Thalia nods.“I think so.She seems sincere in wanting to find these underground death matches, but we're going to have to help her find them.She gave us a symbol that people were wearing.”
“Can you use that to find the matches?”I ask.
She nods.“I should be able to.We could go in and disrupt them easily enough.”
“Let Lyra go in with you,” I say.
“We don't need her there to disrupt things,” Thalia points out.
I shake my head.“But this way she sees what's going on for herself, and maybe she sees connections to whoever's involved as a backer.She won't trust the information if we just give it to her, so we let her see everything.”
“And then hope she does something about it?”Thalia asks.
“She will,” I say.“She must.”
Because I can't believe that Lyra is as corrupt as the rest of them, I won't believe that she's so absorbed by the system in Aetheria that she’ll ignore something like this.
“We have bigger problems, too,” Thalia says.“You heard about Selene Ravenscroft fighting in the colosseum?”
I nod.“That kind of news is impossible not to hear.”
“We're going to do something about it, aren't we?”Thalia says.“Something like this can't be allowed to just drift along unchallenged.”
“We'll do something,” I say.
“What?”
“I haven't worked that part out yet,” I say.We need to think of a way of doing this that won't lose public support for our group.Simply disrupting the games doesn't seem to work, although it might come to that, in the end.
“Well, think quickly,” Thalia says.“Because I get the feeling her presence in the city is going to change things for all of us.”
I nod.Selene’s return must point to something bigger.She has some larger plan in mind, and if we can't find out what it is and stop it, I have no doubt it will be bad for every free person in Aetheria.
CHAPTER TWELVE: LYRA
“No, hang the flagsthere!These aren’t ordinary games!”
In the colosseum, all is chaos as servants and trainers rush to put on a set of games at short notice.There weren't due to be any for another week, and it seems that's far too long for Marcus to wait to see Selene Ravenscroft die.
Which means he's here, overseeing every small aspect of the preparations.I'm by his side for most of it, both because of our relationship and because I'm meant to be one of the organizers of the games.
“No, don't put that post there!”Marcus calls out.“I know obstacles make the fights more exciting, but if you put one too close to the arena edge, Selene Ravenscroft might use it to get up into the crowd.”
I shudder at the thought of the chaos that would ensue then, although the real danger with her is what would happen if she were able to unleash her full magic on the people of Aetheria.
“I'm still worried about this,” I say.
“I know,” Marcus replies, turning to me and taking me in his arms.“Please, just trust me.We can get this done.Selene will die, and the threat from the remnants of the old empire will be gone.”
He makes it all sound so simple to simply bring about someone's death like this.
“What about the rest of the fights for these games?”I ask.
Marcus shrugs.“I thought perhaps a couple of warm-up bouts, all according to the new rules, all as safe as we can make them.”
He says it as if he's trying to reassure me, but I can also hear that he doesn't share my need for everything to be safe.It's clear he's doing it for me rather than because he knows it's the right thing to do.
“And then straight into the bout between Selene and someone else?”I say.
