“What’s wrong?”
He looked back down at our joined hands. “Now that you know how I feel, I have a confession,” he told our tangled fingers. “In my desperation to find you, I might have done something…stupid.”
I froze in alarm. Oh shit. I’d been so busy talking about myself, I hadn’t even asked about him. Nik was clearly involved in something bad. Last I knew, he didn’t even own a suit of black combat armor. That meant something in the last two months had made him buy it, and given how expensive that stuff was—not to mention all the bruises I could see even better now that were poking up above his high collar—it must have been something serious.
“What is it and how can I help?”
“Kind of late for that, I’m afraid,” Nik said, his voice embarrassed. “When you disappeared two months ago, I panicked. I’d always known the DFZ was alive, but I’d never understood what that really meant until I watched a skyscraper eat you in front of me. After that, I didn’t know what to do. You’d been taken by something I couldn’t fight or bribe or negotiate with. I didn’t even know where to look for you. The DFZ’s temples wouldn’t help me, and I couldn’t find the Wandering Cathedral no matter how hard I searched. I even hired someone to hack your phone’s location data, but he couldn’t find it.”
I felt a brief twinge of satisfaction that my anti-internet strategy had actually worked. Too bad I’d made my AI’s life hell hiding from the wrong person.
“It was like you’d disappeared into thin air,” Nik went on. “I refused to believe you were dead, you’re too stubborn for that. But after a month of searching, I realized there was no way I was going to find you on my own. I needed help, so I went to the only person I knew who was strong enough to stand up to the DFZ.”
Oh shit. “Who?”
Nik heaved a defeated sigh. “The Gameskeeper.”
He said that as if I should be terrified, but it actually took me several seconds to remember that the Gameskeeper was the guy who’d hired Dr. Lyle to make cockatrices for his arena. Kauffman’s boss. The man Nik had sworn he’d never work for again.
“Oh shit,” I said, aloud this time.
“Pretty much,” Nik agreed stoically, his eyes dropping to his fake right arm. “I always said I’d never go back, but I didn’t know anyone else who could help. The Gameskeeper knows everything that happens in the Underground. If anyone could find you, I knew it was him, and I was right.” He flashed me a weak smile. “How else do you think I knew you were in that restaurant?”
I’d thought it was odd he’d shown up so fast, but that wasn’t important right now. “How much did his help cost you?” Because it had to be a lot. I didn’t know much about the Gameskeeper, but guys that powerful never worked for cheap. Whatever it was, I’d help Nik pay it back, but he was already shaking his head.
“The Gameskeeper doesn’t work for money. He has enough of that. His price was something he couldn’t get any other way.” He tapped his armored chest. “Me.”
The way he said that made my stomach heave. Not that I could say anything about selling yourself to save someone else, but I had a strong feeling the Gameskeeper wasn’t as dedicated to fairness and personal choice as the DFZ. “What did he want from you?”
“What he always wants from me,” Nik said bitterly. “A fighter.”
My heart fell as my eyes went back to Nik’s new armor and guns. “He made you go back to contract killing, didn’t he?”
“I wish it had been that easy,” he said. “Contract killing was awful, but at least I got to pick my battles. The Gameskeeper wasn’t going to let me off so lightly this time. In exchange for helping find you, he wanted me for his arena.”
In any other context, I’d have said that sounded way better. I’d seen the top of the Gameskeeper’s arena from the bridge in Rentfree. It had looked like just another tourist trap with all the tacky flashing signs and busloads of gawkers. From the doom in Nik’s voice, though, I knew it couldn’t be that simple.
“How bad is it?”
Nik shrugged. “Not so bad. I used to fight there sometimes when I needed cash. It’s not fun, but it’s not the end of the world.”
He was lying. Not only did he refuse to meet my eyes, he was rubbing his false right arm like he was trying to pull it off. He definitely wasn’t as nonchalant about this as he was trying to put on, but how could he be? I’d heard what Kauffman had said about the Gameskeeper’s arena when he’d tried to buy our cockatrices. He’d claimed they were good for fighting because they suffered. That all that fear and love and desperation made good drama for the crowd. Now as then, the idea made me sick. I hadn’t been willing to tolerate that cruelty for a bunch of magical chicken lizards. Like hell was I tolerating it for Nik.
“You have to let me help,” I told him. “This is all my fault. If I’d just called you like a reasonable person and told you what was going on, you never would have gone to him.”
“It’s okay,” Nik said. “You thought you were doing the right thing. I was the stupid one who panicked.”
“You’re not stupid and it’s not okay. It will be, though, because we’re getting you out of this. I’ll just call the Gameskeeper and tell him you found me so your deal is no longer valid. I’m a priestess of the DFZ. That has to count for something.”
From the scowl I could feel pressing into the back of my brain, my god was not
