CHAPTER TWO
I groan in pain as the guards march me back into the most secure section of the underground prison, locking me back into place in my cell.
I curl up into a ball, trying to push back the tears that threaten to fall down my face while Domitian looks on from the other side of the cell.
I won’t give my former enemy the satisfaction of seeing me like that.
“It would be easier if you told them more of what they want to hear,” Domitian says. He’s sitting calmly at his side of the cell.
“I won’t betray my friends,” I say.
“Don’t you think Alaric and the rest would want you to talk if it saves you pain?” Domitian points out.
“Why do you care about saving me any pain?” I ask.
“The philosopher Anumaxis suggests that we must strive to reduce the pain and suffering of the world,” Domitian says. “Of course, Brassa argues that’s a coward’s position, while Polosis suggests that our duty is to rule ourselves so that we don’t show any of our pain.”
“You’re an expert on philosophy now?” I ask. It seems at odds with the tough former military man I knew before his attempted coup.
“My education was always well rounded,” Domitian says. “My family wanted me to have all the virtues of a proper noble. But there wasn’t much time for such things in the armies of the emperor.”
“Whereas now, you have all the time in the world to sit and think,” I say.
Domitian nods. “Enough to contemplate my actions and the way they led me here, at least.”
I never imagined Domitian would be that self-reflective, but then, I know that all we have down here in the half dark is time. Time in which to think, to talk, maybe to plan. Not that I can think of any plan that might get either of us out of here.
“Is this where you tell me you regret trying to kill me?” I ask.
Domitian shrugs. “It seemed like a necessity at the time. Now, I see that the whole coup was always doomed to failure.”
“It didn’t feel like it at the time,” I say. I groan as I push myself up against the wall. The bruises and welts on my body hurt every time I brush against the stone. “It felt as though you were just a short step or two away from being emperor.”
“It did,” Domitian says, with a note of regret. Is that regret for his actions, or regret that he didn’t succeed? “But now I see that, even if I succeeded, I wouldn’t have lasted long as emperor. Selene would have had me killed soon enough, to make way for her.”
There was a kind of clarity in his voice, an awareness of just how badly flawed his dreams of ruling had been.
“I thought the two of you were allies,” I say.
Domitian sighs. “I thought that, too. I was a fool. Selene Ravenscroft persuaded me she shared my dream of a return to the empire, but I see now she only wanted her own version of it.”
It’s hard for me to sympathize with him when Domitian would happily have seen me and those around me killed so that he could make Aetheria everything it had once been.
He wanted a return to the games, the same as Selene.
He wanted a society with rulers and slaves, with an emperor above it.
The only difference is that Domitian wanted a place where blood, strength and nobility were what mattered, whereas Selene believes magical strength is the main thing that matters.
“Selene was never going to settle for being anything less than emperor,” Domitian says. “You know about her past, of course?”
“I know she wasn’t noble born,” I reply. “I know she attracted the attention of a scholar who saw her talent, and then rose up through her magical power.”
Domitian smiles tightly. “That’s the version she likes to tell people. Selene doesn’t talk about how cruel her first teacher was, or how he was found dead shortly after she left.”
“She killed him?” I guess.
Domitian shrugs. “There was never proof, but yes. Her whole rise through the empire was dotted with bodies. Selene has always been good at destroying those who get in her way. She always wants to prove herself superior to everyone else.”
I think through Selene’s actions. She’s always presented herself as a bastion of law and order, but she’s been prepared to act outside Aetheria’s laws whenever it suits her.
When I was fitted with a dampener during my time as a gladiator, Selene is the one who tampered with it quietly, giving me access to my powers once again.
When the rebellion against the emperor came, Selene stood by and allowed him to be killed, abandoning the fight against the resistance and leaving the city.
That made her seem as though she had sympathy for the rebellion, but then she spent her time in exile becoming stronger, learning the skills she would need to rise through Aetherian society when she returned.
Somehow, she learned psychomancy, and she trained herself in the art of hunting and killing beast whisperers.
On her return, Selene manipulated the senate into putting her in the games to fight to the death, precisely because she knew it would let her build up a popular following, even as she met with the upper echelons of Aetherian society in the receiving rooms of the colosseum.
Looking back, it’s possible to see everything Selene has done as one unbroken thread, one plan designed to overthrow the emperor and then slowly build the conditions for her to replace him.
Selene must have known that she couldn’t just kill Tiberius and take his place, because that wouldn’t have undone any of the discontent in the empire.
The people might well have risen up against her in turn, given time.
This way, she let Aetheria experiment with a republic, while letting discontent build within it. Selene was creating conditions where the people would beg her to be empress, when the time was right.
Just as she’s putting me in a position where I will beg to serve her eventually, rather than suffer here.
“She came to visit me,” I say. I don’t know why I’m confiding in Domitian now, except there’s no one else to talk this over with, and I can’t just sit in silence here, surrounded by the oppressive atmosphere of the prison. “She had me brought before her here, in the prison.”
“To show her power,” Domitian guesses. “And to gloat.”
“To gloat?”
“Selene can’t help herself. It’s not enough for her to simply win. She craves spectacle and acknowledgement. She wants people to see that she’s won. I always thought it was a weakness on her part, but I never found a way to exploit it. I never thought I needed to.”
I can see now that Domitian has a point.
Selene has always wanted me to know she’s better than me, wanted to show me that she’s beaten me.
Her schemes are clever and intricate, but she seems to want an audience that appreciates exactly how clever.
She came to me partly, I’m sure, because of the pain it would cause me knowing I can’t stop her, but also partly because she wanted to make sure I understood she’d won.
It would be so easy to give in to despair right now, because as far as I can see, Selene has won.
She has every advantage in Aetheria, while I’m locked in a cell, punished as a traitor far below its streets.
Selene doesn’t have to do anything else to me to win; she just needs to leave me here and let the guards torment me until I break in mind and body.
It’s clear the resistance can’t rescue me, or they would have already. Selene just has to leave me to my fate.
And yet, some part of me is convinced now that she won’t.
Domitian is right: that wouldn’t be enough for her.
She’ll want something bigger and more public, and that will give me my chance.
At least, I hope it will. An enemy wanting to destroy me in the open feels like a cruel and slender hope to cling to.
For now, though, all I can do is wait in the half dark with Domitian, hoping that I’ll recognize my chance when it comes.
*
I sleep fitfully. When the light never changes, it’s hard to tell when day and night are. The comings and goings of the guards provide some clues to the time, but only some. I’m pretty sure they’re as happy to take people from their cells in the middle of the night as in daylight.
The sounds of the prison surround me. Somewhere in the distance, someone is whimpering and begging.
I hear the roar of a great beast, too. The prison is surrounded by a labyrinth that cuts it off from the rest of the catacombs beneath the city.
Alaric and I slew the minotaur that used to patrol that maze, but perhaps the guards have found something else now to replace it.
I hear panicked cries and imagine a prisoner running that maze, trying to get away, only to be hunted down.
I have to imagine it, when I can’t simply reach out with my magic the way I once could.
That’s the part that makes me feel weakest here, the fragment of my powers I miss the most. Being able to control animals was always a massive boon, and being able to influence emotions had started to become as natural to me as breathing, too, but it was always being able to borrow senses other than my own that made the biggest difference to me.
I was able to see the world through a hundred sets of eyes, to watch for foes through the eyes of birds or listen to my enemies with the ears of passing rats.
Now, I have no way of knowing what’s going on in the outside world.
Is Alaric out there somewhere, trying to find a way to free me?
I think of the man who’s closer to me than anyone else, my slender, beautiful lover with his dark hair that spills over features so handsome it’s almost painful.
Is he disguising his pain behind bravado and arrogance?
Is he even wearing his own face right now, or using his illusion magic to walk the city as someone else?
I hope Thalia, his second in command in the resistance, is stopping Alaric from doing anything stupid like charging in to rescue me alone.
I also find myself thinking about Marcus, such a contrast to Alaric in many ways.
Where Alaric is a noble who has become a champion of the common folk by leading the resistance, Marcus is the son of a wealth merchant family who has pushed his way up to become a senator.
Where Alaric is all lithe muscle and grace, Marcus is powerfully built and solid.
He has golden hair and square jawed, blue eyed good looks that make him instantly popular with those he meets.
Where Alaric hides behind acerbic comments, Marcus is a consummate politician, making everyone he meets feel as though he’s their friend.
His magic gives him control over storms, rather than illusions.
He won’t be frantically trying to save me.
Marcus has chosen to side with Selene for the same reasons he does everything: it’s what’s best for him.
I don’t know what reward Selene has in mind for him, or what fate she plans for me, and not knowing only adds to my feelings of helplessness.
It feels like an age before I hear booted feet outside my cell. Fear automatically rises within me as I hear the lock opening, because all too often, these sounds are a precursor to another round of beatings and pain. Light spills into the cell from the hall beyond.
“On your feet,” a guard commands.
“Me?” I ask.
“Both of you.”
I frown, because I’ve never been taken from the cell at the same time as Domitian before. Whatever this is, it feels like something big, something final. Perhaps it’s time for both of us to meet our fates.