“You’re choosing him?Even after all this, you're choosinghim?”
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
Alaric starts forward and Marcus pushes me away from him, sending out a flash of lightning towards Alaric that he barely dodges.
“Stay back,” Marcus orders in a dangerous tone.“Do you think I'm going to stand here and let you attack me?How many of my people have you hurt?How many have you killed?”
“So now you care about people's lives?”Alaric shoots back.He lunges at Marcus, and Marcus avoids the attack only by inches.
“Stop this!”I cry out.Alaric draws back his blade for another attack, but I grab his arm.“Stop this, Alaric.”
“Of course you'd defend your lover,” Alaric says.I can see the pain on his face, carefully masked behind his arrogance, but I've learned how to look through those masks with him.“Or is it your fiancé now?I heard you say he'd proposed to you.”
He sounds so jealous, but this isn't just about jealousy.Alaric and Marcus want completely different things for the city.
“What Marcus is doing here is wrong,” I say.“But more violence isn't the answer.”
“Then what is?”Alaric demands.“Trying to do things within the law doesn't work, Lyra, because the law is designed for the benefit of people like him.The laws of Aetheria were intended to produce a place filled with noble privilege and violence.I should know.”
He should, given that he comes from a noble family, and has fought in the Colosseum.
“So the alternative is chaos?”Marcus says.“Because as far as I can see, that's all you offer, Alaric.I'm trying to produce a better, happier city, and you’ve tried to tear down my efforts with every step.”
“I’ve tried to stop you from corrupting Aetheria,” Alaric snaps.“From turning it back into something only a step away from the empire.”
“But itisstill a step away,” Marcus insists.“I give the people what they want, and because I'm the one doing it, I can stop the worst excesses of the empire from ever coming to pass.Someone like Selene Ravenscroft would make herself into an empress and make slaves of those without the power to stop her.The games would become a grand festival of slaughter, rather than a controlled trickle of blood.”
Alaric looks at him with contempt.“So your argument is that you're not as bad as she is?And all the while you build up your own power?”
“As you have,” Marcus snaps back.“An army of followers in the shadows, who ignore the laws of the city and just do as you say.You spend your time stoking unrest.”
“Sometimes thereneedsto be unrest!”Alaric replies.
Each of them seems to be looking at me as they offer their arguments, as if knowing that they'll never convince the other, but are trying to sway me to their side.Is it just because I’ve been in a relationship with each of them?Or do they see me as somehow holding the balance of power in the city?
Which of them do I believe?Which of them do I trust more?Whose arguments are more persuasive?
More to the point, what doIbelieve?I feel as though I'm caught between the two of them, hating what Marcus is doing, but not liking the way Alaric lashes out from the shadows, either.
“Alaric, I don't condone what Marcus has done here,” I say.“Deathmatches are something I hoped we could eliminate from the city.And I know he takes advantage of the corruption of many of the wealthy.But you're happy to work with the gangs, and to hurt people when it's to your advantage.The methods you've chosen are wrong.”
“Do you still think you can change things from within the system?”Alaric asks, making the very idea of it sound like a joke.
“If we don't change the system in the city, then all you will ever do is spend your time fighting against the full weight of it,” I argue.“You can protest and disrupt, but are you really helping people like this, Alaric?How many ordinary people have been hurt out there?”
“People working for him,” Alaric argues, pointing at Marcus.“People who chose to be a part of this.”
“Servants brought here because their employers wanted to attend a fight?People who don't have anything to do with the violence but are just trying to do their jobs?”
I can see I'm not convincing him.Marcus laughs, bitterly.
“There's no point trying to talk to him, Lyra.Alaric won't rest until he's burned Aetheria to the ground.”
“And you won't rest until you've made yourself an emperor,” Alaric retorts.The two of them have real anger in their eyes, and I worry that they're about to fight.
But we have bigger problems.I'm still connected to some of the birds outside because I suspect I might need their speed and grace if this turns into a physical conflict.Through their eyes, I catch a glimpse of figures approaching along the streets leading to the temple.
“There's no time for this,” I say.“The guards are coming.They must have heard the fighting.They're moving to surround the temple.”
