“Alaric!”
It's so good to see him, even here like this, dark hair spilling over his eyes, features so beautiful and sharp that they’re almost feminine.His dark eyes lock onto mine.
“I knew you'd come, and I guessed you'd come early.Were you followed?”
I shake my head.“I don't think so.”
“Let's keep moving anyway,” Alaric says, taking my arm as if we're two lovers out for a late night stroll.It feels so easy and natural to be next to him like this, a reminder of what we once had.At the same time, it feels almost like a betrayal of Marcus.In every sense, given his stance on the games.
“I heard what happened in the games today,” Alaric says.“I heard you saved lives.”
“There was never meant to be a creature involved in the fight,” I say.“Someone released it.Someone who wanted a deadly outcome.”
“That's what they all want the games to be,” Alaric says.“I know you're trying to hold them back, but it's never going to stop them.”
“And gathering people in secret is?”I say.
Alaric looks pained.“I'm just trying to help as many people as I can.Thank you for helping us get away.”
“I hope I'm not supporting some kind of uprising by doing that,” I reply.
Alaric hesitates.“Not yet.”
“That isn't reassuring,” I say.“There are people on the Senate who are starting to paint you as a rebel leader who wants to overthrow the Republic we all fought so hard for.”
“We fought to overthrow the emperor,” Alaric says.“But what's replaced him… it's slowly sliding back to be the same thing.There's corruption everywhere.I'm trying to gather evidence of it among the senators.Do you know some of them are connected to the pit fights in the city?”
“Those are just fist fights,” I point out.“I wouldn't have thought you'd have a problem with them.”
“They're not just that, not anymore.If you go to the right places, you can find death matches.”
“Do you know who's involved?”I ask.
Alaric shakes his head.“Not yet, but that's just a part of it.It's all one big web of corruption and influence.Different senators want to run the city for their own ends.Some of them are little more than criminals in their own right.The escalation in the games is a part of it.If the contests in the Colosseum aren't stopped, how long will it be before they say ‘let's put criminals in there to get rid of them’?How long will it be before they insist on bringing people in from around the former empire, whether they want to come or not?Slowly, they'll recreate every part of the empire, even if there isn't an emperor named at first.”
I can’t deny some of it.Domitian has already talked about throwing criminals into the games.
“You think all of that will come from the games?”I say.
“They were always the heart of the empire,” Alaric replies.“They were an expression of everything it was.It's not a coincidence that the uprising that overthrew the emperor came from within them, Lyra.I will do anything I must to stop things from going back to the way they were.”
“That's what I'm worried about,” I say.
Alaric turns me to face him, taking me in his arms.He's just inches away from me now, and I can see the drive and passion in his eyes.
“They'll call me a traitor to the Republic before this is done,” he says.“I hope you don't believe them.I'm trying… I'm trying to do the right thing for the first time in a long time.I'd ask you to come with me and help build up our resistance to the corruption in Aetheria, but I know you can't.Not as a senator.”
Would I go with him if he asked?Would I close the distance between us and kiss him if he asked?Those are two completely separate questions but they feel intrinsically bound up in one another.
Before I can think of my reply, the call of a bird comes through the night air.Alaric looks around, sudden worry on his face.
“They're coming for me,” he says.
I borrow the eyes of the bat again, and now we can see guards converging on the marketplace as it gets closer to midnight.
“I need to go,” Alaric says.His face shimmers and shifts, his illusion magic making him into someone else entirely.Someone who slips into the crowd of the nighttime marketplace and disappears.
Alaric has made his choice to be a revolutionary.The question is what I'm going to do.
