Entered in the Alien Bride Lottery by Margo Collins (easy readers txt) 📕

On it, an image of me kissing Natalie appeared, hundreds of morits tall. It had been taken in Natalie’s room the night before. The last thing I saw on the screen was my own fist coming toward the camera to smash it.

Some assistant backstage handed me a sword, and I weighed it in my hand, checking the balance and how well it twirled.

From the viewscreens, I heard Vos announce my name.

This is it.

Time to win.

I strode out into the bright lights and a wall of sound created by the shouting of more voices than I had imagined could ever be on the station at all.

Then I turned, my eyes searching the crowd.

There she was.

My Natalie.

Standing beside Drindl and Plofnid in the very front row, waving and shouting.

This was for her.

I turned to face my opponent.

Chapter Nineteen

Natalie

I realized as Tiziani came striding out onto the mat on the stadium floor that roughly half the crowd was cheering for him. That didn’t fit what Vos told us about Cav being the favorite, and I had to wonder if the Games Administrator had paid—or perhaps bribed or blackmailed—some of the spectators into rooting for Tiziani.

My stomach clenched as the two Khanavai warriors faced off against each other.

Drindl and Plofnid stood on either side of me, each clasping a hand tightly. My palms were sweaty, but I didn’t care. I needed their support.

Beside me, Plofnid sighed dreamily. “He is absolutely beautiful,” it said, staring at Cav.

He was. He stood a head taller than Tiziani, muscled and strong. It was all I could do to keep from sighing over him, too. At least, it would have been, if my throat hadn’t closed from anxiety.

As Vos raised his hand to begin the duel, and the two began circling one another, I realized that Cav might not have as easy a time defeating the guardsman as he had boasted.

Granted, Cav was bigger and stronger, and he definitely knew how to use the curved, ornate sword he handled. It whistled through the air as he twirled it around in a show of dexterity.

But he had spent his adult life on spaceships, using mechanical weapons—he may have trained his entire life as a warrior, but he had not spent as much time working with the traditional Khanavai swords as long as Tiziani had.

At least, that’s what Drindl told me as we waited for the spectacle to begin. She maintained a nervous running commentary on the various bets taking place all over the station, handled through Vos’s office, of course. Apparently, gambling on the winner of battles like this was a long Khanavai tradition.

“I bet on Cav, of course,” she confided in me.

“I did, too,” Plofnid said stoutly. “He is going to squash Tiziani like a Lorishi lightfly and then keep him down like an unbraided child.”

Plofnid’s staunch partisanship gave me a warm glow inside—but I was still worried.

Now, as the two Khanavai danced around each other, blades slicing through the air so fast I could barely see more than a flashing blur, I found myself standing, pressed against the barrier that kept us all from rushing the floor, leaning over it to watch Cav anxiously. My eyes flickered between his form several feet down and even farther away from me, and the giant Jumbotron-style screens floating in the air.

I wasn’t certain how a fight like this could be judged. The two fighters were like whirling dervishes, spinning and lunging so quickly I could barely keep track of who was where. And I had no idea how Cav could possibly find any way through Tiziani’s defenses.

But he must have, because suddenly he leaped across the mat, rolling on the floor and coming up under Tiziani’s guard, slashing at him once and then rolling away just as quickly. The crowd around me gasped and Tiziani stumbled. Cav started to go for him, but Vos blew the whistle and threw his hands up.

“First point to Cav Adredoni,” the Games Administrator announced.

Around me, cheers and boos erupted. I added my voice, screaming, “Go, Cav!” and jumping up and down.

On the viewscreen in the air, Tiziani held his hand to his side, walking in a circle for a moment. When he pulled it away, his hand was covered in a dark, viscous fluid. Khanavai blood.

He snarled at Cav, who gave him a mocking salute.

Vos spoke briefly to Cav, who nodded and turned his back on the mat to walk away for a moment.

Okay. So this would work like some combination of a fencing display and a boxing match? Where they fought for a certain number of points, maybe.

“How many points does it take to win?” I asked my companions.

“Either five points—which means drawing blood—or until one of the fighters can no longer stand,” Plofnid explained.

Five points. He only needed four more, and then Could walk away from this.

But scoring the first point didn’t help Cav. It only enraged Tiziani, who entered the next round with a ferocity he hadn’t shown before.

I realized for the first time that Tiziani’s slighter build could actually benefit him. He was less muscular and shorter than Cav, but just a hair faster. He’d spent his life on Khanav Prime, in natural planetary gravity.

I read somewhere once that could make a difference in muscle development. Ship’s gravity was never perfect, never quite the same as the gravity on a planet.

So Cav might be stronger. He might even be more used to fighting in station gravity.

But Tiziani’s muscular structure had benefited from being a guardsman on the planet.

And he was technically better with the sword. Just as I had feared.

Tiziani scored his first point with a single slash against Cav’s dominant left arm, the one he most often used to wield the sword. I gasped, along with half the crowd, while the other half cheered for Tiziani.

I turned around to glare at those closest to me.

Traitors.

Cav’s arm dripped blood so dark it looked black from where I stood pressed tightly against the railing, every cell of my