Renegades: Lord of Excess by Rich McCormick

Author:Rich McCormick
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Science fiction: space opera (FLS)
Publisher: Black Library
Published: 2024-02-12T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seventeen

He held the dagger in a backhand grip, the serrated blade flat against his muscled forearm. The metal was warm, and it was wet already with blood. Not his own. It dripped from the weapon, little raindrops that tapped out the softest whispers of sensation. Moments of pleasure against his pain.

He swayed on legs wider than the stalks of Serrine’s grass. His muscles burned. His chest, his arms, his back, his calves and his thighs. Strained and stressed from the fight. The rejuvenat kept him young, and they made him more than that, too: bigger, stronger, faster. But they hurt, too. They set his nerves on fire and made his bones feel as if they were being stretched inside his skin. He slept in snatched moments, a rag by the side of his cot for him to chew on when the agony woke him up again.

He would never tell anyone, but in his weakest moments, he wondered if he wanted this. To be chosen. To be feted. To be served the sweetest meats and the ripest fruits, to be offered pleasures beyond his imagination.

He couldn’t have said no. He didn’t want to say no. Who would turn this down? The chance to become the biggest, the strongest, the best? It was all anyone dreamed of – especially a sixth son of a vassal family. His parents had scrimped and saved until they finally saw their opportunity in their son as he entered his adult years: the long limbs, the toned muscles, the fighter’s grace. They cashed it all in for his treatments, securing the services of back-alley chirurgeons and black-market sellers to get the best stuff. He could be a winner. Be their winner.

He spared them a glance. His mother, her mouth open, the tendons in her neck bulging. She was screaming something, but her voice was lost in the baying din of the crowd. His father, small eyes hard as gemstones in his drawn face. His mouth was pursed, concentrating as his family teetered on the brink of advancement.

His low voice came through unnaturally stretched vocal cords. His voice was so deep now that his siblings could barely understand him. He had tried to write his requests, but the words flitted around in his mind like the birds he saw sometimes through the bars in his window. He couldn’t catch them. He just smiled at them, these days, on the rare occasions they came to visit him.

The enemy ran at him, her own blade raised. She was like him: tall, wide-shouldered, bigger than everyone else in the duelling chamber. The treatments had made her skull grow too fast, and her skin was too tight around her eyes. Cracked, angry wounds were visible, aggravated and constantly reopened by the natural action of blinking. It made her look as if she was crying blood.

She used her momentum, swinging her short sword overhand as she closed the distance between them. It was a good swing, a powerful swing, but she was not quite like him.

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