Chapter 26 #2
I stilled.
“He believed there was something unusual about your magic. Something important.” A strained breath left him. “I may have spoken too openly about that curiosity these past days.”
“To who?”
“No one unusual, acquaintances at the market,” he replied quickly. “Even at the audience yesterday I spoke about you with the Praetor, the Aedile. Their wives as well. Even the Imperator expressed interest. Elion was proud of you. I saw no reason not to speak highly of it.”
Fire ignited beneath my skin. The Imperator.
The Praetor. The Aedile. Aelia’s laughter echoed through my mind, along with the gleam in her eyes as she forced me onto display like some animal meant for their amusement.
The Praetor had wanted me for himself badly enough to make no effort concealing it.
And Cassara had watched it all unfold without a shred of mercy.
But would they kill Elion? Or was it the work of the men with the clawed daggers, did they operate on their own?
I didn’t know anymore. Perhaps I had never truly understood the depths of corruption festering beneath the polished stone of this city. Then the Imperator’s face surfaced in my mind. Cold. Calculating. Untouchable.
One of them had orchestrated this. One of them had ordered Elion’s death. I would find out who. Though in truth, I no longer cared if they all burned for it.
Livia tended to me in my chamber, helping me dress, offering comfort much like Jorius had.
It had taken what felt like hours to wash the blood from my leathers and skin, the water in the bath turning red again and again until the last remnants of Elion swirled away.
When I finally stood clean, I felt stripped of more than blood.
My grief was no longer soft. It had hardened.
My heart no longer ached—it burned. Everything I had worked toward was gone. The system had taken it piece by piece, shaping me, testing me, trying to bend me into something small. Obedient.
I would not bend. I would burn it down instead. If vengeance required my soul in exchange for their screams, I would pay it. I would make them suffer.
I sat beside Livia on the bed in silence. She watched me carefully, concern etched into her features.
“Tina,” she said at last, her voice trembling, “I need to tell you something. I should have told you before, but I was afraid… ashamed. Please don’t think differently of me.” She grasped my hand, her fingers cold.
“What is it?” I softened my tone for her sake, forcing the edge from it. “You can tell me.”
“You must understand I didn’t have a choice,” she began. “But I think you need to hear this. It may offer you some comfort.” She drew a steady breath.
“The system—the piercings—they change everything. They demand something from all of us. I told you before I’d found a way to survive.
That wasn’t entirely true.” Her eyes filled with tears.
“During the feast… the Praetor had noticed me. He took me. I couldn’t refuse him—not in my position.
I admired how you maneuvered him, how you held yourself before him.
I couldn’t. He wasn’t gentle. And when he was finished with me, he gave me to the Aedile. ”
Her voice faltered, but she continued.
“My father begged them not to take me. He didn’t even know what had already been done. It didn’t matter. The Aedile hurt me as well. After… I felt hollow. Like I no longer existed inside my own body.”
My hand tightened around hers.
“When Marcus came to visit the Aedile, I saw something different in him. More… controlled. So I cornered him. Made sure he wanted me. That’s how I was brought to the Ludaryn...
I don’t assist the medicus as you think.
Marcus summons me. He takes me to his bed almost every day.
I let him believe I care for him. That I’m devoted.
He holds feelings for me, I know he does.
But to me… it’s survival. I trade a part of myself to remain here, beneath this roof, where I will never again be passed between cruel men like currency. ”
Her heart-shaped face was sunken in, her olive-green eyes were glistening with tears and I ached for her inside. For everything she’d endured, there was no shame in it for her.
“Livia… I’m so sorry. None of this is your shame. None of it.”
“I tell you this now because you are ready to hear it,” she whispered. “You’ve maneuvered the system so far, but I see it shifting around you. I see them treating you as currency as well. If you’re ever forced… there is no shame in surviving. We rarely have a true choice in this world.”
When she finished I pulled her into my arms. She clung to me, and for a moment our pain blurred together—grief, anger, humiliation, survival.
We held each other in the unspoken understanding that neither of us was alone.
I brushed her braid away from her shoulder and looked at her with concern.
I’d find a way to get her away from all of this as well.
The doors burst open.
“Bondward Valentina.” A guard stepped inside. “You are summoned.”
More pain awaited.
I followed him through the corridors, my steps growing heavier with each turn. Livia stayed close behind me, her presence steadying in the suffocating silence as we descended into the lower halls.
“Livia,” I said without looking at her. “Don’t come into the courtyard.”
She frowned immediately. “What? No… I want to be there for you.”
I swallowed against the tightness in my throat. “I don’t want you to see.”
Her expression faltered. “Tina—”
“Please,” I whispered. “I’m asking you to. You’ve suffered enough.”
We reached the final archway before she could answer. I gave her no time to argue further and pulled the iron door shut between us.
When I stepped onto the sand, the moon had already risen, casting a pale glow across the courtyard—soft, almost serene against what was to come.
To my left, the Bondwards stood in rigid formation.
To my right, the warriors waited, their expressions unreadable, the sabers shifting restlessly behind them.
The Bondwards watched with open pity. The warriors did not. And among them—Vayren. Every line of his body was tight with restraint, fists clenched, jaw set. He looked as if a single breath might shatter whatever control he possessed.
I forced my eyes forward. At the center stood Doctore, whip coiled in his hand. Before him rose two wooden poles, iron chains with cuffs hanging from each. Was this the place Elion had been burned only hours ago?
Dread coiled through me. Placing one foot before the other across the sand became an effort of will. Grief, anger, fear—they pressed against my ribs with every step. Still, I kept my chin high.
I would not bow.
“Bondward Valentina,” Doctore’s voice carried. “You are ordered to receive ten lashes upon the will of Marcus. Your crime—attempted escape.”
He lifted his gaze toward the balcony. Marcus stood above us, rigid against the stone, untouched by what unfolded below. There was no grief in him now. Only a cruel certainty.
He gave a single nod. And sealed my fate.
“Restrain her,” Doctore ordered harshly.
The guards stepped onto the sand, seizing my arms before I could take another breath. I moved forward on my own, but they forced me down regardless, my knees striking the ground hard enough to jar my bones. The grit bit into my skin as they wrenched my arms outward.
Cold iron snapped around my wrists. Pain flared from my injury as chains rattled, dragging my arms wide until my shoulders strained under the pull. My torso was forced upright, vulnerable to every watching eye as I faced Bondwards and warriors alike.
The courtyard was silent. I clenched my jaw, refusing to lower my gaze. I would not show regret. I would not offer them shame. I held on to my anger instead, gripping it like a shield as I waited for the first strike.
Doctore stepped behind me, the shift of air warning me before his hand ever touched my back. His palm lowered, pressing against the leather covering my skin. And in the corner of my eye, Vayren moved. Barely. A shift of weight. But everything about him changed.
Sweat glistened along his brow despite the cool night. His fists clenched until the tendons stood out like drawn wire. His chest rose unevenly, breath no longer controlled but dragged from deep within him.
His eyes… no longer cold. Lethal. Fixed on Doctore’s hand. On the hand touching me.
The air thickened, charged, as if the entire Ludaryn sensed something coiling tight within him, something ancient and violent straining against its leash. He looked one heartbeat from bloodshed. A predator forced to watch another lay claim.
And for the first time—
He did not look in control.
The tear of leather split the silence. Doctore ripped it from my back. The fabric gave way in his fist, falling uselessly over my arms, leaving me exposed. Only thin scraps remained across my breasts, barely enough to preserve my modesty, my skin bared to every watching eye.
A choked breath escaped me, unbidden. Not pain…
Humiliation . The deliberate stripping of dignity before the first lash ever fell.
I found Jorius in the line of Bondwards. He couldn’t hold my gaze. His fists were clenched at his sides, breath uneven, fury and helplessness etched plainly across his face. I looked away. I couldn’t bear the pity there.
Instead I searched for the only man in this entire Ludaryn who would not look at me with sorrow. Only with rage.
They did not understand what they had created.
He had promised to burn a room for me if I gave him what he wanted.
I had refused him then—afraid of losing myself.
But I had already lost something far greater.
I was done pretending. Done resisting the pull between us and the truth of what I needed. I would not bow to them.
But I would bow to him .
My eyes found Vayren’s. The air between us sparked—alive, dangerous, charged with something that had been building for far too long. Behind me, the whip sliced through the air as Doctore prepared the first strike.