In His Arena 1: Slave Eternal (27 page)

Lucan could not keep the feeling of betrayal from creeping into his heart.

HEKTOR HATED HIMSELF. Even as he said the words, he loathed them, loathed himself. The longspear was heavy in his hands. How could he attack Lucan? Lucan, whom he loved.

And yet, if he did not, the Empress would find disfavor in them.

They were already slated to compete in the Grand Melee. Her punishment might take any other form.

Fight or fuck.

Hektor glanced at Stratos. He knew the man’s proclivities. He wouldn’t hesitate to plow Lucan right here on his hands knees in front of the Empress, in front of Hektor. The idea of Stratos fucking Lucan, shoving his cock into the boy’s mouth, into his ass, the boy’s body bowing beneath him—

No.
Hektor would fight to the death to prevent that.

His hand tightened on his weapon, and he forced himself to loosen his grip. Lucan would not understand. He was innocent. He would see only betrayal in this. Hektor gritted his teeth. Stratos was already massaging his cock, anticipating Hektor’s refusal.

So be it.
There was peril here, and Hektor had no choice but to enter into it.

A Spectacle was what she wanted. He could give it to her. And hopefully keep Lucan safe in the process.

LUCAN’S HEART ACHED, even beneath the pulsing agony of the Ebon. The disdain on Hektor’s face, in his movements, cut into Lucan keener than the sharpest blade. He hesitated by the rack, the praetorian guard nearest him standing off to the side, waiting only for him to choose and take up his place in the center before they closed off the circle once more.

He called upon his training, tried to calm himself, to breathe deeply and forget his emotions, forget where he was and what he was doing. Forget Hektor.

He could not.

“Pick up a weapon.” Stratos’s command was light, but the Ebon responded, jolting through Lucan like fire and lightning, the impetus of fell magick translating into movement.

He watched his hand go out, watched his fingers run over each sword, each shield, the nets, the spears… Stratos was playing with him. Terror suffused Lucan. How many other men had Stratos controlled to fight, to kill? Had the Ebon not been mastering him, Lucan might have retched.

Each one of these weapons had killed many—men-at-arms, freemen, gladiators who came to the Grand Melee seeking freedom, fame, fortune, a name for themselves—only to be smote down in their prime. Suddenly it seemed a horrible thing.

“Choose.”

The command burned through him like wildfire. Helpless, he struggled, unable to make his body obey his mind. His hand closed on a trident. He watched like a dreamer as he chose a weighted net and fastened the cord to his wrist. He armed himself like a retiarius.

And now, with weapons in his hand, the Ebon drove him to attack, to kill.

The Empress.

Confusion lit within him, but the urge felt right, good. Killing her would quench the runaway conflagration in his chest. He turned toward her, fixing his gaze upon her. He could not stop. He was going to—

Dear Elysia in Oversky, she is not even armed!

But before he could move to violence, Stratos stepped before him. “My slave eternal.” His voice was syrup and steel. “Attack…” He hesitated, but his will kept Lucan hovering on the line, waiting, coiled to spring. Stratos’s finger moved, coming to rest at Hektor’s broad chest. “Attack him.”

Lucan stepped forward. And where he had once wanted Hektor Actaeon with all his heart, suddenly, all Lucan wanted was Hektor’s blood on his hands.

Chapter Fifteen

A SPECTACLE OF HEARTS

The Empress

Beautiful, eternal, never aging, immortal

Some said she drank the souls of the men

Who died in the Arena

Others rumored that she fed on True Love

Like ambrosia

—Athanasia Zaerus, House Zaerus, the Rulers

“Attack him.” Stratos’s fell command burned through Lucan’s brain, the black glow from the Ebon glinting in his eyes, blinding him to all else but obedience.

He fought it. With all his heart and soul, he fought it.

The next breath came, and the dark mark flared open in fiery agony across his chest. It pulsed in time with his heartbeat.

And there was no denying its power over him.

With a battle cry, Lucan sprang to the attack, stabbing at Hektor with the prongs of his trident. Fueled by sorcerous rage, the attack was clumsy, and Hektor was no novice. He batted the weapon away easily with his shield.

Lucan circled, his lips drawn back from his teeth in a primal growl. Terror and fear spiked his blood. He could not control himself, the Ebon burning through his skin, tendrils of fire eating their way toward his heart. The pain drove him on, the command branding itself upon his mind.
Attack. Attack.

Confusion ruled him. He did not want to hurt Hektor. No. All his rage and anger, all his hatred was for the Empress seated impassively upon her dark jade throne, and yet Lucan could not deny his master’s target. Hektor.

It was Hektor.

“Kill him.” Stratos’s voice cut clean and clear through Lucan’s rage.

Hektor. Hektor.
All hesitation burned away in the wake of the command.

The Ebon drove him. Where a moment ago his struggles against it had made him clumsy, now he was given wholly to its power. He was stronger, faster, surer.

Lucan stepped in, jabbing, then slashed for his mentor’s midsection.

Hektor leaped back in surprise, but not before a red line printed across his chest. It split, and blood trickled over his muscular chest.

Lucan felt the heat of it on the air. The beautiful redness of it burst across his mind’s eye, urging him on, hotter, faster, to attack, to kill. To kill!

A smug murmur of pleasure from Stratos. “There,” he said to the Empress. “My slave eternal. You see how the slavecraft defies love.” His green eyes glinted like poison. “Even true love.”

“We shall see.” Her voice was silky, a smirk barely lilting on her lips.

She reclined on her throne, seemingly unconcerned that she could not see their skirmish in the manner of a mortal woman. But those were her rules: fight or fuck.

The chamber lit up in the clashing of their weapons, the grunts of their labor. Possessed or not, Lucan was abruptly, fiercely glad that they fought before her. He could not bear it if his feelings were put on display, to have Hektor fuck him for Spectacle—Hektor who did not even love him.

“Kill him, slave.” Stratos’s tone was filled with irritation. “Show us how you can slaughter your true love.”

True love.
Those words seared into Lucan, hotter than the Ebon brand, and when Hektor backed away, Lucan went after, swinging wildly, hewing into the gap between them. It was wasted energy, but a seed of his own anger had been planted, and now it sprouted, poisoning his thoughts. Hektor never loved him. He’d led him on and then led him here.

And now… Now the Empress demanded this charade, this Spectacle from them.

Spectacle.
It was a dirty word in Lucan’s mind.

He stalked Hektor within the circle of praetorian guards, eying their shields, their pikes at the ready. So far, Hektor had not attacked him.

Why? If he does not love me, why would he not vanquish me?
He swung again, from the shoulder, a wild blow.

Hektor dodged, slapping the trident out of the way, and then jabbed to keep Lucan off-balance. “Lucan…” Hektor stopped. The look on his face was stricken. “Fight. Fight it.” He danced back when Lucan came forward.

The Empress sighed softly, as though she were regarding a boring piece of art. Her long, white fingers lilted along the arm of her jade throne, her fingernails scraping a quiet stridency across the polish.

Stratos moved closer, though not so close that he’d be in Hektor’s reach.

“Fight back.” Hektor hesitated again. His shield dipped.

Driven by the dark enchantment, Lucan stepped in to take advantage of the opening.

“Stop!” At Stratos’s sharp order, the Ebon burn lessened for the barest moment. Lucan gasped, his breath released in a deep exhalation of relief—relief that bled to panic when Hektor spoke.

“I will not fight him.”

The words echoed off the vaulted ceilings and cast a sinister quiet about the open-air chamber. For a long moment, the only sounds came from outside—the shouting of men as they labored to prepare the theatre for the Melee, the laughter and rumoring of the women as they strung the pillars with garlands, the grind of stone on stone as laborers forced more landings into the stands, building them higher and higher for the grandest Spectacle of all, the crack of hammers and the burr of saws—the entirety of Arena buzzing.

Lucan’s breath burned in his lungs. Hektor’s defiance kindling hope in his heart.
Maybe he loves me after all. Maybe…just a little?
And that hope turned into fear, fear of what the Empress might do.

She sat stone-still, the only indication that she was not some lifelike doll the breeze moving through her hair. And then, the slightest tilt of her head. Her voice was silk and steel. “Better men than you have attempted to defy me, Hektor Actaeon. Look around you. Where are they now?”

“I am right here, Your Imperial Majesty.” Hektor held forth his gladius and dropped it. It landed with a clang on the floor and bounced once before coming to rest at her feet.

Lucan’s heart stopped.
He does love me.
He looked at Hektor, but the gladiator’s face was unreadable, his jaw set, anger blazing in his eyes as he glanced from the Empress to Stratos and back. Lucan felt the weight of that stare, the weight of history between Hektor and Stratos. Something had happened between them.

Was Hektor’s defiance more out of hatred for Stratos than love for Lucan?

Fear crept back into Lucan’s heart.

HEKTOR TENSED, EVERY muscle strung taut with anticipation. The Empress’s jade-green gaze fixed on him, her praetorian guards hemmed him in while Stratos stood to one side.

How dare they set Lucan against him?
The way I was once set against Leander.
The pain that came blindsided him and tore into his gut. Fear festooned there like a plague. He could not stave it off.

He feared for Lucan, for what Stratos could make him do.

Better to get their attention on me.
The gladius lay on the floor, a sharp accusation, a reminder of his murder of his last lover. Even now, the remnants of Hektor’s own dark mark pulsed at the back of his neck. Not the bright, burning pulse of pain that had driven him in the arena that day, but the dull ache of broken hearts and splintered dreams.

Movement from the Empress stole him from his reverie, her hand lilting at her throat, caressing the white flesh. “I do desire my Spectacle.” She fixed him with her sightless eyes. “Are you certain you will not indulge me, Hektor Actaeon, primus palus of the theatre?”

Hektor sensed his peril cleanly. He could avoid her punishment only by fighting Lucan, here and now, and that he would not do. He glanced at Stratos. Five years ago, Hektor had been at that Vulpinius’s mercy. Driven by the Ebon, controlled, his will deadlocked to Stratos’s, Hektor had been given no choice but to fight.

And fight he had. He had killed Leander. He would not raise a hand to Lucan.

No. This boy was golden and pure, purer even than Leander. Hektor refused to sully him further.
I never should have touched him with my imperfections. I never should have dared…

To love him.

He met the Empress’s sightless gaze and waited for her judgment.

She stroked the sides of her throne, as though it were a beast of burden that she might soothe. “You must fancy the idea of fighting him in the Melee.”

Hektor faltered. No one had ever gotten a fair deal from the Empress. The best a man could hope for was her mercy.

Her voice took an edge. “Do you?” The threat hung between them like a glittering ornament.

Stratos moved closer, a look of interest on his face. Hektor knew the Vulpinius’s sadism well. He had enslaved Lucan for a purpose—entertainment, pleasure, fame. Surely, he could not mean for that to play out here, before such a meager audience. Not with the Melee looming so close.

Not with Lucan being favored by the odds-makers.

Hektor took the chance. “No, Imperial Majesty.” He knew better than to appeal to her heart, for it was said she had none.

“Then pick up your weapon. Fight him now, and I may grant you both mercy.”

Hektor knew he should, but the image of Leander in his mind would not be stilled—Leander with his bright smile, his fair skin, every part of him golden. Until Hektor had stained him, had broken and ruined him in the arena. He would not do that to Lucan.

“No.”

The Empress stood. Her white robes flowed and settled about her like a shroud. Though she was young, her body was lush, the curve of her hips and breasts evident beneath the clinging cloth.

Hektor supposed most men would find her attractive. In that moment, he wondered what sort of man she fancied. In the next, he was profoundly glad it seemed not to be him.

“Very well.” Her voice was soft, gentle, though the light in her jade-green eyes was bright as knives. “In two days’ time, you will fight each other to the death in the Grand Melee. Before a crowd of thousands, you, Hektor Actaeon, will hold his fate in your hands. And when you best him, when you stand over him, you will remember this moment and look to me for the Mercy.” Her lips curved into something warped, a parody of mirth from a woman who had never learned what facial expressions were. “And I will grant you none.”

Her words cast ice and sorrow through Hektor’s blood. He had hoped to be dead before he chanced upon Lucan in the arena. But as primus palus, he was a rare commodity, a rare sight. She could release him upon her whim.

The Grand Melee. Once his dream. Now his bane.

He could not look at Lucan. All he had wanted to avoid was coming to fruition. “I will not fight. Not there. And not here.”

The Empress arched one perfect eyebrow.

Stratos took his cue. “Slave eternal.” He gestured lazily at Hektor. “There is your enemy.”