In His Arena 1: Slave Eternal (28 page)

ONCE MORE, LUCAN felt the control leave his body. In a fury, he was on Hektor, suffering an anger he did not truly feel, living a fury that made his heart cry out. He thrust and riposted, Hektor evading, dodging to one side. He sidestepped, trying to use the praetorian guards’ shields, but they jabbed at him with their pikes, corralling him back into the center.

“This isn’t you, Lucan. Fight it!” Hektor’s voice was desperate, his movements jerky as he danced away from Lucan’s every attack.

Helpless, gripped in the sorcerous power of the Ebon brand, Lucan attacked again, brutal and efficient. He stabbed in, and when Hektor dodged aside, Lucan kicked his mentor in the ribs, doubling him over. A following slash opened Hektor’s shoulder in blood and a scream of pain.

Crimson stained the prongs of Lucan’s trident. The Ebon flooded him with triumph even as his heart seized. He did not want to do this, and yet he couldn’t stop himself.

Stratos mastered him.

With vicious stabs and slashes, Lucan drove Hektor back, the primus palus twisting, avoiding the worst, wincing as the prongs of Lucan’s trident nicked him, caught him, tearing bloody gashes across his arms, his legs. Lucan gouged him good in the ribs, a visceral pride swelling his branded, burning chest. Hektor’s blood splattered the white marble crimson.

“If you don’t fight, he will kill you,” Stratos said mildly.

Hektor deflected another blow off his shield. “I would rather die.”

“Very good.” Stratos’s tone was mild. They might have been discussing the latest fashions in Arena. And then to Lucan. “End him.”

Snarling, Lucan darted in, all viciousness and fury. He prayed Hektor would avoid him, divert his blows off the rectangle shield, but his own quickness shocked him. No man alive could have evaded his assault. Lucan struck the shield, battering it out of the way. The strap snapped, and it fell with a clatter to the floor. His following kick took the wind from Hektor’s lungs.

In the next moment, Lucan had his hand wrapped around Hektor’s ponytail. The Ebon fueling his strength, he shoved his mentor to his knees.

Hektor surrendered. Why was he surrendering?

Lucan gripped his trident beneath the head and drew it toward Hektor’s throat.

“Not yet.” The Empress stood, and Stratos stayed Lucan’s hand.

She came down from her dais, the crown of golden laurel leaves around her brow glittering like worn-out promises. She came to stand near Lucan, and he marveled to see how short, how diminutive she was, this woman who wielded such power over them all. His hands itched to close over her throat, but a glare from Stratos kept all of Lucan’s manufactured fury on Hektor.

The Empress paced around them in a circle. “You truly love each other. As my gift to you on the second eve of the Grand Melee, I will show you the folly of love.”

At her simplest gesture, Stratos ordered, “Cut off his braid.”

Lucan did not hesitate. He seized Hektor’s glorious hair and sheared it off at the nape. As the ponytail fell in a dark glossy clump to the floor, Hektor gave a wounded cry that tore at Lucan’s heart. Lucan knew he had grown his hair out in mourning for Leander, and now…now it lay forgotten on the floor, discarded like trash.

Lucan ached for Hektor’s loss, but what he glimpsed on the back of Hektor’s neck made his breath go out and extinguished the light in his heart. A dark blotch, but unmistakable. A circle with two slashes.

An Ebon brand. Old, used, lacking in power. But still, the Ebon.

He acted like he didn’t know. He acted like it was all my fault.
Sickness stole Lucan’s spirit. He stepped back from Hektor, pain and confusion ruling him, all his anger rushing in, mingling with the love he was suffering, overwhelming him. He stared at the man kneeling on the floor.

His mentor, his lover. A liar.

“Tell him.” Stratos dared closer to where Hektor knelt. “Tell him how you murdered your last lover. How you succumbed to the power of the Ebon. How you proved that true love doesn’t exist.”

Lucan’s breath caught in his throat. Hektor looked up, caught his gaze, and there, Lucan saw the truth.

“Why?” He wanted to stop—stop hearing these horrible thing, stop speaking, stop feeling. But he could not. “Why didn’t you tell me?” Now that it was out, all his emotions burst the dam and flooded him. His face grew hot, tears cutting down his cheeks. “Why, Hektor? You acted like…like I was some kind of monster, but no… You’re the monster!”

Turning, Lucan tried to flee. He was surprised to find himself able to, Stratos holding him captive only a moment longer before allowing it. And with a wave of the Empress’s hand, the praetorian guard parted, and Lucan made his escape.

STILL ON HIS knees, Hektor watched Lucan go. He yearned to chase after the boy, but even if he could, Lucan wanted nothing to do with him. Helpless, heartbroken, Hektor remained prostrated before the Empress and his most hated enemy, Stratos. How Hektor wanted to wrap his fingers around the man’s throat and squeeze until he gasped for air, until he turned bloated and purple, until Hektor felt the windpipe crush in his hands.

He bowed his head and spied a pair of bare white feet. Dimly, he realized the Empress was standing before him. She reached down and took his chin, lifting his head. Her blind gaze commanded his, and he could not look away. She searched his eyes and then released him.

“True love…” She mused a moment. “Bring him.”

Hektor did not fight as the praetorian guard surrounded him, grabbing his arms and hauling him off. The Empress’s dungeons were dank and dark, stifling, sweltering—nothing like the dungeons of the Claim. The chains were heavier, and it stank to the Abyss of sodden wood and rotting meat, as though everything had soured beneath the ground in this secret charnel house.

They clamped him in fetters and left him swinging.

In two days’ time, he would enter the Grand Melee.

He hung heavy, without trying to lessen his weight, letting the bite of the chains dig into his wrists. He reveled in the sharp pain.

He would not fight. For once in his life, Hektor Actaeon, champion gladiator, would not fight. It felt good to have this choice, to make it. Lucan would not die at this hands as Leander had.

Footsteps grated on the stairs. A sound of rasping metal as tumblers turned in the lock. The door opened, and Alession stood there.

Hektor gave a dark chuckle. “So, the Empress sends her sorcerer to torment me. No matter how you torture me, I will not fight.”

Alession’s smile turned cruel, triumphant. His hand began to glow black with the fell power, the Ebon dancing at his fingertips. “Oh, I think you will.”

Chapter Sixteen

PAGEANTRY

The Grand Spectacle

A day-long event of feasting and fucking

Of the pageantry and pomp

All to commemorate the slaughter of men

—Marcus Zaerus, House Zaerus, the Rulers

Lucan stood on high at the balcony of House Vulpinius. Above, the gray wolves rippled and ran on the pennons as they snapped in the early morning breeze. Soon the day would dawn, and the iron horns would call the gladiators of every house to the Empress’s Theatre.

He had no choice but to go. It was his fate.

The Grand Melee.

He’d waited for this moment since he was a boy—the moment he would step onto the burning hot sands and win the favor of the crowd in the grandest Spectacle in all Arena. Today they would scream for Lucan of House Vulpinius. Today they would scream for a boy who had once been Golden, but who was now a wolf.

Suddenly nauseated, he gripped the railing and held on so tight his knuckles cracked.

The Grand Melee. All his dreams become his nightmares.

Shouts and calls from below caught his attention. It was at least two hours before the first Diversion, but the Grand Palestra was teeming with activity—spectators already arriving, clamoring for their seats. The laborers straining to erect the great crimson awning that would cast patterns like bloodstains across the sand. Merchants shouting at passersby, hawking their wares of wine and sweetmeats, of programs and other sundries. Odds-makers moving through the crowds, giving their chances, taking bets from squabbling people, plebes, and Citizens alike.

It would not be long before Lucan entered the vomitoria beneath the stands and felt all that weight above him.

The weight of what he was about to do.

The Ebon pulsed at his chest, and he dug his fingers into the skin. The black glow had faded, but the brand remained. A circle with two sharp slashes through it. Now that it was revealed—now that Lucan and Hektor knew each other’s dark secrets—it stayed visible.

A dark mark. A dark stain. He would go to the theatre branded as another man’s property.

Gingerly, he worried at the mark. What did it even matter, he and Hektor? It had been a dream. Nothing more. A dream he shouldn’t have dared to dream.

When the time came, Lucan would do whatever Stratos wanted. Just as Hektor had.

Lucan leaned heavily on the railing. Hektor had lied to him. Hektor had looked at him as though Lucan were a monster—a monster branded with a dark mark and evil intent—when he too had been branded. He too had been controlled by Stratos.

Under the influence of the Ebon, Hektor had slaughtered his own lover in the arena, for the enjoyment of the Empress, for the sake of Spectacle.

To distract himself, Lucan gazed down over the bowl in the center of the Grand Palestra. The Empress’s Theatre. Already, her praetorian guards had begun to line the arena. They were heavily armed today.

Even at a distance, even without a spyglass, Lucan could see the wariness in their every movement. They were veterans, all of them. A few had even been gladiators in their day, but had received the Mercy so many times that Her Imperial Majesty had granted them the honor of joining her elite guard.

To live and die in her service. Lucan supposed it was much the same thing as dying in the arena.

Only with less applause.

The sounds of the crowd massing rippled and swelled. And where Lucan had imagined this day would carry glory and triumph, he felt only hollowed out, an empty shell.

A puppet waiting to be used.

If only he could lose himself in the fight. If only he could forget the Grand Melee, the Empress, the crowd, the cheers, his love for Hektor. Hektor, who had killed his first lover. If only he could forget the Ebon, Stratos… Everything.

Below, the iron horns blared into the rising of the morning and called the masses to their seats. In a few moments, the theatre would be flooded with spectators.

In a few hours, Lucan would be there, in the vomitoria, feeling the rumble above him, the excitement of the crowd in his blood, the Ebon burning on his chest, and the impetus of the gladiators around him.

All of it carrying him back to Hektor.

Always back to Hektor.

* * * *

Hektor stood beneath the portico at the edge of the Empress’s Theatre. His wrists were rubbed raw from the manacles, but he paid them no mind. The sun seared the sands and sent waves of heat rolling over him. Sweat sheened his skin.

Normally, he would have reveled in all of it.

Scant feet away, the Doomsayer’s jackals dragged away the torn carcasses of the noxii who had been staked and left out for the beasts. The bestiarii had long since come and wrangled their wolves and lions back to the cages. Exotic and from the farthest reaches of Arden, the animals were worth more than the majority of men. The Diversion—wild animals tearing apart men who lay helpless, a dagger just out of reach—had brought the crowds to a frenzied roar. Their cheers and the stomping of feet rocked the theatre’s stands.

Hektor felt the rumble in his chest, heard it echoing into the sky, as though Arena were a great source of thunder and that thunder shook out to brand the land with glory.

Soon, it would be time for the main Spectacle. The fifty-man free-for-all. The chance to walk out a free man.

But Hektor Actaeon of House Actaeon was not walking into that arena as a free man. No, Alession had seen to that. Again.

Dark fury boiled inside Hektor, as hot as the new mark that lurked invisibly beneath his chest. Hidden, it seared his skin, but more than that, it seared his heart. He touched the flesh gingerly.

Lucan and I match now.

Some of his fury lessened, washed over by pain. There would be no hiding. Not on the battlefield, not beyond.

If it even lasts that long.

He dug at his skin. And dug deeper. He loved Lucan with every beat of his betraying heart. He could not deny it.
And now Stratos will use us against each other.

Hektor looked at his longspear, leaning up against the base of a column, and wondered when the Empress would call him to task. Above, the crowd yelled and jeered. A piece of crockery flew and shattered against a high caryatid, and then the crowd parted in a wave as the praetorian guard seized the miscreant to take him away.

The Empress did not brook any threat to her theatre or her Spectacles. Not the threat of a defiant citizen or a flying cup.

And most certainly not the threat of true love.

All around the arena, the heralds were taking down the lion and wolf flags, and raising up the laurel-wreathed fist. As soon as the crowd saw it, they began to chant. “For those about to die! For those about to die!” And now flowers rained down, the noble ladies casting the rarest of blooms onto the sand to be trampled and bloodied. It was their way of saying thanks, that more beauty in the world should be killed for Spectacle.

Hektor gritted his teeth, his anger returning, shot through with melancholy. Beauty could not exist in the arena. It showed its face only to die.
I will not let that happen to Lucan.

A final flag raised. Two crossed swords. The flag of House Actaeon. The Empress called for him.

Resolve made him draw himself tall, take up his longspear, and fasten the cord to his wrist. He fixed the shield on his arm and adjusted the strap. The breeze kicked up through his newly shorn hair. He touched the ends of it ruefully.

The look on Lucan’s face when Stratos told him.
That had pained Hektor more than any blade, any arrow, any fist against his flesh.