Chapter 44 #2
I stood on the dais with Elio beside me, a blue velvet purse in one hand and the Domina-Regent’s handkerchief in the other, a gold badge around my neck, and a silk stole draped across my shoulders, and tears drying on my cheeks.
And I tried hard to believe that any of this was real.
The crowd rose from their seats and dispersed, commoners descending toward the arena where they surrounded us in a laughing, shouting mass of congratulations, and the aristocrats walking out of the amphitheater in offended silence.
∞∞∞
Lukhan
I sat perfectly still as the amphitheater emptied around me.
Most of my fellow aristocratic students were flowing toward the exits in tight, silent clusters, their academic gowns billowing behind them like the wings of agitated crows.
But I wasn’t the only one who lingered. I spotted Lady Cresta and Lord Bernardo still seated, their heads bent together in furious conference, while their supporters crowded them and offered their condolences on the shocking loss.
I did not join them. Those two had stupidly squandered their opportunity by trying to cheat the final obstacle when victory was within their grasp, and had thus brought humiliation down on us all.
Instead, I remained in my seat and watched Miss Fishwife and her merchant boy gloat over their chance-won victory.
The two of them stood at the center of a mob of commoner students on the arena floor.
They surrounded Miss Fishwife and Ferraro in a vulgar display of celebration, shouting congratulations, hooting with laughter, clapping their backs, reaching to stroke the silk stole draped across their shoulders with their dirty fingers, as if adoring a sacred relic.
Miss Fishwife looked plainer and uglier than usual with her face blotched and swollen from crying, her cheap black gown dusty and dirty.
Ferraro, grinning like the fool he was, stood at her side, one arm slung possessively around her shoulders, his own face alight with insolent triumph.
He clutched his purse in his free hand, and every few seconds he hefted it as if savoring the weight and the clink of coins that must represent everything his family had wanted for him.
Then Ferraro said something to her and her face broke into a wide, helpless, utterly unguarded smile that transformed her plain features into something radiant.
For an instant, she actually looked beautiful.
And for one traitorous, unforgivable moment, I understood why they all followed her.
They surrounded her because they wanted to. Because being near her made them feel like they were part of something that mattered. Because she looked at them the same way she was looking at Ferraro now, with her whole heart in her eyes, and they believed in her.
She did not command loyalty like Father and General Corvellan did. She inspired it.
The thought sliced into my chest like a mage-healer’s scalpel. I turned my head and looked at Damien, patiently sitting beside me, his big body still and quiet, his gray eyes fixed on the same scene with an expression that looked almost… longing.
Of all the students here, Damien alone followed me because he chose to. Not because of who Father had been before his exile. Not because Damien feared what would happen if he walked away. Because the friendship between us was real, in a world where almost nothing was.
And for one heartbeat, watching Talisa of Bernswick accept the adoration of her followers with genuine, bewildered joy, I envied her.
Then the moment curdled as reality set in.
She won. She actually won.
Which meant the ruin of everything I’d worked so hard to achieve. Now, she would pay her fines, and the threat of expulsion would vanish.
That interfering, stubborn, impossible girl would return to the Imperial Academy in the fall, trailing her admirers and her merchant boyfriend.
She would sit in the same classrooms as me, challenging me at every turn and holding my secret like a poisoned dagger for another year.
And every commoner in the academy would look at that trophy at every mealtime and remember that nobility was no longer synonymous with excellence.
And I would have to watch it happen.
Father would receive my letter today or tomorrow.
I could picture his reaction with merciless clarity.
The tightening of his mouth. The dangerous narrowing of his eyes.
The way his right hand would curl slowly into a fist against the arm of his chair, knuckles whitening, while his left hand held my letter at arm’s length as if the paper itself had been contaminated.
My son, what kind of lackluster heir have I sired?
He would not shout. He never shouted. Shouting was for men who could afford to lose control.
My father could afford no sign of weakness since the mad old Dominus had stripped him of his seat and his dignity and left him with nothing but a remote estate, a bitter wife, two resentful daughters, and a half-Fae bastard son and heir whose very existence was a daily reminder of everything he had lost.
I knew, all too well, that the news in my letter would destroy whatever fragile progress I had made in his estimation over the past year.
All my carefully crafted reports about my standing in my classes, my social position at the academy, my cultivation of the right friendships—all of it, rendered meaningless by my defeat to a fishwife’s daughter from the impoverished Western Isles and a merchant’s son from the decadent, sun-drenched, port of Baleares.
I should have been on that dais just now, receiving the Domina-Regent’s accolades. My name—and Damien’s too, of course—should have been engraved on that trophy for every student to see.
Instead, here I was, failure sitting in my stomach like a stone, watching a pair of commoners celebrate the victory that should have been mine.
If Talisa of Bernswick believes that this victory makes her untouchable, she’s wrong.
Bonds could be broken. Her so-called “Circle of the Open Hand” was held together by nothing more substantial than shared resentment and the temporary glow of belonging.
Remove one key supporter. Find the right pressure point.
Apply it with precision, and her reputation and her support would both collapse like a sandcastle in a rising tide.
And I now had extra resources to draw upon.
After the Custodes Sanguinis had approached me, I knew I needed to wait for the right moment and the right leverage to demonstrate my value to them.
Before, my vow to destroy Talisa of Bernswick had likely been viewed as little more than a personal vendetta.
But now that she and Ferraro had won the Aurelian Trials, bringing them both down would not only teach the upstart commoners at the academy to mind their places in the natural order of things, but also prove my loyalty to the Custodes.
I would secure my position within their ranks before the year ended. And together, we would ensure that Miss Fishwife’s remaining time at this academy was brief, miserable, and ultimately futile.
She could not, must not, be allowed to return for a second year.
Damien shifted beside me. “Luk,” he said. “We should go.”
I turned to look at him. His expression was grave. He had not said a word about the final. Had not offered congratulations to our opponents. Had simply sat beside me through the entire ceremony, a solid, silent presence that asked for nothing and gave everything.
I reached out and squeezed his forearm once, briefly, where no one could see.
“Let’s go,” I agreed.
I rose from the bench and turned my back on the arena floor, on the commoners and their unseemly celebration, on Miss Fishwife and the merchant boy, both draped with prizes they did not deserve.