Nora Sakavic
THE SUNSHINE COURT
Nora Sakavic
ALL FOR THE GAME
-
The Foxhole Court
The Raven King
The King’s Men
The Sunshine Court
CHAPTER ONE
Jean
Jean Moreau came back to himself in pieces, dragging himself together as he had a thousand mornings before. The cloud in his thoughts was as unfamiliar as the heaviness in his limbs; Josiah generally stuck to ibuprofen when patching the team up, even when it was Riko he was cleaning up behind. For him to step it up meant Jean wasn’t going to like what he was waking up to.
Aside from the stinging ache along his scalp and up to his crown, his cheekbones and nose were a soupy mess of heat. Jean lifted a too-heavy hand from his side and gingerly felt out the lines of his face. Stitches and bandages were a familiar rough texture beneath his fingertips, and the blossoming ache under a bit of pressure confirmed his nose was broken again. The Ravens were going to use that to their advantage the next several weeks to keep him in his place. He’d have no choice but to protect himself against their high and brutal checks, pulling back when he should have been pushing forward.
His neck ached, but the skin there felt unbroken, and in his hazy delirium it took Jean too long to remember what had happened. The memory of Riko’s hands around his throat, squeezing tighter and longer than he ever had before, sent a shiver down his spine when it finally sharpened into focus.
Jean had given into fear and forgotten himself, and he’d tried pulling Riko’s hands loose. Riko responded by pummeling his face with unrelenting fists.
Knowing the master would beat Riko black and blue after championships for breaking the golden rule— not where the public can see—left Jean queasy. Riko was twice as vicious when he was hurting.
Jean slowly let his hand fall back to his side and struggled to open his eyes.
It took a few tries, but what came into focus was an unfamiliar ceiling. Jean was sold to Castle Evermore five years ago; he knew every square inch of that stadium better than he knew his own body. This room was not in Evermore, not with such pale paint and wide windows. Someone had hooked a dark blue blanket over the curtain rod to darken the room a bit, but slivers of burnt orange sunlight still peeked through to stripe across the bed.