LAYLA
The speakeasy’s velvet and jazz vanished the moment I stepped below. Down here it was raw concrete, iron cages, smoke so thick it hung like drapes from the ceiling. The roar of men rolled off the walls, sharp with the stink of sweat and spilled whiskey. Blood already stained the sand. Betting slips crumpled in fists, glasses clinked hard, cigars glowed like fireflies in the haze.
The boss sat above it all in his velvet-backed chair, high enough to look like a throne. Girls with gold ribbons knotted at their throats clung to the arms of his seat, laughing too sweetly.
I tugged at my own ribbon, the knot just a little too tight. Months of work had led me here. Smiling when I wanted to spit. Tucking coins away until my fingers ached. Playing the good-girl waitress, soft voice, lowered eyes. All of it for this. And now here I was, standing shoulder to shoulder with the prizes, praying no one looked too close at me.
Not a girl. Not a prize. A cop.
I repeated the mantra in my head, the only thing that kept my stomach steady. Names. Faces. Bets. Who laughed, who paid, who everyone watched. I’d need it later for the report. I couldn’t get lost in the spectacle, not now.
Clara leaned close, all perfume and bravado, as though we were friends. She’d dragged me down here under the excuse of “fun.” What she really wanted was someone to preen against. She was good at it too — hips cocked just so, laugh pitched high enough to catch the eye of any man who glanced her way.
I’d tried to like her. I’d even tried to let her in. But Clara was loud, indecent, a little too eager to scandalize. Nothing about her felt honest.
I glanced around at the other ribboned girls and felt the same. Too clean, too polished. Most of them were daughters of money; I could see it in their manicured hands, their silk dresses. They could afford to buy a ribbon every week if they wanted. To them, this was a game.
For me, it was risk.
I didn’t understand them. They flirted with danger the way they flirted with drivers — because it was thrilling, not because they had to. Boredom dressed up as bravery.
The crowd pressed thick around us, a living wall of heat and noise. Humans made up most of it — shouting, waving cash, drunk on the violence. Orcs muscled their way forward, booming laughter shaking the smoke. Two dwarves perched near the rail, squat and grim, mugs in hand, drinking more than most human men.
And then the elf girl. She stole every eye in the pit without trying. Tall, glittering, her ribbon shining like a halo. Her beauty dropped silence like a stone into water — every man near her went still for a breath before the roar picked up again.
“Crazy,” I thought. All of it. Humans and orcs and dwarves and elves pressed shoulder to shoulder, betting, ogling, laughing. The lines blurred here.
I swallowed hard. A knot curled low in my belly, sharp and hot. The air hummed, alive, charged. I told myself it was the crowd, the smoke, the violence. But deep down I knew better. My magic always stirred strongest when my body did.
The first fights were already in motion. Bare-knuckle brawls, no names, no rules. Just sweat and fists and the crunch of bone. I recognized a few of them — speakeasy regulars who usually spent their nights half-slumped over a glass, now stripped to the waist and swinging like their lives depended on it.
The crowd ate it up. Jeers and cheers rose with every hit, bills flashing as bets changed hands faster than the fighters could throw punches. One man staggered away with his nose bent sideways, blood dripping down his chest. Another lifted his arms in victory, drunk on the roar as much as the whiskey he’d downed before climbing in.
I kept my eyes sharp, lips pressed tight. Names. Faces. Who carried weight in the room. Who took bets, who paid without looking at the slips, who laughed too easily — the men who didn’t care if they lost because they owned the house, anyway. This was intel. This was what my handler needed.
My gaze slid up, pulled like a magnet. The boss sat above it all. His laugh cut through the noise, sharp and ugly, the sound that reminded everyone who kept the pit spinning.
Get him, and you cut the head off the snake. That was the job. That was why I was here.
I told myself to look back at the fights. To keep my focus. But then —
I froze.
He was stepping into the cage. The orc. The bodyguard. The one I’d served drinks to more nights than I could count. Always silent, always looming near the boss’s booth. He’d never spoken a word to me. Never smiled back when I offered one, not like the other men. But he always looked.
Now the whole pit was looking.
Seven feet of scarred muscle, broad as the cage itself. His shirt and suspenders were gone, replaced by nothing but a fighter’s loincloth. His skin gleamed dark green under the lights, tattoos twisting across his shoulders and down his arms and back in heavy lines. Black hair slicked back in the popular style, sharp at the sides, glossy on top — but at the nape, a long, thin braid trailed down like a quiet rebellion.
And then I saw it. The tail. Muscular, leonine, ending in a tuft of black hair that lashed once behind him. I’d never noticed it upstairs, hidden under his trousers, maybe? A shiver ran through me. Tails meant Old World. He had to be older than two centuries, born before the Bridge, carrying history in every scar.
The crowd roared, coins slapped palms, bets shouted. He rolled his shoulders once, slow, steady, like a man who knew exactly how dangerous he was.
And I couldn’t look away.
Brutal. Crude. Magnetic.
The knot low in my belly tightened, sharp and hot. My magic stirred with it, restless and reckless under my skin.
Clara leaned in close, perfume sharp in my nose, voice pitched high over the roar of the crowd.
“We’re unlucky tonight,” she said, eyes flicking toward the elf. “No chance we’ll be picked as the main prize. But still… maybe one of the smaller winners will want a kiss.”
She giggled, tipping her chin toward the pit. “Some of them are even nice-looking.”
Her words made it sound easy. Normal. Like it was nothing to stand here with a ribbon at your throat, waiting for a stranger’s mouth. My skin prickled where the satin touched it.
I didn’t care about a kiss from some fighter I didn’t know. Not when I could feel his eyes on me — the orc’s — just for a second, sharp as a blade, before the fight swallowed him whole.
Clara let out a low whistle. “That one’s huge.”
I didn’t need to ask which she meant.
She leaned closer, voice dipping into something conspiratorial. “Think he’s bigger everywhere?” She wiggled her brows. “He’s got the shoulders for it. Arms like he could fold me in half — or just fuck me through a wall.”
“Clara —”
She kept going. “And you saw the tail, right?” Her voice dropped to a stage whisper, eyes wide. “An actual tail. That’s Old World blood. They don’t make ’em like that anymore.”
I blinked at her.
She smirked. “Gods, can you imagine what he can do with it?” Then she fanned herself, like she was half-joking — but not enough. “If he win and pick me? I’m going to drop to my knees right here. Tail or not, I’d let him wreck me just to find out.”
“You’re unbelievable,” I muttered, cheeks heating.
Clara just grinned and shrugged. “I like to keep an open mind. Besides—” she tipped her glass toward the pit, “— you think any girl would say no to a tail like that?”
I looked away, pulse kicking a little too fast. Of course I knew not every orc had one. The tailed ones were rare, almost relics — born in the Old World before the rifts closed. Most people never saw one in real life. Clara definitely hadn’t touched one.
Below, one of the earlier winners was already claiming his prize, dragging a laughing girl against him for a kiss, she made a squeal of delight. Another groped at a girl’s hip, but it never went further than that here — a touch, a kiss. The girls giggled as though they enjoyed it, but I could see the glassiness in some of their eyes — they were high on magical booze.
Then the announcer’s voice boomed over the noise. The fight was set.
The orc wasn’t facing just one man. Two climbed into the cage with him — Black Twins, tall as trees, six and a half feet each, shoulders built like brawlers. I’d heard their names muttered in the speakeasy, seen money change hands when they fought. They hadn’t lost in months. Every night, every pit, the twins walked out winners.
The crowd roared for them, hungry for blood, but louder still for him. The orc — Khurzog.
And everyone knew what was at stake. Whoever won this fight — the twins or the orc — would get their choice of girl for the night. The elf. Or Clara. Everyone could see it. Clara had preened extra hard tonight, and she was beautiful; I couldn’t deny that. Prettier than any of the rest, save the elf whose beauty froze the whole room.
I felt sick with it.
But every time my gaze slid back to him — his fists clenching, tusks bared, tail lashing slow behind him — the knot in my belly pulled tighter, heat rising with my magic.
I told myself it was cover. Just the job.
The cage slammed shut, and the noise of the pit rose like thunder.
The twins didn’t waste time. They came at him together, fists swinging, their movements practiced — they’d fought as one long enough to move like a single beast. The first blow landed against his jaw with a crack; the second slammed into his ribs. He barely moved.
Then he struck.
His fist drove into the gut of the nearest brother, deep enough I swore I heard something rupture. The man folded around it, choking, and the orc ripped him sideways into the bars with a sound of metal rattling under meat. The crowd howled, the air shaking with it.
The other twin went for his back, arm slamming down across his shoulders. The orc twisted, tail lashing like a whip, knocking the man’s legs out from under him. Then he dropped a knee into his chest, bone crunching, blood spraying from his mouth as he gasped for air.
It wasn’t a show. No flourish, no wasted movement. Just brutal efficiency. Each strike was designed to break something, to end something.
Blood hit the sand in thick spatters. It sprayed the bars, slick and dark under the cage lights. I smelled it even from where I stood, metallic and hot, the tang curling into my throat until I could almost taste it. Sweat and blood together, heavy and raw, drowning out the smoke of cigars.
The twins staggered, but they weren’t done. One caught him across the cheek, splitting the skin — dark blood welled bright against green flesh. For a heartbeat, I thought it slowed him. It didn’t.
His tusks flashed as he roared, grabbing the man by the neck and slamming him down hard enough that the ground shook. The second tried to pull him off, only to take an elbow that shattered his nose, blood pouring like a faucet.
The pit screamed with it — men stamping feet, bills waving, voices rising until it was a wall of noise.
And through it all, I felt him.
Not just saw. Felt.
His presence throbbed under my skin, heavy as a drumbeat. My witch-senses flared against it, my magic clawing to the surface like it wanted him. I shouldn’t have felt it — orc magic wasn’t mine to touch — but it rattled through me anyway, a low thunder in my bones, shaking everything loose.
My belly clenched tight, hot, needy. Heat coiled where it shouldn’t, sharper than fear, rougher than excitement. I told myself it was the crowd, the spectacle, the way blood always set magic stirring.
But it wasn’t. It was him.
Every punch he threw made my pulse kick. Every grunt, every drop of blood sliding over his chest, pulled something darker out of me. When his fists clenched, my own fingers curled, nails biting my palms. When he slammed a man against the cage, my thighs pressed together.
I didn’t want this. I couldn’t want this.