“Why do you care where I put my tongue, Kaya?” he demands, and for a second, I am at a loss for words. But it’s not that I don’t know the answer.

It’s that I can’t admit the answer.

I care where he puts his tongue because that tongue has been in my mouth. It’s starred in my wildest, dirtiest dreams—the ones I wake up from damp and flushed and aching for something I can never have.

That’s what I need to keep in mind. I can’t have Sebastian. And the truth is that out here, I have much more important things to worry about than where his tongue has been. And where it hasn’t. Like food and shelter. Like getting my com device back so I can call for a rescue.

I’m not a guard, so I don’t have a tracking chip. For all I know, when they realize I’m missing, everyone else will think I’m dead. Unless I want to spend who knows how long out here scrounging for food and relieving myself in the woods while Sebastian looks for Sylvie, I’m going to have to get myself rescued.

Until then, I’ll have to play along.

“Let’s just go, if you’ve had enough rest,” I say, ignoring his question. “I can walk.” I adjust one of my borrowed socks to punctuate the assertion. “Where are we going, anyway? And will this destination have something I could wear? Something that isn’t torn open and gaping?”

Sebastian blinks at me. Then he swings his pack onto his back and shrugs.

“You have no idea where we’re going, do you?” Of course he doesn’t. How could he possibly know where Sylvie is?

“Kaya—”

“So, what was the plan? Just wander around zone three until we happen to run into your sister? You do know we’re much more likely to run into anyone else on the planet than the person you’re actually looking for, right? Because that’s just the kind of luck I have.”

“We’ll find her. And we’ll find food. And clean water. That’s all out here for the taking. In the meantime…” Sebastian pulls his pack forward until he can open it, and I notice that it looks much heavier than it did when he showed up in the greenroom yesterday morning, before his fight. He took more than just bottles of water from the supply room on the yacht. Thank goodness.

Sebastian pulls a wad of cloth from the bag and shoves it at me. I shake it out and realize it’s a tee-shirt. And though it smells pretty clean, it also smells like him.

Wait.

“Have you had this the whole time? Why would you carry me for hours in a ripped blouse, when you had a perfectly functional extra shirt?”

He shrugs. “Because you have beautiful breasts.”

“You can’t—” I exhale, trying to bring my thoughts into some coherent order as I pull the shirt on over my blouse. “That’s not the kind of thing you’re supposed to say!”

“Why not? It’s true.” Sebastian heads through the tree line and out of the woods, leaving me no choice but to follow.

“Just because something’s true doesn’t mean you have to say it.” I grind my teeth when he laughs. “Also…thank you. That was a very nice thing to say about…my breasts.”

Sebastian laughs again.

I exhale slowly and settle in for a long hike.

*

“Okay, the socks were a great temporary fix, but they’re not going to work in the long term.” I stop for the dozenth time in the past hour to remove a big, reddish cocklebur from the bottom of my foot. The spikes are long enough to penetrate both layers of my borrowed socks, and the soles of my feet feel like pin cushions. “I don’t suppose you have any extra shoes in my size, do you?” I toss a glance at Sebastian’s bulging backpack when he stops next to me.

“Sorry. I have my prison-issued shoes, but they’d fall right off of you, even with a double layer of socks.” The shoes he’s wearing now were supplied by one of his sponsors, to be worn in the arena. As were his pants. They would have been returned to the greenroom—my domain—after the cocktail party, if he hadn’t crashed the yacht.

“Okay, well this isn’t going to work.” I stand up straight and flick the cocklebur into a patch of tall grass several feet away. “We need supplies. And shelter. If you’ll give me my com device, I can probably pull up a satellite image of zone three. That’ll at least tell us where there are some buildings.”

“And just turning it on will tell the rescue team exactly where we are. Nice try, Kaya.”

It was worth a shot.

“Seriously, Sebastian, I can’t walk much farther without shoes.”

“Fine.” Before I can protest, he picks me up and throws me over his shoulder, and the sudden pressure on my abdomen forces most of the oxygen from my body. This is less a fireman’s hold than that of a caveman carrying off his bride.

At least he isn’t dragging me by the hair.

I press my hands against his back—it’s bulging with rock hard muscle—and lift myself until I can breathe a little, but he clamps his arm across my thighs and takes off before I can find my balance. I grab his arm, trying to push myself upright, and something in the sky catches my eye.

It’s a thick plume of black smoke. Coming from the direction of the wreckage.

“Sebastian! Put me down!” I pound on his back, my gaze glued to the sky. “Now! Put me down!”

Finally, he stops and swings me onto the ground. “What’s wrong?”

I point. “It’s on fire. The yacht is on fire, and that’s your fault! We have to go help them!”

He frowns at the plume and shakes his head. “Unless you have a source of water and a hose, there’s nothing you can do for them. Besides, I’m sure rescue crews got everyone out of the ship hours ago.”

“You don’t know that!”

“Look.” He points, and I squint into the sky. “They look like little specks against the smoke from here. Those are shuttles, Kaya. UA is all over the wreckage. They don’t need our help.”

He’s right. Warden Shaw isn’t going to let Universal Authority stockholders and corporate sponsors spend one second longer than necessary on the surface of this planet. And the yacht is equipped with a state of the art fire suppressant system. But the fact that the passengers are in good hands isn’t the point.

They’re being rescued. They may already have been rescued. And I’m trapped out here walking in borrowed socks, with cockleburs stuck in my heels. I’m tired, and hungry, and I’ve been avoiding relieving myself, because not only is there no toilet, there’s no toilet paper.

I want off this damn planet. But I can’t get to the wreckage by myself. Not without shoes. And maybe a weapon.

“Sebastian, we’re going about this all wrong.” I’m saying “we,” rather than “you,” because even though I had nothing to do with putting us on the surface, if I sound like I’m accusing him of something, he’ll be even harder to reason with. “If you really think the passengers have all been rescued, there’s no reason we can’t head back toward the crash. That wreckage is going to be the best source of resources in this entire zone. Food. Water. Supplies. There are probably even clothes in some of the executive suites.”

“Suites?” He frowns down at me. “People sleep on the blimp?”

“Yes. And they pay quite a bit for the privilege. It’s part of the flyover tour package. An overhead view of the fights and a cocktail party with the winner of the headlining bout. All drinks and meals included. Plus a flyover of the Resort as well as a couple of the open population zones.”

“People pay good money to take a vacation on a prison planet and just…observe the misery. That’s sick.”

“This, from a man who gets paid to kill people on camera.”

“I’m not paid to kill people,” he snaps, all vestiges of his usual grin gone. “I’m forced to kill people.”

“I was talking about Grand Champion.” The civilian gladiator show he was on before he was sentenced to death by combat. Sebastian—stage name: Havoc—was famous before he went to prison, and he was an instant hit on the UA feeds. My bosses decided within a week of his arrival in the bullpen last season that he’d be this season’s champ.

Which means he didn’t have to crash the yacht. If he’d just waited a few months, they would have released him into zone three, his sentence commuted to life in prison. He would have been free to live out his days on Rhodon with Sylvie.

Not that I can blame him for wanting something better from the rest of his life than a daily fight for food and shelter. But that’s what he signed up for. He got himself sent to prison on purpose!

I can’t blame him for wanting to protect his sister, either. But I can blame him for dragging me into this.

“I never killed anyone on Grand Champion,” Sebastian reminds me. “Only the championship is to the death, and I never made it to the final round. And anyway, my Grand Champion contract had an out-clause. If I’d made it that far and decided I didn’t want to kill someone—or risk being killed—I could have walked away with a simple forfeiture of a season’s salary, plus my bonuses.

“But what’s going on here—” He spreads his arms to take in the entire planet. “—is something else entirely. Here, death row inmates are forced to kill. Here, the UA stood by and watched while convicts tried to gang rape my sister on-screen. They profit from that footage. And you help make that happen. So I’m sorry if this rescue mission is an inconvenience for you, Kaya. I’m sure you’re missing your shoes, and your clean, private restroom, and whatever lavish facilities they have for you, up in orbit. But I have something a little more important to worry about down here. And I’m not going to feel one second’s guilt over the people who went down with the blimp. They’re even more complicit in what goes on here than you are. And I set off the alarm to give them fair warning. That’s more than I owe those bastards.”

“I—” I have no idea what to say. He’s not wrong. But it was never my intent to… I never meant to hurt him. Or Sylvie. Or Graham. I’m not like the people who run Universal Authority. I’m not wealthy. I’m not a decision maker. This is just a job. Before he came here, Sebastian got paid to hurt people, and I guess, in a different way, that’s exactly what I do.

But that’s not what I meant to be doing.

“I tried to help her, you know.” My voice sounds disgustingly weak, because I know I have no right to defend myself right now. Not to him. Not after what I helped UA do to him. To his entire family. But I need him to know that that wasn’t my intent. “I tried to help all three of you. Before you and Sylvie and Graham, the other inmates on my roster were…they were true criminals. Scary violent men. They would have hurt me, if they’d gotten the chance, and even with half a dozen guards in the room at all times, I never really felt safe.”

And the fact that several of those men—former champions—are in zone three right now terrifies me all the way into my soul.

“But I knew Sylvie was different from the moment I met her. And not just because she’s a woman. It was the same with you and Graham. So I did what I could. I let her keep her knife. I gave her clothes that would be harder for the men to…take off. And even today, after I figured out what you were doing, I didn’t call it in. I followed you to try to talk you out of it, because I didn’t want them to shoot you. Failure to report an escape attempt is a crime. So…maybe this is what I deserve.” I glance around at the sea of ankle-tall reddish grass around us, swaying with the wind. “I guess I’m as much of a criminal as anyone else here.”

Something in his expression seems to crack, and anger falls away from his features to expose…sympathy. Guilt. “No. You’re not.” Sebastian pulls me close, his arms wrapped around me. My face buried in his shoulder. “You’re not a criminal, and you don’t belong here. And you’re not going to stay here. I just need your help one more time, Kaya. I have to get my sister off this planet. And you’re the only leverage I have.”

“Leverage.” I step out of his embrace. “Well, I guess it’s good to get that cleared up.” I don’t have my com device. Or my tablet. Or a supply pack. I don’t have anything to hold or anything to do with my hands, so I prop them on my hips and stare at the plume of smoke.

“It’s good to get what cleared up?” Sebastian follows my gaze, as if the answer might be written in the sky.

“What I am to you. Leverage.” That shouldn’t surprise me. He’d certainly been willing to use me last season to get special treats in the greenroom, on fight days. This is really just more of the same. Only instead of an omelet bar, now he wants an escape vehicle.

“Kaya, that’s not what I meant.”

“Yes, it is. You’ll do anything for your sister, and I actually admire that about you. So the least you can do is own it.” I stare up at the plume again. “But my point stands. If we’re going to be stuck on this planet for a while, we should take what we can find from the ship.”

“There are UA shuttles hovering over the site like vultures. There are probably guards crawling all over the wreckage. Hell, they’ve probably set up a perimeter with laser wire.”

I shrug. “So we watch from the woods until they’re gone.”

He exhales slowly. “If I take you back there, you’re just going to shout for help and get me shot.”

“I wouldn’t do that. Even if I were going to try to ‘escape’ this ‘hostage situation,’ I wouldn’t let them shoot you.”

“Kaya, you couldn’t stop them. It’s not safe to go back there before UA abandons the site. And it’ll be even less safe once they have.”

“What? Why?”

“Because everyone within miles of the wreckage will have seen the smoke. Men will be flocking to the ship in droves to scavenge what they can find, and the last thing they need to find is you.”

A chill washes over me. The thought of dozens of violent men—most of them arena champions—deciding I’m as ripe for the taking as abandoned bottles of champagne and jars of caviar makes me feel sick.

Sebastian’s the strongest man I’ve ever met, and not just physically. I can’t imagine there’s another man in the galaxy who would willingly get himself sent to death row in order to protect his sister. But he can’t protect me against dozens of men at once.

And I can’t ask him to. Even if I’m only leverage to him.

With that, I turn my back on Sebastian and walk, empty handed and in sock-feet, opposite the direction of the plume of smoke.

I have no idea where I’m going, but one direction is as good as any other, since we can’t go to the crash site.

A minute later, Sebastian’s footsteps crunch through the grass after me.