Innocence Enslaved by Maddie Taylor, Melody Parks

isn’t where it ends. When he arrived to collect her, Lord Ervin was already there. He’d come to claim his prize early.”
    “Plague upon the man!”
    “Exactly, but Lancore has never been that blessed, and neither was Corbet. Lord Ervin didn’t take kindly to his attempt to keep him from something he wanted, and certain that he would come out triumphant with Sara as his in the end, Ervin decided to play with Corbet a bit. He agreed to let Phillip out of their arrangement, only if he, or a champion of his choosing, would fight for Sara against one of his knights in an upcoming tournament.”
    “Corbet became that champion,” Emilia guessed.
    “Of course, Phillip was not a healthy or robust young man; it would have been nothing short of suicide.”
    “What about for Corbet? He was an apprentice, not a knight!” she exclaimed in outrage.
    “Which is why Ervin suggested the contest. He doubted he had any chance of winning. To give it the semblance of an even match that would drive up the bets sure to be laid down, Ervin said he’d allow each man one weapon of his choosing. And, to make it more interesting, they would each be chained by one shackle around the ankle to a post, allowing them no more than ten feet of maneuverability. If that were not bad enough, Lord Ervin then decreed it would be a fight to the death.”
    “Surely he is mad. The carnality of his household is clearly well known, but this reaches new heights, a fight to the death among his own people is going much too far.” Emilia practically choked on her words. She was as outraged and as fearful for Corbet as if the challenge was happening now.
    “Calm down!” Muriel hissed. “You’ll wake everyone. If the master or mother comes down, you won’t get to hear the ending and likely won’t sit for a week.”
    “I’m sorry. It is almost too absurd to be believable.”
    “Oh, believe it. Ervin is a lover of blood sport as well as of lustful displays and charges admission to his spectacles.”
    “I can’t fathom why anyone would want to watch such vulgar entertainment, let alone pay a price to see it.”
    “Have you never heard of the gladiator contests at the Roman Colosseum? People, by nature, are a bloodthirsty lot and Ervin has always been well versed in what it takes to quench the people’s hunger. It seems the more he gives the depraved who clamor around him at his manor, the more they crave.”
    “I’ll never understand.”
    “Neither will most good people, though Ervin Ives could never be called such.”
    “How do you know all of this?”
    “Don’t tell, but I heard the story from one of Sara’s sisters; there are seven of them and I shan’t tell you which one since she swore me to secrecy. She told me the tale word for word having witnessed the meeting between Corbet and Lord Ervin that day.”
    “You can trust me. What else did she see and hear?”
    “I committed every word Bec—uh, Sara’s sister told me to memory. In my mind it’s as though I was there.”
     
    “ I’d like to fight you to the death,” Corbet told Ervin boldly in a chilling tone. He glanced at his poor weeping Sara and then to her father. Of him he asked, since he was the one actually challenged, “Do you agree to this?”
    “I am a foolish old man, who made a fool’s bargain in a weak moment. Unless you step up to be champion, there is no other way to release Sara from the bargain. A breach would cost me my farm and all of my children will suffer. Should you decline the challenge, my agreement with him will have to stand. I can’t win a battle; if I tried, my loss would have the same outcome. She would still have to go with him.”
    He banged his fists down hard on Phillip’s small kitchen table and then proceeded to stand. “So let me understand this.” Angrily, with his hands balled tight into fists, he glared at Ervin. “If I say no, you get Sara. If I say yes, and lose the challenge, you get Sara. And if I should happen to win, and we