The Twin They Erased novel · Chapter 23 of 24

Chapter 23: The Last Purse

On the first Saturday of the month, the barn was full to the rafters and every girl from Marrow Hill was in it.

They had passes in their pockets, signed in my hand.

They stood along the fence in their grey skirts, shouting, and the farmers' wives were passing them sandwiches.

Eamon stood at the edge of the ring with the green ledger open.

"New rules," he said to the crowd, and the barn went quiet. "One. The fighter keeps the whole purse. There is no sixty-forty any more."

A cheer went up.

"Two. Nobody touches a fighter outside the ring." He looked at me. "Except where it's invited."

Laughter, and a whistle from the girls' row.

"Three. Nobody asks a fighter where she sleeps."

The cough girl, in the front, said, "We know where she sleeps."

The whole barn roared.

I climbed through the ropes in my wraps, and across the ring from me the champion rolled her shoulders.

She was the miller's daughter, the one who had put me down in my first minutes in this barn.

She was twenty-two, and broad, and she grinned.

"Rematch," she said. "Heard you came into money."

"Heard you still drop your left."

"Don't make me laugh. It'll cost you."

The bell rang.

She came in low and fast, as she always did, going for my ribs.

I took the first shot on my forearm and the second on my shoulder, and I didn't give her my face.

I knew every inch of this floor by now.

She swung a long right hand, and I slipped under it and put my fist into her stomach.

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