Avow

CHAPTER 19

Charleston 1798

Tristan was a different man.

The day after Scarlet had hunted him down, he had moved to a different location and kept a safer distance from her, but she’d became ill anyway and slowly started to die. For eight months, her eyes flashed on and off. Then the nosebleeds started.

When he had felt her die inside of him, something snapped in his soul.

He had not been able to save her. He had searched for weapons and resolved himself to death, but it hadn’t mattered. She had still died.

After throwing knives into walls and slamming doors around his empty house, Tristan had finally surrendered to grief. And the guilt and sorrow he carried festered low in his chest, keeping him from any real sleep. It was a blackness that thickened with time, slowly inching its way around his soul, filling him with darkness.

Drowning in darkness seemed a merciful fate.

Tonight, he was walking in the seedier part of town where most men didn’t travel after dark. But most men were not immortal men and Tristan didn’t really give a damn anyway as he walked in the shadows of dangerous alleyways and buildings.

“Gabriel.” A suspicious-looking fellow with a few missing teeth gripped his shoulder. “How long has it been? Nine, ten years?”

Since there was no point in explaining to the stranger that he was, in fact, Gabriel’s twin brother—no one ever believed that anyway—Tristan said, “I’m not sure. A long time.”

The stranger nodded. “You still betting high stakes in the lower games?”

What the hell were lower games?

“You know me,” Tristan said dryly, wishing the man would release his shoulder.

“Then I have a tip for ya.” He leaned in, his breath horrid as he said, “There’s a new kind of fight under the Nine Club tonight. Password is “knuckles”. Tell ‘em Hank sent ya. I get a cut if you win.” He winked. “Nice seeing ya, ol’ pal.”

And with that, the stranger was gone.

Tristan knew he should ignore the man’s words and carry on with his mindless walking, but curiosity was a relentless bastard and Tristan’s feet took him to the Nine Club, where he told the man at the backdoor the password.

He was led downstairs into a well-lit cellar where people were crowded around a dirt ring. Peering above the heads of the townsfolk, his eyes fell on two large men beating each other bloody in the center of the crowd.

The spectators cheered and booed, held money up for a passing bookie, and drank themselves happy as they watched blood pour from the wounds of the fighters.

He had heard of prizefighting in England but, being that it was illegal, had never seen a fight before. And he found the sport…fascinating.

He watched with new eyes as the fighters hit, threw, and knocked one another around in the dirt circle. Blood, spit and sweat coated both bodies and the ground as the calls of the entertained crowd floated to the ceiling.

Fighting for sport. Slamming fists and body parts. Pounding out aggression with a willing opponent. The darkness in his chest expanded and Tristan raised the corner of his mouth. Being beaten bloody sounded heavenly.