Chapter 49
AIMILIA
The day of the first trial arrived, and Aimilia stood in the shadows of the hall built on the sides of the amphitheater built on the edge of the estate grounds into a rocky, sloping hill.
There were two small buildings, one on each side of the stage that housed the commanders as they waited for the spectators to fill out the sloped seats.
She could see Cyprian glaring at her from the other side.
Aimilia was bracketed by two of the other commanders, the ones she was worried least about.
If she leaned forward and craned her head, she could see Nikias and his mother in the amphitheater stands.
A little wave of guilt rolled in her stomach and she hoped her distance from him over the last week spared him from his mother’s displeasure. If it hadn’t…
She did lean forward, sneaking a look at his cold marble facade. What was he hiding under there?
Commander Prisca came down from the stands, having been chosen by Nikias to conduct the trials, and Aimilia leaned back, taking a deep breath and steeling herself. She needed to worry about herself right now and Nikias later.
“House Mitis, Runai, I give you—your commanders,” Commander Prisca called out, silencing the whispering crowd.
They went from oldest to youngest, so Cyprian stepped out first and Aimilia last.
The dirt kicked up with her sandals as she took her place in the line-up and faced the crowd fully. She lifted her chin as they cheered, keeping her hands clasped behind her back.
Her eyes caught Turpis’ gaze where he sat in the crowd and his lips lifted into a smirk and a wink.
Aimilia kept her expression impassive, hoping it would go unnoticed, but she could see Nikias pulling his gaze away from Turpis, hands clenching over the arms of his seat.
She focused instead on Commander Prisca as she spoke to them about the first challenge. It wasn’t anything Aimilia wasn’t prepared for. She’d spent a good amount of time reading up on the past trials used to determine the next Head of House Mitis.
The first one always involved a magical creature.
She just hoped it wasn’t chimeras. She’d had enough of them to last her a lifetime.
A snarl sounded from nearby.
Aimilia turned her head and spotted it just as the words left Commander Prisca’s lips. Cerberus. One for each of them.
Maybe Aimilia would prefer a chimera.
The three-headed dogs were snarling, jaws snapping at the air as they struggled against the vitae leashes their handlers had around them.
One was being particularly unruly, although they were all giving them a run for their money.
Runes filled the air and soon enough Aimilia and a cerberus were surrounded by walls of vitae.
Hypatia had mentioned the sound of a dog snarling. Maybe this was it. This could be the trap.
If this was the trap, did that mean Nikias was innocent?
“The faster you defeat your cerberus, the better the judges will score you, but remember, speed isn’t the only skill we’re examining. Now…” Commander Prisca backed away from the six commanders, all isolated with a half-starved cerberus, straining to sate their hunger.
“Begin!”
The handlers released the cerberuses and Aimilia began casting.
The dog’s middle head rammed right into her shield and sent the creature bouncing back.
Aimilia quickly set the shield to buy her enough time to cast again.
The dog returned to his advance, angrier than before, lunging and swiping its paw at the shield.
Its sharp claws screeched against her vitae, but her shield wouldn’t let it through.
Aimilia sent a vitae whip out around the shield, wrapping it around its back paws and ripping its legs out from under it.
The three heads yelped as they slammed into the ground and Aimilia quickly began running and maneuvering her vitae to drag the dog across the dirt, heads away from her. It kept twisting and writhing in the dirt, trying to turn back around and get back on its feet, but Aimilia was ruthless.
She said a silent apology to Marcella as it was the same maneuver she’d once done to her, and it was particularly brutal.
The dog finally got back on its feet, and Aimilia released the whip as the third head nearly closed its jaw around her ankle. A quick blast of vitae in its eyes gave her enough time to dodge out of the way.
A scream ripping through the air told her that one of her cousins was not faring well against their dog. She hoped it was Cyprian, but she knew it wasn’t.
Her rune casting was interrupted when she was jerked back, and Aimilia gasped as the first head had its teeth sunk into her cloak.
She slammed into the ground, one head still pulling on her cloak and the other two moving to sink their teeth into her arms. Aimilia reached up and tore her clasp off, rolling out of the way and leaving the cloak behind.
She threw out another blinding rune and right after two illusions, one of herself running in the other direction and another hiding herself as she darted behind the dog.
The creature started for the illusion, leaping forward, one head sinking its teeth into the illusion’s leg, and she could hear the crowd cry out in shock and someone yell her name.
But the real Aimilia dropped the illusion hiding her as she grabbed her cloak still dangling from one head’s jaw.
She took the red fabric and swept it around the dog, taking its legs out from under it again as she enveloped it with the fabric before she pulled another corner over the other two heads, teeth grazing her arm and drawing blood as she did so, but it was too late.
She had the dog bundled up in her cloak despite its furious attempts to fight its way out.
She pulled it against her chest, the dog longer than her torso, and her fingers flew, getting her rune ready.
When the first head tore through the fabric and went for her throat, she was ready.
She slammed her hands to the head, catching it right before its teeth sank into her skin, and activated her rune.
Paralysis.
A hard rune to master and ever harder to use in combat, especially against another mage.
Runai battles rarely involved being with arms’ distance.
This rune in particular was one commanders rarely paid attention to, leaving it for the healers.
When would a commander ever be close enough to an opponent to be able to physically cast on them?
The dog went completely still, and Aimilia held her breath to see if her gamble paid off. If not, she was dead. The other two heads slumped down.
Aimilia sighed and pushed the dog off her and to the ground.
Her cloak slid off it, exposing the paralyzed creature, eyes open and a starving fury in them, but the creature was powerless now.
Aimilia huffed for breath.
All magical creatures had a bit of resistance to vitae attacks, so it had taken quite a bit of vitae for her to power the resistance, and that was on top of an already complex, draining rune.
Cheers ripped through the stands, and Aimilia turned to see her walls falling. Three of her cousins were still in the midst of their fights. She looked over to see Cyprian had already finished, and her stomach rolled at the sight.
All three heads had been separated from the body, making for a gruesome sight.
She hadn’t realized just how much blood a dog could hold, even a fairly large one that stood just below her waist height.
She glanced at the other victor to see he’d had a far less bloody victory. His cerberus was still snarling and snapping, but it was stuck in a hole in the ground.
The applause for her was finally dying down as she was able to focus on the crowd. Turpis was taking his seat again, still clapping with a smirk on his face.
Nikias wasn’t applauding. He stood while his mother sat.
Aimilia could see her hand wrapped around his wrist. It was going to bruise.
How had she been so blind all these years to Nikias’ silent suffering?
He wasn’t applauding. He couldn’t even if he wanted to with his mother gripping him so tightly. He was just staring at her.
Huh. Distantly, she remembered her graduation tournament.
On the occasions she’d looked up at the royal box, she always found him watching her. She’d never understood why, considering both of their biggest concern during that time had been ensuring Gavril would score high enough to avoid their father’s wrath.
She couldn’t make out what he was thinking beneath his impassive marble facade, but…
Aimilia followed his gaze to her arm, still bleeding from the shallow cuts.
So she lifted that arm into the air and the crowd cheered again. She then swept into a dramatic bow before snatching up her ruined cloak with her injured arm and lifting it up into the air, joining the crowd with a victorious, savage cry.
Nikias took his seat again, and his mother released his arm.
Another set of rune walls fell, and Aimilia looked to see one of her other cousins, Commander Eleni, limping away from the cerberus, bleeding from both her leg and her neck.
The dog was still twitching, a gash on its side and a broken leg keeping it from pursuing her further, and even then she didn’t look like the victor with the way she was holding her throat.
Aimilia was moving before she could even think twice about it. She was closer to her injured cousin, even if a healer was already on their way, every second counted.
Aimilia crashed to her knees in the dirt, ignoring the throbbing burn in her own arm as she grabbed her cousin by the arm and pushed her to the ground.
Her hands were turning red as she pulled her cousin’s hand away from her throat, and a gasp fell out of her mouth at the gash.
They needed a real healer. Aimilia knew enough for first aid and to heal Gavril’s scrapes and bruises, but an injury like this was beyond her.
But she had to do something, so she cast, summoning her vitae once more and focusing on the bleeding. If she could at least slow the bleeding, maybe that would buy time for a healer who could actually repair the damage to the intricate inside.
She didn’t know how long she knelt there, focusing on her rune that was trying to keep blood moving through her body without pouring out of her throat and into places it wasn’t supposed to be when finally another rune joined hers, and the sound of a man’s voice filled her ears.
Aimilia looked up and then she spotted the religo lines and wedding band. It had Eleni’s name etched into the metal.
Right. Commander Eleni had married a healer from House Gelu. Her husband.
“Keep your eyes open! Stay with me? Do you hear me, amata?”
Aimilia pulled her hands back as another healer quickly joined them and she shifted down to Eleni’s leg, doing what she could to heal the simpler gash there that was shallower.
She tried not to listen to her husband’s pleading as he healed her, mostly because if she did it was going to tear her in half.
She did her best to stare at the wound in front of her and work on stitching the wound back together just enough to manage until she was out of imminent peril, but all she could see was a shadowy tent and a bandaged Nikias as he lay there in agony, thanks to the fact that she’d poisoned his father to force his hand into negotiating with the monster who killed his beloved wife.
But then Commander Eleni was being lifted away from Aimilia, and she was kneeling in the dirt with Eleni’s husband, Ovidius.
He was trying to get to his feet to follow, but another mage had him by the shoulder, saying, “You’ve done what you can.
You can’t operate any more, you’re too close to this.
You’ve got to let her go and trust the other healers. ”
Aimilia looked down to see she was covered in blood. She wasn’t sure at that point how much of it was hers or her cousin’s.
“She’s my wife—I have to—I—”
Aimilia’s arm was screaming at her and she was starting to feel lightheaded. Everything was swimming around her.
How much blood had she lost?
The sun bearing down on her and sending sweat pouring off her brow wasn’t helping.
But she couldn’t stop herself from looking once more out into the crowd. She needed to go seek help for herself, but given the situation that had just occurred for all to see…
Nikias had turned ashen, and her eyes met his.
His knuckles were alabaster white from how tightly he was gripping the arms of his seat.
The sounds of the last fight filled the air behind her.
He couldn’t move until it was over. He was supposed to be watching it as a judge, but he claimed his scores were fakes and he wasn’t bothering to put up the appearance of watching anything but her.
Aimilia staggered to her feet and smiled, hoping she looked better than she felt, but considering the way her chiton was no longer distinguishable from her red cloak, she doubted it.
Then an arm went around her back and someone was pulling her good arm over their shoulder and escorting Aimilia off the stage floor. She blinked and startled to see it was Uncle Cyprian. “What—What are you doing helping me?”
“You were sportsmanlike enough to rush to Commander Eleni’s aid. Do you think you’re the only one who wants to win without seeing any of their family die?”
Aimilia’s vision was swimming. “I’m not dying.”
“If you were capable of swallowing your pride for five seconds, first of all, we wouldn’t even be here in the first place, so I won’t bother asking again. Just be quiet and let me get you to the healers before you pass out in front of everyone.”
Aimilia let out a soft huff as he helped her make her way out of sight. “Thanks.”
“I didn’t realize you remembered manners.”
Aimilia’s eyes rolled into the back of her skull.