Glacius looks shocked, then stumbles, toppling back into the crowd.The people there don’t move to catch him, but instead step out of the way, letting him fall with a sound like a boulder crashing to the ground.The crypt we’re in is dusty enough to send a cloud of it into the air as Glacius falls, unconscious.
People move around me, slapping me on the back.Domitian is one of them.
“Don’t worry, boy.You’ll get your chance to fight in the true games again.I’ll make sure of it.”
CHAPTER TEN: ALARIC
What am I doing here?
I ask myself that question over and over as I sit in Seatide’s tavern, drinking bad wine and listening to worse music.The people of this village have a fondness for sea shanties that verges on the mind numbing.
What am I doing here?
The village doesn't seem charming or quaint without Lyra here, and I'm not sure I ever really thought it was.I'm here because of her, for the chance to be with her, and now she's gone.So why am I staying?
A couple of the women in the bar look me up and down, making no secret of it.One in particular is quite brazen, a red haired young woman who sits by the bar of the tavern and glances over in my direction while sipping a drink.She looks at me as if I'm the most beautiful thing she's ever seen, and I must admit she's good looking in her own right.I could forget so much in her arms, the same way I forget it in wine.
There is so much people want me to remember that I don't care to.Fighting in the colosseum, being a prisoner of the emperor.Almost seeing Lyra die, again and again.
Things were meant to be so simple between us.We’d helped to overthrow the emperor, done our part in the violence of the revolution.Somehow, Lyra even managed to keep it from turning into a bloodbath the way it so easily could have.
Possibly evenshouldhave.There were plenty within Aetheria I would have been glad to see the end of.Instead, there was only limited fighting in the streets, a relatively peaceful transition to a republic ruled by a senate of which Rowan is somehow the head.How is common born Rowan the first senator of Aetheria?The world is enough to make me laugh bitterly sometimes.
And now Lyra has gone running back to him the moment he asks.That's part of why I didn't want her to go: knowing that Rowan merely wanted her close to him.But the rest… what I said to her was true: it's impossible for her to go to Aetheria without getting tangled up in its politics and schemes.I thought we were trying to be free of all that, free from the machinations found around the arena.
I told her all that and she still left.It's enough to make me sit silently and sullenly, rolling a cup of wine between my hands without ever quite drinking it.I look over to the bar again and the young woman is glancing back at me once more.I know with one tilt of my head I'll be able to summon her over to me.We’ll sit and drink, and almost inevitably we’ll stumble home together to one of our beds.I've spent enough time with noble women looking at me lasciviously in the receiving rooms of the colosseum to know what that expression means, and what she wants from me.
Why don't I give in?I’ve been faithful the past year, but Lyra has made her choice.She's abandoned me here in her home village, with no sign that she's coming back.Whatever promises there were between us have been worn down by time, by living together in this place that feels too small to ever contain either of us.
I’m free to do whatever I want.I could head over to this young woman, could take her to my bed, and in the morning, I could keep traveling around the former empire, seek some adventure rather than the simplicity of village life.
“You realize that Ella is promised to Juro the hunter?”
I sigh as Lyra's mother, Arla, approaches.She looks like an older version of her daughter, with the same spill of golden hair and the same fine features that look almost fragile.She's the healer here in the village, although she uses herbs rather than magic, the way some of the healers of the arena might have.
“And yet she keeps looking my way,” I say.“Maybe she isn’t happy with him.”
“Or maybe you’re the one who’s unhappy,” Arla says.“Maybe you’re just looking for a fight now.”
Because that’s what it will mean if I sleep with this young woman.Her hunter boyfriend will come looking for me, and we’ll fight.I have no doubt that I’ll win.I’m a trained gladiator of the arena rather than some village hunter.But I’ll have to hurt him, and there will be bad blood all around, especially without Lyra there to smooth it over.
Maybe Ella wants me, or maybe she just thinks it will be romantic to see her lover fighting for her honor.Maybe she doesn’t know what that will mean for him, or maybe she likes the idea of having to care for him while he recovers from fighting me.
A part of me wants to do it, even now.I want to go to Ella, take her from this place, and simply forget myself in her, and in the violence to follow.
Arla puts her hand on my arm.“Don’t do it, Alaric.It won’t make you happier.”
“Who says I’m not happy?”I counter.With anyone else, I wouldn’t even have this conversation, but I’m surprised to find that I’ve grown to respect Lyra’s mother in the time since I’ve been here.She’s kind and good, and clearly loves Lyra in a way far less complicated than my relationship with much of my family.My mother loves me; she became my patron when I volunteered to be a gladiator just so she could see me, but my father… he’s the reason I volunteered in the first place, trying to get some kind of respect from him.
“Isay you aren’t,” Arla says.“You’ve been miserable for months now, Alaric, and you’ve only gotten worse in the time since my daughter went to the capital.”
I don’t answer for several seconds, and she puts her hand over mine in a gentle touch that’s comforting in a way that I shouldn’t care about.There was a time when I didn’t care about anybody.Lyra changed that.
“That isn’t your business,” I say.
“You’re the man my daughter loves,” Arla says.“Thatmakesyou my business.”
I shake my head.“If she loves me so much, why did she leave?”
