“It’s not that simple,” he said, reaching up to pull down his collar. At first I thought he was just showing me his bruises, which were a lot worse than I’d originally realized. Poor guy looked like he’d been choked multiple times, but Nik didn’t stop at the throat. He kept pulling the armored shirt down until he reached the base of his neck just above his collarbone where his skin was marred with thick black marks from a new, hideously ugly tattoo.
No, I realized. Not a tattoo. The thing on his neck was a curse. I’d never seen one dug into the skin like that, but now that I knew it was there, I could feel the malicious magic a foot away.
“What did they do to you?”
“Nothing I didn’t agree to,” Nik said, his voice resigned as he slid his collar back up. “I went to the Gameskeeper for help, not results. Whether I found you or not was never part of the deal. All the Gameskeeper promised was that he’d look for you and let me know when you showed up. In return for that information, I promised to be his champion for five fights in the arena. I thought it was better to stick to simple rules, less chance for him to screw me. Unfortunately, simple cuts both ways. The Gameskeeper’s job is done, but I’ve still got two fights left. If I don’t show up, the curse chops off my head.”
“Then we’ll get it removed,” I said frantically. “The Rentfree arena fights are to the death, right? You can’t fight in a death arena!”
“It’s not that bad,” Nik said, still refusing to meet my eyes. “I’ve already done three bouts, and I’m still alive. I can handle two more. What’s important is that I found you.”
“You shouldn’t have had to look for me!” I was really panicking now, because it was so obvious that he was lying. Nik was trying to hide it from me, but I could see the tension in every line of his body. He was terrified, and it was all my fault.
“I’m getting that thing off you,” I promised. “I don’t know anything about removing curses, but I found a bunch of cursebreakers when I was trying to get rid of mine. Yours isn't dragon magic, so I bet we’ll have a lot more luck finding—”
“No,” Nik said sharply.
“Why not? If that curse is the only thing holding you to this stupidity, why can’t we trash it?”
“Because that will be worse,” he said, looking at me at last. “The Gameskeeper is the only person everyone in the Underground is afraid of. He’s not someone you want to piss off. We made a deal. If I break it, he’ll be after both of us forever. But if I stay the course and fulfill my end, I’ll be free in two more fights. It won’t even take that long. My fourth bout is tomorrow, which is now tonight, I guess, but the point is I’m almost done. I just have to hold out a bit longer and then this will all be over and we can go back to how things were before.”
I wanted to believe him. Going back to Cleaning with Nik sounded like heaven after everything we’d been through, but I knew it couldn’t be that simple. The Gameskeeper wasn’t a dragon so far as I was aware, but I’d never met a powerful person who let a weapon walk away just because the fight was done. Remembering some of Kauffman’s snide remarks, I suspected the Gameskeeper had been trying to get Nik back under his thumb for a long time. Deal or no deal, there was no way he was going to let him go free again whatever happened in that arena.
From the look on his face, I was pretty sure Nik knew that too. He was clearly clinging to hope with all he had, though. After causing him so much hurt, I didn’t have it in me to crush that, especially since I had no solution to offer in exchange.
“Can I come watch you fight, at least?” I asked, trying to smile.
Nik shook his head. “I don’t want you to see me like that.”
“There’s nothing I could see that would lower my opinion of you,” I promised. “If I hadn’t been so thoughtless, you wouldn’t be in this mess. The least I can do is come and cheer for you.”
Nik still didn’t look convinced, but I was determined to get my way. This whole thing was such a pointless disaster, but if he was going to suffer for my sake, then dammit, I was going to be there with him.
“All right,” he muttered a few seconds later, pulling out his phone. “I’ll tell them to hold a seat for you.”
I blinked in surprise. “Really? Just like that?”
“I know better than to stand in your way when you get like this,” he said in a resigned voice. “And it’s not as if I can keep you out. It’s a public fight. If I said no, you’d just look up the time and go anyway. At least this way I can make sure the Gameskeeper doesn’t make any money off your ticket.” He punched a few buttons then turned his ludicrously archaic phone around to show me the confirmation on the postage-stamp-sized screen. “There. Second tier seats. Just give your name at Will Call, and they’ll hook you up. Fight starts at seven.”
I winced when he said the time. I’d been so determined not to let Nik face this alone, I’d forgotten I had other obligations. His fight was right in the middle of my work block for the DFZ. If it were any other job, I’d blow it off no problem, but as evidenced by her quota and check-in systems, my god took work attendance very seriously. I’d never even tried to
