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barracks were in something of an uproar after Domina Lennai’s announcement. It had been so long since any of their masters had offered a donara. Once their training for the solar was finished and they had retired to their barracks, the cursii could talk of nothing else amongst themselves. The mess hall broiled with boastful cursu and cursana discussing what they would do with the strange alien creature the domina had presented to them, as well as what kind of creature she might have been. What she felt like, what she tasted like. What she hid beneath her dress and if it was the same as theirs. If she was intelligent or primitive. Only a handful of them had ever seen another human, and those who had claimed to know everything about them. What they ate, how they procreated, that the slightest breeze might kill them if one wasn’t careful.
    All of it annoyed Vega beyond measure.
    It was a cheap ploy, the donara. He didn’t know why the rest of these idiots couldn’t see that, but he could. It was the domina’s way of distracting them from what should have been their goal: to fight to the top of the lists and win their freedom. Instead, she had them falling all over each other to get to another link in the chain holding them all to House Chara. As for the donara herself, she was a slave just like the rest of them, and he had no desire to link her fate to his. But, as the lists currently stood, he was the highest ranked of Chara’s cursii, and if he won the games he’d have to take the donara or insult the House itself. That wouldn’t do, either. So the entire thing had put him into a black mood.
    “Don’t worry, Vega,” Bathari laughed, elbowing down to his table in the mess. He set a cup of sweet wine in front of him. “If you win her, I’ll take her off your hands.”
    “Fuck off,” Vega grumbled, ignoring the cup. He never partook before a day of games.
    “I saw you looking at her,” Bathari persisted, his tall antlers casting shadows on the far wall in the low lights. One of his antlers was broken, cracked in the last games. Vega remembered how he’d screamed in pain, writhing in the sands.
    “We were all looking at her, Bathari.”
    “But she was looking back at you.” Bathari grinned.
    “I just want to win the games. I’ve no desire for that sort of thing. And if you had any sense about you at all, you wouldn’t either.” He slid the wine cup back in front of Bathari, grunting irritably.
    Bathari picked up the cup with a shrug and took a gulp. “We must indulge where we are able to, friend.”
    “No, we must win. That’s all there is.”
    Bathari indicated Lohar, another Errai cursu, at a table across the room. “Mind you keep an eye on Lohar tomorrow,” he said lowly. “I hear he seeks to unseat you.”
    Vega sighed. There were always fighters who sought to kill him in the games, by accident . He had no doubt Lohar wasn’t the only one. Sometimes they got brazen enough to try and take him out in the practice yard, well ahead of the real fight. None had succeeded, because for Vega, every fight was a real one. He eyeballed the red-scaled Errai for a few seconds, before looking back at Bathari with a shrug.
    “Good luck to him.”
    “You’re so dour all the time,” Bathari complained.
    “If you don’t like it, go bother someone else.”
    “You can’t tell me you aren’t the least bit curious.” Bathari’s laughing, dark eyes glimmered at him. “I mean a donara, after all this time?”
    “I’m curious,” Vega admitted. “But not enough to really care.”
    “The last donara was given more than five years ago,” Bathari went on. “I heard Gurun telling the story. She was an Errai, and she was given to the winner in the Jambanar Conflict. They said she was kissed with luck. A year later, she and her cursu gained their freedom.”
    “And so the dominus stopped giving donaras or donarums, thinking it inspired his fighters to freedom too quickly,” Vega muttered, looking pointedly