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The noise was deafening.From everywhere all at once, the yelling surrounded her. An echo, a mantra, a prayer."DRAVEN! DRAVEN! DRAVEN!"Below, in the center of the arena, he raised his sculpted arms and the voices intensified with the gesture. It was adoration for his work, for his showmanship, for his brutality.It wasn't enough.They should worship him.Qiyana rose from the seat she had shared with him before and felt eyes follow her from the sides. She did not ask how he had convinced the other men to allow her up there. It was where she belonged, he said, where she would get the best view possible of his performance. Their distrustful gazes meant nothing to her, not when her attention was drawn to Draven. Bracelets clanked on the stone balustrade as she leaned over it, akin to a young noblewoman about to be serenaded, but not through song.No, Draven would never bore her with something so drab.His wild green gaze searched the crowd and his smile stretched lips thin to reveal rows of sharpened teeth. Made to mock and humiliate, tear and crush.How she longed for her throat to feel them.Bodies littered the arena the reckoners had retreated from. It was time for the main event.The dragging of heavy chains did not draw her gaze away from him immediately. The arena brought up a prisoner from its rotten core, a gigantic man that easily towered even over someone as tall as Draven, with fists the size of her head and a gargantuan torso covered in deep gashes and scars. He cast shadow over the executioner and Draven didn't even flinch or tense."So, what will it be?" His voice drew her closer to the edge of the balcony, the wolfish grin she could hear in his words like a lure that tugged at her heart. "Ya gonna run or you gonna make this a better show?"The man grunted and drew his arms back, perking their attention, then clapped them forward with a blow that broke his chains from the metallic pillar they were attached to, making it creak and bend with the motion.Draven's axes were spinning by the time the man took the first step. Double blades, steel shining in the sun, a blur of motion that made her breathless. She recalled feeling their weight in her hands earlier and admiring the craftsmanship that went into such a brutal weapon. The cuts on her fingers stung at the memory, a thoughtless caress of the blade having made them, but it was a pain she did not mind.Something made to cause so much pain, decorated to match him, and wielded with such mastery in his rough hands. She watched as he spun them rapidly, turning his body around for the audience to cheer, fear not even settling in his eyes despite the fact he was being charged. The ground shook underneath the gigantic man rapidly approaching him and Qiyana leaned further over the balustrade, heart skipping a beat at the thought of—Ah, but he was too good to make a silly mistake like that. No, it was all for the show, for the entertainment.Draven turned back toward the threat with flair in the gesture, a twirl full of confidence and power that translated through the practiced throw of an axe. The first blade dug into the exposed flesh of a pale shoulder, its teeth digging into the surface of muscle — but not too deep. There was art in the way Draven fought, a delicate balance that was necessary for things to be executed properly. He had told her the secret of it through a dangerous grin.Howling with pain, the man halted and tried to reach for the weapon, rip it from the bleeding fountain his skin had become, but immediately came the unholy pain the axes were designed for. The second blade spun around, lighter and faster, and sliced through the prisoner's meat like it was melting fat. An intense cheer made her heartbeat louder as a still-twitching arm fell upon the dusty ground. The wound spat out a torrent of blood that painted dirt red and had her teeth digging into a bottom lip hard enough to draw ichor from herself. The axes dislodged themselves with the momentum, giving Draven his cue to run and drop to his knees, sliding beneath the wailing man's legs and catching his axe mid-fall to rise up behind him, teeth so sharp and eyes so ungodly green.He was a predator and she should hate it.She should have fallen for anyone else.Not someone who loves with his teeth.But when had she ever felt so alive? So free to indulge, to dig underneath her own skin and learn herself?That night she had raided the Piltovan camp, she stood there long after making sure the terrified survivor would deliver her message. Qiyana had never seen viscera. She had never killed before. The stench was unbearable. And yet...It had felt so good to not hold herself back. To allow blade to slice, stone to crush, water to drown, nature to take back what belonged to them.What belonged to her.She recalled the footprints of blood on the flawless floor of the palace and how they had looked at her, stained from head to toe, smiling as she claimed the slaughter.There was fear in father's eyes.Qiyana had never felt so powerful.Draven's voice brought her attention back to him. His most recent victim clutched his stump and screams of agony pouring out of bloodied lips filled the arena, but they weren't louder than his executioner's thrilled giggling. The man had barely managed to turn his grotesquely wide torso before another axe was flying his way. A low throw sideways and it bit into the softness of a thigh, ripping away another limb from the scarred body.It was hypnotizing.He made such a brutal display of gore something she could not cast her eyes away from. Some people in the front row felt sick and could not walk away fast enough before emptying their stomachs the same way the meat of the show did when his severed leg rolled in front of his eyes. Still, he had some fight left. Unbalanced and torn apart, the condemned victim still swung a meaty arm toward Draven to try and grab at him — and all he did was grin and jump over the forearm, blades still spinning in his hands and spraying the ground with thick blood, having cut away bloated fingers in the middle of his dodge and earning another thundering scream, another cheer of his name from the crowd.Draven swung and her hands tightened. He spun in place and her heart did the same. Every drop of blood spraying his clothes and drawing a momentary grimace of annoyance on his face only made him more beautiful in her eyes. Fire burned low in the pits of her stomach, heady and wanting, eager for her lips to lap up the metallic taste from his skin and feel its warmth under her palms.Deep down, her body ached to be torn apart by his teeth. His hands and mouth desecrating her, consuming her body as if he owned it.Would he keep her conscious? As maw pulled flesh from bone and ichor gurgled in her throat, hot like an inferno and making her choke on heated, crazed confessions of love? Would he say it back as her vision darkened and her last sight was that of hungry green eyes and a blood-coated jaw? If she were to die, she would want it to be just like that; cut open her chest and let her heart hang for him, let it be held and eaten by the one it belonged to, so even if her body rotted and her soul faded, he could have it until he too was taken from the world.Disgusting. Vile. What an awful thought to indulge in.People would lose any respect for her if they could peer into her thoughts.And yet, as she came down from her fantasy, her cheeks were flushed and her legs felt weak with desire.When Draven eventually joined them again, covered in a sheer layer of sweat and splashes of blood, it was like he knew. He beelined for her and took her eyes away from the arena, a single hand grasping her face to turn it toward him, that grin full of pearly sharp teeth taunting her. How she loved how easily she fit in his palm and how his fingers felt squeezing the soft skin of her cheeks. His head dipped and a ragged breath teased her ear, forcing her to hold back the smallest of whines."Keep lookin' this fuckin' needy, Qi," he growled, "and I might just eat you up."Oh, little did he know how badly she wanted him to."Promise?"