She puts her foot on Cesca’s chest, pushing her back down onto the sand and setting her blade to the other woman’s throat.
“Selene! Selene!” the crowd is chanting, even as Cesca looks up with pleading eyes to the senate box.
“I yield!” she calls out again, as her own blade draws a single bead of blood from her flesh.
I rush to the front of the box. “This fight is over,” I call out. “Selene Ravenscroft is the winner.”
Selene smiles, and just for a moment I think she might send some deadly burst of magic into Cesca, just to prove I can’t control her. My heart tightens in my chest at the thought of that. Cesca and I aren’t friends, but I don’t want to see her hurt.
Selene steps away, raising the sword as the crowd cheers. To my surprise, she reaches down and helps Cesca up, too, and thecrowd cheersthatas well. Right now, I suspect they would cheer anything she chooses to do.
Selene is a symbol to the people now, a point of certainty and clarity, even if she stands for something contrary to everything the Republic represents. It only makes her more dangerous.
I frown as I watch her there with Cesca. There’s something very strange about all this. Selene doesn’t seem like the kind of person to share the limelight, and yet she is. There’s also the moment when she set a blade to Cesca’s skin. Cesca might not be the most powerful magic user, but her powers are clear. She could have sent lightning arcing along that blade, could have stunned Selene, maybe even killed her.
So why didn’t she? The more I look at this moment, the two of them walking from the sands together to cheers, the more I’m convinced there’s something else going on here. Selene is playing some deeper game. It’s something that makes me worried, especially when Selene’s last game saw her show mercy to a gladiator, only to kill him after the bout.
I turn and run from the council box, determined to find out what’s happening.
CHAPTER THREE
I leave the senate box, heading into the depths of the stadium while Marcus closes the games. I hurry down to the preparation rooms, and the healers’ slabs there, wanting to make sure Cesca is all right.
The last time Selene fought, she killed a gladiator named Sorrel. She didn’t do it during their bout, though. She made it look as though she’d disabled him mercifully, without permanent damage. But she’d done something far crueler, using vitomancy to put a twisted, growing kind of magic into Sorrel that had consumed him from the inside out.
I need to ensure Selene hasn’t done the same thing again. My heart beats faster with the fear Cesca might be dying even as I head into the preparation area, into the area reserved for the healers, where stone slabs stand in neat rows, either for gladiators to sit on while they’re healed or for their bodies to lie on when they fall.
Cesca isn’t there, and I frown, looking around for one of the healers. The senate pays to ensure the finest healers are here to help the gladiators with their magic.
“Did Cesca come down here?” I ask one of them.
“She’s already gone,” the healer says. “She didn’t have any injuries to speak of. She’s already gone to the receiving rooms.”
I curse and make my way up through the colosseum, because I can’t take the chance that Selene might have infected Cesca, the same way she did with Sorrel. I’m also worried about the way the two of them walked out of the arena together. I’m worried there’s more going on there.
So I run to the receiving rooms, the spaces within the colosseum that were designed so nobles of the empire could meet with gladiators, gaining reflected glory by being seenwith them and giving the gladiators opportunities for them to gain favor. They've always been places of pleasure and double-dealing, secrets and power.
They’re a place that hold bad memories for me, too. I used to meet with my patron, Lady Elara, in one of the side rooms there so that she could teach me more about being a beast whisperer, and that got me embroiled in dangerous webs of conflict that ultimately led to me killing her. The receiving rooms are a space where I’ve been hurt and humiliated, attacked and punished.
Now, as I go into them,I’mone of the important personages who has access to them only because of my status, rather than because of being a gladiator. There are plenty of others here, including several senators, despite them not being in the senate box. Senator Olivia is lounging on an elegant couch, augmenting her toga with so many jewels she seems to drip with them, her golden hair adorned by a diamond encrusted circlet. Senator Octavio stands solemnly at one side, the aging senator always a stickler for the laws and customs of Aetheria. Senator Yarrow is a dark-haired woman in her forties, who works as a gang leader in the slums when she isn’t undertaking her senatorial duties.
There are plenty of others here as well as senators. There are nobles and merchants, but no common people other than the servants who stand around the edges of the room, ready to provide food, drink or entertainment.
Selene is sitting on one of the many couches there, with Cesca on another not far off. Both are being attended by knots of supporters, although they’re very different groups. Cesca seems to attract good looking young nobles who want to take her into one of the side rooms to spend time with her. It’s one of the ways she builds connections she hopes to use to give herself a better place in the world. Currently, a handsome young man is sitting close to her, offering her a jeweled pendant.
Selene is surrounded by people who matter far more. Senator Octavio goes over to her, even though he seems to have no love for her. I watch as they sit and talk in whispers for a few moments, before Senator Octavio goes out from the receiving rooms once more. Senator Olivia is next, the two of them sitting there as if they’re old friends, when I know Olivia is frightened of what might happen if Selene gains power. I doubt Selene will speak to me, and I know she won’t give me a straight answer if she does, so I wait until Cesca is going to one of the servants to get wine so I can intercept her, instead.
“What happened down there in the arena?” I ask.
Cesca hesitates, and it’s as though she’s remembering the answer from somewhere. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“You had a chance to stun her with your lightning. Why didn’t you do it?”
There’s another hesitation, a brief flicker in Cesca’s dark eyes. “I don’t understand. She beat me. She was always going to beat me. Begging for my life was the only way to survive. And this way… at least people know I was brave enough to take her on. I’ll get so much more attention this way.”
I can understand that as a motivation for her, but I’m surprised Cesca would just come out and say it. It’s not the kind of thing she would normally admit to. She’s more subtle than that, even if she’s usually determined she should be the center of attention. She doesn’t even seem to care that Selene has more of that attention than her.
Something strange is happening here.
