a man killed for loving me.

Juhan steps around the corner into my sight, and I wonder why he wears
black. Do we both have blood on our hands, now?

He stops abruptly, eyeing the draken at my back, Prator at my side, and
then focuses on me. For a split-second, staring at my brother, it is like being
home again.

Sadiene Renult steps up beside him, her hand tucked into the crook of
his elbow, deftly maneuvering around his wings—a position she is comfortable
in. Disgust and anger flare through me, and I don’t bother to keep it
contained. I let it slam into Juhan, and enjoy watching him falter. He glances
down at Sadi and then back to me.

“Go to our box,” he says, stepping away from her, and I laugh.

“You have a
box?”
I ask, my
voice dripping disbelief. “Stars, you really have changed.”

He flinches, but doesn’t dispute it. “I’m still your brother, Chosi.”

“My brother would have come for me,” I spit, furious. “Not spent six
months fucking a Senator’s daughter and becoming
this.”

-It’s
a lie. A lie I told to get to you. Sadi means nothing to me.-

“No, see, brother, I know better. I’m your twin, your other half, and I
can see what you won’t admit to yourself—you love her.”

The little bitch makes a small noise of surprise and Juhan’s face closes
off. I smile, and turn away.

“Go find your seats, brother. The match will start soon.”

-
You don’t want this.-
His
voice is desperate in my mind and I shrug. Prator is watching me, openly
curious, and I take a deep breath.

“You aren’t the only one who has changed, Juhan. You kept your vow—you
came for me. Go home. I don’t need rescuing.”

Juhan’tr

Sadi drags me away, and the last I see of Chosi is her wings folded at
her back as she strokes the nose of the draken. He eyes me with sympathetic
understanding that I can’t stomach.

Somehow, Sadi gets us to our box. I keep hearing my sister’s voice,
melodic and full of scorn as she tells me to go home.

“What the hell did he do to her?” I ask, numbly.

Sadi crouches in front of me. “We have to stay focused. If she won’t
come with us, what do we do?”

“He’s brainwashed her, Sadi.”

-It
doesn’t change that she wants to stay.-

The match below is wrapping up, and I want to scream at Sadi. “I should
have been here months ago.”

“She wasn’t for sale months ago either.” The man from earlier who
listened to our conversation in the draken pit stands in the doorway of our
box.

“Excuse me, but who the fuck are you?” I demand.

-The
Ja’s brother,-
Sadi whispers in my mind.

“Prator Argot. I am Henri’s second in the jakta, and have been
overseeing Brielle’s training.”

“How much is it going to take to purchase her?”

“My Ja already told you—she isn’t for sale. And she doesn’t want to go.”
He pauses. “I’ve never seen an Eleyi take the arena as naturally as your
sister.”

He nods at the arena and I look out.

Chosi is standing on the sands, in a sheer white dress. Her posture is
cocky, lazily indifferent. The crowd is quiet, breathlessly waiting. A gate
opens, and I see the draken chained there. She twists to look at him and a pack
of five premtha swarm the arena. The draken screams, and Chosi jerks around, a
whip slithering out of nowhere. The crowd shrieks and the cats fall back,
hissing. Faster than I can follow, she whips out a dagger and throws it.

Prator laughs. “She’s still learning the best tricks to play to the
crowd—it’s why she’s given a limit of weapons. Drags the match out.”

I stare at her, at the draken fighting its chain to reach her. “I’m
taking my sister from this,” I whisper.

Prator shrugs, “What can one Eleyi do against all of this?”

He watches me for a moment, before turning back to the spectacle in the
arena. I smile, a feeling of blissful release sweeping through me. Finally,
finally, I loose my psyche, reach for the minds in the arena. There are draken—vast,
wild minds that stir when I touch them, psyches as powerful as my own. There is
a sense of recognition and kinship in the big black draken in the arena with
Chosi.

-She
speaks of you, Eleyi
,- he says, his mind like thunder around mine. I
shift, exerting my own will, and he falters. The crowds scream as he stills in
his chains, briefly. Sorrow wells in his voice, and hope.
–You will take her from us.-

–I’ll
try. I need her,-
I say.

An image flashes in his mind—black diamonds, and the necklace Chosi
wears. –
It’s a bomb.-

Rage crystalizes in me, icy cold, washing away the hesitance and doubt.
I brush past the draken, find the gladiators. They will be pathetically easy to
manipulate, so used to following orders. I wrap my mind around theirs, lightly,
and skim out, avoiding Chosi—she doesn’t need to know what I am doing. There
are other beasts, alien and primitive and fierce. The premthas are snarling,
and I focus on them—on what it will take to keep them from attacking Chosi.
Their minds are simple, fueled by hunger and the hunt. There is only one other
thing I need, and I throw my mind out, searching until I find heat. I feel the
flames of the candles, the heat of fires and the draken.

There is no coming back from this.

There is no going back at all. I’ve changed too much—my people will
never accept me now. And I don’t care. I look over at Prator, watching my
sister fighting for her life, and I almost choke on the lust coming off him. I
want to kill him. Want to break his neck and throw him to the premthas fighting
to get to Chosi.

But I need him alive. I force the anger down and give him a cold
smile.
 

“You see me, and you see an Eleyi—a psychic pacifist who won’t fight
you. Maybe the other Eleyi you own have encouraged that thought. But you need
to remember something, Argot.” I murmur, ignoring my guilt, my hesitation,
everything but my anger. I tighten my psyche, where it wraps around the draken
and the fire, the premethas and gladiators. I smile coldly at Argot.

“I’m not your slave. And I am
not
a pacifist.”

I loose my psychic grip and fire explodes through the areana and the
stands, through the draken pens, and the chains that holds the big black draken
away from my sister, catching in everything, and I give it a
nudge,
laughing, swaying under the power rushing through me as I push it where I want
it to go. With a light touch, I wrap around the glittering black diamonds, the
one on Chosi’s neck. There’s a muffled scream as the neuropulse denonates,
light flashing before it’s smothered, harmless, under my mental air bubble.
Prator stumbles back as the table between us catches fire with a searing blast
of heat. Distantly, I can hear the screams of the spectators, hear the
gladiators flooding the arena sands. Smoke stings my eyes, and I feel Sadi,
coughing, next to me. I nudge the fire and it licks away from us, leaving me
standing with Sadi at my side, in a circle devoid of fire and smoke.

“What did you do?” Prator shouts.

A pang goes through me at the question, the fear in his voice. I ignore
it and him, and refocus on the arena. Two draken are in the arena now, the big
black hunched protectively near Chosi as gladiators flood the sands. The other
draken, a small gray, snakes its head down, hissing at the gladiators. I tug a
little on the psychic leash, grinning when the glads freeze, standing too
still, weapons raised but not attacking. The black draken twists, looking at me
and I yank hard on its mind. Snarling, he snaps down, biting one of the
gladiators in half. Behind me, Argot gags, heaving. The scent of vomit fills
the air, twisting my already churning stomach. I want to stop—want to back
down. No matter what I tell Sadi and the bastard who owns Chosi,
this
isn’t me. I want to go home.

I can’t.

Stiffening my spine, I tighten my grip on the draken, twisting the link
viciously, and it pauses, swiveling to look at us again, admiration and
amusement in his giant eyes. The gladiators attack in unison and the smaller
draken screams, releasing a gout of fire that engulfs the streaming awning over
the arena seating. The black shrieks, drawing attention as the spectators
scramble from their seats, racing for the hover pods. Thousands of people,
spilling toward the exits as fire explodes in the sands, catching on the linen
awnings and setting the whole damn thing ablaze. The little gray screams,
lauches himself into the air. He soars up, up, screeching and raining fire. The
black draken is still on the sands, and I reach out for his mind.
–The shield is down. You’re free.-

His mind spreads, and I can feel her—the one mind I’ve blocked out.
Chosi is furious, terrified, confused. The fires are darting around her, the
glads and draken ignoring her as the premthas screech behind a wave of fire.
The draken’s mind surrounds her.
–I
won’t leave the little Le.-

-She’s
leaving you,-
I snap, and Chosi sucks in a breath. All the
other emotions in her vanish—the only thing I can feel is disgust. Then her mental
walls shove up—a deliberate move to shut me out. Stung, I fall back.

“What are they doing?” Prator asks, shrilly.

I look at him, reeling from my sister’s actions, loving the fear in his
voice. “They’re doing exactly what I tell them,” I answer and he pauses before
swinging around to look at me. “
This
is how a single Eleyi—slave or not—will destroy you. I’ll burn the arena to the
ground and everyone in it. Your draken, your beasts, your gladiators—you’ll
lose them all—and thousands will die in the stands. Who will come to your
spectacle, knowing they will die? Who will allow you to fight your gladiators,
when they learn that doing so will make them lose
everything
?” I demand,
my fury finally breaking free.