X. Spectator Sports
“Stay calm. I’m here. You’re not alone”
Those words, spoken in the Imperial tongue, were the last thing Mikhail managed to say to Anjali before the hood came down and muffled his voice beyond recognition.
A split second later, one of Santerna’s goons tried to force an identical hood over Anjali’s head. And though Mikhail had told her to stay calm, told her that she wasn’t alone, that he was with her every step of the way, Anjali nonetheless struggled against her captors.
She couldn’t help herself. She hated being hooded, always had. The darkness, the confinement, the disorientation, the feeling that she was about to suffocate, the sense of never knowing where the next blow, the next attack was going to come from — she hated everything about it. And so she fought bac
