SICK HEART, Huss, JA [novels for students .txt] 📗

Pavo must win.

Bexxie returns a little while later. Her face is flushed and her eyes are calm, like she just woke up from a long nap. “Look what I found.” She plops down onto the couch next to me and offers up the program in her hand. It’s for tonight’s fight.

There is a picture of Pavo and Cort on the front, both of them shirtless, both of them looking like monsters. Inside there’s a short welcome paragraph from Cort’s father, a small writeup about my father and… a full-page picture of me.

“You look so pretty in that pic, Anya. I love it.”

Looking at the dress I’m wearing, I recall posing for it now, but I didn’t know they would use it as promotional material. And it seems like too much. I’m not really the prize. The prize is the ship. I’m just a trinket that comes with it.

“They want you downstairs for wardrobe.” Bexxie leans into me. Her little hands grip my arm and she snuggles up against my breasts like I’m her mother. I lean my head on hers. “They’re not going to let me watch.” She pouts out these words. “Daddy says it’s too violent. And that’s stupid.” She sits up straight again. “Why did I come all this way if I can’t even watch?”

I’m glad she won’t be watching. She’s already seen way too much in her short nine years.

“You get to watch.”

Get to watch? Hah. That’s an understatement. I was already told I will be on the platform with them. I will be forced to watch. I will see every horrific thing the two fighters do to each other in perfect clarity. I will spend the entire time wondering which monster will take me home. Which one of the blood-covered animals in front of me will be my master?

Bexxie gets up and offers me her hand. “Come on. I’ll walk you down.”

I let her pull me up and then I let her keep hold of my hand as we exit the reception hall and head down the stairs. Several of my father’s guards fall in behind us. I can’t quite decide if they’re doing this for my protection, or to make sure I don’t run.

I would like to think of myself as a person who might run, but it’s a ludicrous idea. We’re in the middle of the ocean. Where would I go?

I roll my eyes internally. As if that was the reason. I have had hundreds of opportunities to run. Never happened.

I am not the kind of girl who runs.

Down on the main deck lots of people are milling about. It is massively wide. You could fit several houses side by side. But the front part of the ship is actually two long arms that extend outward like a forklift, if said forklift was a hundred and fifty meters wide. The topside is propped in the middle of the ship-sized forklift on massive robotic arms and ballasts.

I am not an oil rig expert, but our father is very excited at the prospect of winning a controlling interest in this ship, so he explained all this to Bexxie and me while we were traveling here.

The topside is a pre-fabricated oil rig minus the legs that anchor it to the ocean floor. Those have already been built and now this ship is carrying the working part—the power plant, the housing units, the office, the command center, the pumps or whatever they use to get the oil and gas up out of the ocean floor—so it can be placed on the legs.

A topside is a factory. And right now, the topside roof sits higher than the command center of the Bull of Light. So that’s where all the important people will be watching the fight.

But the fight itself will take place on the Bull of Light’s helicopter platform, which extends slightly outward over the side of the ship’s hull. That’s where I will be too.

Bexxie leads me below deck. I don’t even know where we’re going, but she seems to, so I don’t worry about it. We end up in a compartment that must be a salon, where a team of people are waiting to turn me into something else.

“I’m gonna stay with you,” Bexxie announces. “We’ll have mani-pedis together like the old days.” Then she pouts. “I hope you don’t leave. I don’t want you to leave, Anya.”

I don’t have any say in that—and neither does she—so I don’t encourage this line of thinking. I just sit down, close my eyes, and enjoy the moment.

I’m good at that.

And so is Bexxie.

I don’t get to choose my polish. I don’t get any say in how I look tonight. But Bexxie is more than satisfied with her gold and silver nails and toes.

After the mani-pedis are finished, I am directed to a flat table where they will wax me.

“I’ll see you when it’s over, OK?” Bexxie’s bright blue-green eyes look at me with fear and I nod. “OK,” she says. Then, without another word, she turns and walks out just as the team of body painters walks in.

The stylists undress me and point to the table. I lie down on it and open my legs.

I’ve never been Pavo’s prize before, but I’ve watched two of his fights.

This thought makes me pause and wonder where his other girls are. He must have a harem of them by now as well. And children. How many children must he have? Dozens, maybe. He’s been fighting for girls since he was twelve. Even if only half of them had two babies in those dozen years, that number is in the upper twenties. But it’s not likely that they haven’t been pregnant every other year. Some of the earlier prizes might not even be around anymore. Hell, even his oldest children are probably dead by now. Used up and thrown out.

And if he had boys, those boys started training for the fight ring by the time they