Nikandros’s smile curled, ugly and thin. “Seize her.”
The Hippeus moved at once, bronze-faced and wordless, closing around Thalessa like a trap. Hands wrenched her arms behind her back. Her satchel hit the stones with a dull thud, herbs spilling like secrets.
“How dare you profane this day,” Nikandros said, his voice carrying across the wind. “On the very hour we celebrate our champion and Amyklai’s future, you choose defiance? Let all see the price of such insolence.”
“No,” I breathed, useless against the power he commanded.
I couldn’t move though. Not now. Every instinct begged me to lunge, to claw, to drag him from his pedestal and feed him to his own men … but I had nothing to fight with except a promise I hadn’t yet earned. The Trials were why I was leaving. For this. For her. If I broke now, he won. If I broke now, there would be no change, only another spectacle.
One of the Hippeus uncoiled their whip.
The crack split the air.
The first lash tore through Thalessa’s tunic and the skin beneath, opening a long red smile across her back. She staggered but didn’t fall. Blood welled in beads, then ran, bright against the dust. The second stroke crossed the first where welts were rising up, the edges already swelling, raw and wet. By the third, threads of fabric clung to the wounds, and every breath she took was a shudder.
She didn’t scream. A sound rose from the crowd instead, a helpless moan, quickly swallowed. The taste of iron flooded my tongue as I held my tears back. I forced my spine straight, Calismae’s command still living in my body.Stand tall.
I would do nothing today that gave Nikandros one more excuse to break her, or anyone else.
But I watched. I counted each strike. And I vowed that when I got to Mene laus’s palace … I would remember.
Chains scraped and metal groaned as the Aetherthorn shifted, its shackles dragging across the ground like a warning. Each clank twisted my spine tighter. The sound of the chains together with the sound of the whip became a grotesque duet:submit, submit, submit.
They hauled Thalessa upright when she began to falter. Her head drooped … but then, inch by inch, her chin rose.
Defiant.
Even through the blood and gashes, something in her still burned. A flickering, furious ember that refused to be stamped out.
Thalessa’s gaze moved over the crowd, as if searching for someone … and then she found me.
Her eyes locked with mine, even as her body shuddered with every lash. She wasn’t begging. She wasn’t afraid. She wasn’t asking to be saved.
Thalessa saw me, and in that endless second, I felt the weight of everything she could no longer say.
Don’t look away. Don’t forget. This must end.
I nodded, barely. Not enough to draw attention. But enough for her to see.
I won’t lose. I won’t fail Amyklai. I swear it.
A tear slid down her cheek, carving a line through the red dust like blood on marble.
She raised her fist, and a gasp tore through the crowd.
“No matter what you do,” she cried, her voice pained but defiant, “they will come back.”
The words didn’t just echo. They cracked across the agora like Zeus himself had hurled them to the earth. For a single, suspended heartbeat, Amyklai forgot to breathe.
I saw the glint of steel a second before one of the soldiers grabbed Thalessa’s jaw with brutal force, yanking it open so hard her neck twisted. The dagger rose, flashed once more, and came down hard.
There was a spray of red and a choking gurgle. The dagger came away crimson, and the small, ruined shape of her tongue hit the stones with a sickening thump.
I flinched, my stomach lurching. Below me, someone gagged. Another choked on a sob. Hands flew up to mouths, to eyes, but no one moved forward. Mercy was treason here.
“You will spend your life in the cells in silence,katàratos,” Nikandros hissed as blood poured from Thalessa’s mouth in thick, glistening waves, vivid against the red dust. She tried to gasp, but what came out was a wet, broken rasp, air bubbling through blood, catching on the mangled sounds of what had once been a voice.
“Take her away,” he barked. “See that she lives to suffer her punishment.”
