I laughed this time, the sound strained through my hoarse throat. I blinked to clear my vision. “We have names,” I said to Maya. She nodded her head. “Names,” I repeated, and this time, she laughed, too.
Leaning forward, I wrapped Maya in my arms. “How can I ever thank you?” I asked. Maya tensed. I immediately pulled back.
Her eyes dipped and she said, “Since I was sent to serve you, you have treated me as though I were alive, that I am somebody. This is worth more than I could ever give you, miss.”
“You’re wrong,” I said as my heart warmed. Maya shook her head. A sudden seriousness set in her expression. I waited patiently for her to speak.
“Miss, I found something else, too.” I held my breath as she revealed, “You had a brother, too. He was named Valentin, Valentin Belrov.”
At this moment I felt as if I were a cracked vase, taken back in time. I was the broken pieces, shattered and seeming irreparable, suddenly fixed and re-forming into a normal state.
“Valentin,” I said, and immediately saw a young boy holding me in his arms as we traveled in a small cage. I was crying, but he held me close, kissing me and making me feel safe. The boy that I waved to.
I pressed my hand over my lips. My eyes fluttered, when I whispered, “I’ll miss you.” Maya didn’t react to my words, didn’t ask why I had said it, but I explained, “When I was taken from him, when he was fighting to get me back…” A sudden image of high walls and towers flooded my mind. Snow and steep dark steps. “But I waved from far away and told him, ‘I’ll miss you.’”
My heart felt like it was cracking as an onslaught of images raced through my mind. Him as a young boy, training in the pits. Then him slightly older, near Maya’s age, with a metal collar around his neck. My hand lifted to my neck and I let my fingertips drift over the skin.
“He wore a collar,” I said, seeing a female dressed in all black using me to make him yield. “Mistress,” I said, and it was said harshly. I barely remembered the female, yet something told me that I hated her with all my being.
“Yes,” Maya clarified. “Master’s sister. She was the one who took both you and your brother away with her.”
“But I came back,” I clarified. Maya nodded sadly.
Sadly.
“What?” I questioned.
Maya sighed, then revealed, “Mistress was killed. Not too long ago. We don’t know how or by whom or even where, but she is dead.”
“And my brother?”
Maya shook her head. They didn’t know.
I pushed my brain to remember more, but nothing else would come. I was tired and confused. And Ilya …
“I want to see Ilya,” I told Maya.
She nodded sympathetically but said, “Master will not allow it, miss. If you go against his orders, you will be punished.” She glanced away, then faced me again. I knew that look. It wasn’t anything good that she was about to reveal.
She hesitated, but I urged, “Just tell me.”
Maya exhaled, then said, “Master never intends to give you to Ilya ever again. I overheard him telling his high guard that he achieved what he wanted with his gifting of you to him.”
Maya paused, but I pushed. “Tell me. Everything. Please.”
Maya closed her eyes. “He said that you are too beautiful, and he won’t have a repeat of what happened with his last High Mona. Not with you. He said that once this tournament is over, he never intends for you to set foot out of this room. He wants you to himself and only to himself. He said that he knows you feel that way, too.”
Repulsion rose in my throat. “I made him think that,” I said in devastation. “At Ilya’s cell, I made him believe that I was unaffected by Ilya. That I wanted Master.”
Maya’s eyes softened in sympathy. Her hand tightened on mine. She shook her head. “Miss, you can’t disobey Master. If he believes you want him, and then you betray him, he will surely kill you. What he did to his last High Mona was horrific. He likes you much, much more. Which means—”
“He would hurt me more,” I finished for her. “The pain would be worse.”
Maya nodded.
All I felt was sadness. Sadness and the impossibility of my situation. My hand covered my chest above my heart and I whispered, “Maya. The pain is so great in my heart when I think of not seeing Ilya again, that I feel like my heart is breaking.”
Maya didn’t say anything in response. How could she? What was there to say?
“Come, miss,” she said eventually. “Let’s get you in the bath for when Master comes back.”
“Ilya,” I said in a daze, as she led me to the main room. “His name is Ilya, I am Inessa, and I had a brother named Valentin.”
“Yes, miss.” My tears came thicker this time. Ilya didn’t know his name. Wouldn’t ever know his name if I never saw him again. And if I was confined to this room, I would never know what happened to my brother. For some strange reason, the fighter with the scarred face, 194, came to my mind. I had caught him watching me from the pits, but more disturbing than his attention was how I didn’t mind. I knew it was because he reminded me of the male that was in my dreams.
As I looked to Maya’s scarred face, I wondered if they had made him a chiri. Scars and disfigurements were nothing new in the pit—slaves were punished brutally for the smallest thing. Just like Maya. I wondered if he had somehow cared for me when I was under the drugs and didn’t even know where or who I was.
I knew I might never find out the answers to these questions. After all, this was Master’s domain and I was his favorite toy.
What Master wanted, he got.
And right now he wanted me, caged.
So I would be caged.
It was just that simple.
* * *
I shifted on the bed, trying to get comfortable. All I could think of was 901. No, Ilya. I still sometimes forgot to use his name. He had a name.
Ilya.
Inessa.
Valentin.
As I kicked the sheet off my legs, there was a loud knock on the door. I sat upright. Maya appeared from the side room and shuffled across to the door. When she opened it, a guard said something to her. Maya nodded, then shut the door again.
I sat up higher. “What?”
Maya approached me and said, “Master isn’t coming to you tonight. He is entertaining his guests after the attack.”