This is the Circle by Tash McAdam

Author:Tash McAdam [McAdam, Tash]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: NineStar Press, LGBT, military, futuristic, alt universe, barbarians, bonded, dark, disabilities, body snatching, undead, polyamory, non-monogamy, minor romance
Publisher: NineStar Press, LLC
Published: 2019-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fifteen

E17

The next days pass in a similar fashion: we watch the fights, which get longer and harder every day, and at night we join the shuffling dances and display fights that are the Eater’s prime entertainment. I’m reading, reading all the time, and I’m starting to understand how their power differs from ours, how they draw it from others. It’s more a learned skill, I believe; their transactions and everyday lives are all based around the sharing, stealing, and exchanging of power. It is natural to them in a way it isn’t to ARC or the Institute, and that gives them the insight needed to snatch someone else’s power away from them. I think I could do it, if I needed to. I got to practice on Toby, after all.

On day nine of the gathering, the huge blonde who used to own Hepeh-Ganuh, the one called Sanep-Bolin is still standing. Pollux has watched fewer and fewer fights as she mows down opponents, has spent his days training with loaned warriors and studying with Up-Shup’s kin.

Pollux has always been wearing Eater style garb—unlike myself who’s kept the clothes from ARC, dusty and dirty as they are. Hygiene is not my top priority at the moment, and the familiar, military style outfit makes me feel more like myself—but today he’s wearing gear that matches that of the best fighters I’ve seen. Studded leather, sewn with pieces of the black, glossy rock that Hepeh-Ganuh tells me is numbstone, the same material as the Great Rock which can leech power if one knows how to rouse it. I assume Pollux has learned, rather than it just being for show.

His teeth are stained red, he’s wearing a sort of helmet that will protect the stubs of metal emerging still from his skull, and his hollow cheeks have been dusted with sand that sparkles and glows golden in the right light.

Sanep-Bolin has plowed her way through thirty-nine opponents, gathering strength and power from each of them. When I look at her with Reader vision now, she’s a rainbow titan, it’s impossible to even pick out single colors in her Talent.

Pollux, standing across from her, is a lamb about to be slaughtered. She’s a half-head taller than him, and her shoulders make his look brittle and snappable. He’s never been a large man, even in Cassandra’s memories of him, when he was whole and hale, not eaten away by the loss of his brother, his mind, and his freedom. But the months in the desert have been good for him, darkened his skin to a healthier golden shade instead of the insipid white he was before, and hardened his muscles into ropey lines standing clear on his bare arms. Even from here, maybe two hundred meters away, the definition is clear.

Sanep-Bolin is a tree trunk, her thighs are as thick as my torso, and she’s sheer muscle from top to bottom. The slabs of her flesh aren’t delineated, but they don’t look fat, only strong. And

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