Rogue, Prisoner, Princess

“And what do you suggest we do?” King Claudius demanded. “Drag her out onto the sands and have her beheaded? You were the one who suggested that she should fight, Stephania. You can’t complain if she isn’t dying fast enough for your tastes.”

Lucious understood that part, at least. There was no pretext for her death, and the people seemed to demand that for those they loved. Even more astonishingly, they did seem to love her. Why? Because she could fight a little? As far as Lucious could see, any fool could do that. Many fools did. If the people had any sense, they would give their love where it was deserved: to their rightful rulers.

“I understand that she cannot simply be executed, your majesty,” Stephania said, with one of those innocent smiles that Lucious had noticed she did so well.

“I’m glad you understand it,” the king said, with obvious annoyance. “Do you also understand what would happen if she were harmed now? Now that she has fought? Now that she has won?”

Of course Lucious understood. He wasn’t some child for whom politics was an alien landscape.

Stephania summed it up. “It would fuel the revolution, your majesty. The people of the city might revolt.”

“There is no ‘might’ about it,” King Claudius said. “We have the Stade for a reason. The people have a thirst for blood, and we give them what they are looking for. That need for violence can turn against us just as easily.”

Lucious laughed at that. It was hard to believe that the king really thought Delos’s populace would ever be able to sweep them away. He had seen them, and they were not some blood-drenched tide. They were a rabble. Teach them a lesson, he thought. Kill enough of them, show them the consequences of their actions harshly enough, and they would soon fall into line.

“Is something funny, Lucious?” the queen asked him, and Lucious could hear the sharp edge there. The king and queen did not like being laughed at. Thankfully, though, he had an answer.

“It is just that the answer to all of this seems obvious,” Lucious said. “I am not asking for Ceres to be executed. I am saying that we underestimated her abilities as a fighter. Next time, we must not.”

“And give her an excuse to become more popular if she wins?” Stephania asked. “She has become beloved by the people because of her victory.”

Lucious smiled at that. “Have you seen the way the commoners react in the Stade?” he asked. He understood this part, even if the others did not.

He saw Stephania sniff. “I try not to watch them, cousin.”

“But you will have heard them. They call the names of their favorites. They bay for blood. And when their favorites fall, what then?” He looked around, half expecting someone to have an answer for him. To his disappointment, no one did. Perhaps Stephania wasn’t bright enough to see it. Lucious didn’t mind that.

“They call the names of the new winners,” Lucious explained. “They love them just as much as they loved the last ones. Oh, they call for this girl now, but when she lies bleeding on the sand, they will bay for her death as quickly as for anyone else. We just have to stack the odds a little more against her.”

The king looked thoughtful at that. “What did you have in mind?”

“If we get this wrong,” the queen said, “they will just love her more.”

Finally, Lucious could feel some of his anger being replaced by something else: satisfaction. He looked over to the doors to the throne room, where one of his attendants was standing waiting. A snap of his fingers was all it took to send the man running, but then, all Lucious’s servants quickly learned that angering him was anything but wise.

“I have a remedy for that,” Lucious said, gesturing toward the door.

The shackled man who walked in was easily more than seven feet tall, with ebony black skin and muscles that bulged above the short kilt he wore. Tattoos covered his flesh; the slaver who had sold the combatlord had told Lucious that each one represented a foe he had slain in single combat, both within the Empire and in the lands far to the south where he had been found.

Even so, for Lucious, the most intimidating part of it all wasn’t the size of the man or his strength. It was the look in his eyes. There was something there that simply didn’t seem to understand things like compassion or mercy, pain or fear. That could happily have torn them all limb from limb without feeling a thing. There were scars on the warrior’s torso where blades had struck him. Lucious couldn’t imagine that expression changing even then.

Lucious enjoyed watching the reactions of the others there as they saw the fighter, chained like some wild beast and stalking through them. Some of the women made small sounds of fear, while the men stepped back hurriedly out of his path, seeming to sense instinctively just how dangerous this man was. Fear seemed to push emptiness ahead of him, and Lucious basked in the effect his combatlord had. He watched Stephania take a scurrying step back out of the way, and Lucious smiled.

“They call him the Last Breath,” Lucious said. “He has never lost a bout, and never let a foe live. Say hello,” he grinned, “to Ceres’s next – and final – opponent.”

CHAPTER SIX

Ceres woke to darkness, the room lit only by moonlight filtering in through the shutters, and by a single flickering candle. She struggled toward consciousness, remembering. She remembered the beast’s claws ripping at her, and just the memory seemed to be enough to summon the pain to her. It flared in her back as she half turned to her side, hot and sudden enough to make her cry out. The pain was all-consuming.

“Oh,” a voice said, “does it hurt?”

A figure stepped into view. Ceres couldn’t make out the details at first, but slowly, they swam into place. Stephania stood there over her bed, as pale as the shafts of moonlight that surrounded her, forming a perfect picture of the innocent noble, there to visit the sick and injured. Ceres had no doubt that it was deliberate.

“Don’t worry,” Stephania said. To Ceres, the words still seemed to come from too far away, fighting their way through fog. “The healers here gave you something to help you sleep while they stitched you back together. They seemed quite impressed you’re still alive, and they wanted to take away your pain.”

Ceres saw her hold up a small bottle. It was a dull green against the paleness of Stephania’s hand, stoppered with a cork and glistening around the rim. Ceres saw the noble girl smile, and that smile felt as though it was made of sharp edges.

“I am not impressed that you have managed to live,” Stephania said. “That wasn’t the idea at all.”

Ceres tried to reach out for her. In theory, this should have been the moment to escape. If she had been stronger, she could have burst past Stephania and made for the door. If she could have found a way to fight past the cloudiness that felt as though it was filling her head to the breaking point, she might have been able to grab Stephania and force her to help in escaping.

Yet it seemed as if her body was only obeying her sluggishly, responding long after she wanted it to. It was all Ceres could do to sit up with the covers wrapped around her, and even that brought with it a fresh wave of agony.

She saw Stephania run a finger down the bottle she held. “Oh, don’t worry, Ceres. There’s a reason you’re feeling so helpless. The healers asked me to make sure you got your dose of their drug, so I did. Some of it, anyway. Enough to keep you docile. Not enough to actually take away your pain.”

“What did I do to make you hate me this much?” Ceres asked, although she already knew the answer. She’d been close to Thanos, and he’d rejected Stephania. “Does having Thanos for your husband really matter to you this much?”

“You’re slurring your words, Ceres,” Stephania said, with another of those smiles without any warmth behind it that Ceres could see. “And I don’t hate you. Hate would imply that you were in some way worthy of being my enemy. Tell me, do you know anything about poison?”

Just the mention of it was enough to make Ceres’s heart speed up, anxiety blossoming in her chest.

“Poison is such an elegant weapon,” Stephania said, as though Ceres weren’t even there. “Far more so than knives or spears. You think you are so strong because you get to play with swords with all the real combatlords? Yet I could have poisoned you while you slept, so easily. I could have added something to your sleeping draught. I could simply have given you too much of it, so that you never woke up.”

“People would have known,” Ceres managed.

Stephania shrugged. “Would they have cared? In any case, it would have been an accident. Poor Stephania, trying to help, but not really knowing what she was doing, gave our newest combatlord too much medicine.”

She put a hand to her mouth in mock surprise. It was such a perfect mime of shocked remorse, even down to the tear that seemed to glisten at the corner of her eye. When she spoke again, she sounded different to Ceres. Her voice was thick with regret and disbelief. There was even a small catch there, as if she were struggling to hold back the urge to sob.

“Oh no. What have I done? I didn’t mean to. I thought… I thought I did everything exactly the way they told me to!”

She laughed then, and in that moment, Ceres saw her for what she was. She could see through the act that Stephania so carefully maintained all the time. How did no one notice? Ceres wondered. How could they not see what lay behind the beautiful smiles and the delicate laughter?

“They all think I’m stupid, you know,” Stephania said. She stood straighter now, looking a lot more dangerous to Ceres than she had. “I take great care to ensure that they think I’m stupid. Oh, don’t look so worried, I’m not going to poison you.”

“Why not?” Ceres asked. She knew there had to be a reason.

She saw Stephania’s expression harden in the candlelight, a frown creasing the otherwise smooth skin of her brow.

“Because that would be too easy,” Stephania said. “After the way you and Thanos humiliated me, I would rather see you suffer. You both deserve it.”

“There’s nothing else you can do to me,” Ceres said, although in that moment, it didn’t feel like it. Stephania could have walked over to the bed and hurt her a hundred different ways, and Ceres knew she would have been powerless to stop it. Ceres knew the noble would have no idea how to fight, but she could have bested Ceres easily right then.

“Of course there is,” Stephania said. “There are weapons in the world even better than poison. The right words, for instance. Let’s see now. Which of these will hurt most? Your beloved Rexus is dead, of course. Let’s start with that.”

Ceres tried not to let any of the shock she felt show on her face. She tried not to let the grief rise up enough that the noble girl could see it. Yet she knew from the look of satisfaction on Stephania’s face that there must have been some flicker.

“He died fighting for you,” Stephania said. “I thought you would want to know that part. It does make it so much more… romantic.”