Slave, Warrior, Queen

“Father will never agree to this,” Ceres sneered.

Ceres’s mother took a threatening step toward her.

“Oh, but it was your father’s idea,” her mother snapped, with her eyebrows raised halfway up her forehead. Ceres knew she was lying now – whenever she did that, she was lying.

“Do you actually think your father loves you more than he loves me?” her mother asked.

Ceres blinked, wondering what that would have to do with anything.

“I could never love someone who thinks she is better than me,” she added.

“You never loved me?” Ceres asked, her anger morphing into hopelessness.

With the gold in hand, Lord Blaku waddled over to Ceres’s mother and handed it to her.

“Your daughter is worth every piece,” he said. “She will be a good wife and bear me many sons.”

Ceres bit the inside of her lips and shook her head over and over again.

“Lord Blaku will come for you in the morning, so go inside and pack your belongings,” Ceres’s mother said.

“I won’t!” Ceres screamed.

“That was always your problem, girl. You only ever think of yourself. This gold,” her mother said, jingling the purse in front of Ceres’s face, “will keep your brothers alive. It will keep our family intact, allowing us to remain in our home and make repairs. Did you fail to think about that?”

For a split second, Ceres thought maybe she was being selfish, but then she realized her mother was playing mind games again, using Ceres’s love for her brothers against her.

“Do not worry,” Ceres’s mother said, turning toward Lord Blaku. “Ceres will comply. All you need to do is be firm with her, and she becomes as meek as a lamb.”

Never. Never would she be that man’s wife or anyone’s property. And never would she let her mother or anyone exchange her life for fifty-five pieces of gold.

“I will never go with this slaver,” Ceres snapped, shooting him a look of disgust.

“Ungrateful child!” Ceres’s mother yelled. “If you do not do as I say, I will beat you so severely you will never walk again. Now get inside!”

The thought of being beaten by her mother brought back awful, visceral memories; she was taken back to that dreadful moment at five years old when her mother had beaten her until everything had gone black. The wounds from that beating and many others healed – yet the wounds in Ceres’s heart had never stopped bleeding. And now that she knew for sure that her mother didn’t love her, and never had, her heart split wide open for good.

Before she could respond, Ceres’s mother stepped forward and slapped her across the face so hard her ear began ringing.

At first, Ceres was stunned by the sudden assault, and she almost backed down. But then something snapped inside her. She would not allow herself to cower as she always did.

Ceres smacked her mother back, across the cheek, so hard that she tumbled to the ground, gasping in horror.

Red-faced, her mother climbed to her feet, grabbed Ceres by the shoulder and hair, and kneed Ceres in the stomach. When Ceres stooped forward in agony, her mother jabbed her knee into Ceres’s face, causing her to fall to the ground.

The slaver stood and watched, his eyes wide, chuckling, clearly taking delight in the fight.

Still coughing and gasping for air from the assault, Ceres staggered to her feet. Screaming, she flung herself toward her mother, driving her to the ground.

This ends today, was all Ceres could think. All the years of never being loved, of being treated with disdain, fueled her rage. Ceres smashed closed fists into her mother’s face again and again as tears of fury rolled down her cheeks, sobs uncontrollably spilling out of her lips.

Finally, her mother went limp.

Ceres’s shoulders shook with each cry, her insides wrung inside out. Blurred by tears, she looked up at the slaver with an even more intense hatred.

“You will make a good one,” Lord Blaku said with a guileful grin, as he picked up the bag of gold from the ground and attached it to his leather belt.

Before she could react, suddenly his hands were upon her. He grabbed Ceres and climbed into the carriage, tossing her into the back in one quick motion, as if she were a bag of potatoes. His massive bulk and strength was too much for her to resist. Holding her wrist with one arm and taking hold of a chain with the other, he said, “I’m not stupid enough to think you would still be here in morning.”

She glanced at the house that had been her home for eighteen years, and her eyes filled with tears as she thought of her brothers and her father. But she had to make a choice if she was to save herself, before the chain was around her ankle.

So in one quick motion, she mustered all of her strength and snatched her arm out of the slaver’s grip, lifted her leg, and kicked him in the face as hard as she could. He fell backwards, out of the carriage, and tumbled onto the ground.

She jumped from the wagon and ran as fast as she could down the dirt road, away from the woman she vowed to never call mother again, away from everything she had ever known and loved.

CHAPTER FOUR

Surrounded by the royal family, Thanos tried hard to keep a pleasant expression on his face as he gripped the gold wine goblet – yet he could not. He hated being here. He hated these people, his family. And he hated attending royal gatherings – especially the ones following the Killings. He knew how the people lived, how poor they were, and he felt how senseless and unjust all this pomp and haughtiness really was. He would give anything to be far away from here.

Standing with his cousins Lucious, Aria, and Varius, Thanos didn’t make the least bit of effort to engage in their petty conversation. Instead, he watched the imperial guests meander about in the palace gardens, wearing their togas and stolas, presenting fake grins and spewing false niceties. A few of his cousins were throwing food at each other as they ran across the manicured lawn and between tables stocked with food and wine. Others were reenacting their favorite scenes from the Killings, laughing at and mocking those who had lost their lives today.

Hundreds of people, Thanos thought, and not one was honorable.

“Next month, I will purchase three combatlords,” Lucious, the eldest, said in a boisterous tone as he patted drops of sweat from his brow with a silk handkerchief. “Stefanus wasn’t worth half of what I paid for him, and if he weren’t dead already, I would have run a sword through him myself for having fought like a girl in the first round.”

Aria and Varius laughed, but Thanos didn’t find his comment amusing. Whether they considered the Killings a game or not, they should respect the brave and the dead.

“Well, did you see Brennius?” Aria asked, her large blue eyes widening. “I actually considered buying him, but he gave me this conceited look when I watched him rehearse. Can you believe it?” she added, as she rolled her eyes and huffed.

“And he stinks like a skunk,” Lucious added.

Everyone except for Thanos laughed again.

“None of us would have picked him,” Varius said. “Though he lasted longer than expected, his form was horrible.”

Thanos couldn’t keep quiet another second.

“Brennius had the best form in the entire arena,” he interjected. “Don’t talk about the art of combat as if you know anything about it.”

The cousins grew quiet, and Aria’s eyes became large as saucers as she looked toward the ground. Varius puffed out his chest and crossed his arms, scowling. He stepped closer to Thanos as if to challenge him, and the air thickened with tension.

“Well, never mind those self-important combatlords,” Aria said, stepping between them, defusing the situation. She waved for the boys to gather around closer, and then she whispered, “I have heard an outlandish rumor. A little bee told me the king wants to have someone of royal birth compete in the Killings.”

They all exchanged an uncomfortable look as they fell silent.

“Perhaps,” Lucious said. “It won’t be me, though. I’m not willing to risk my life for a stupid game.”

Thanos knew he could beat out most combatlords, but killing another human wasn’t something he wanted to do.