Thawed Gladiator: Draco (Awakened From the Ice #7)
Chapter 1
Chapter One
Draco
The coin rolls across my knuckles like quicksilver—flash, vanish, return. A trick I learned in Rome’s alleys to keep my belly full, now just habit while I size up marks.
And Union Square in the heart of New York City is full of marks.
"Ladies and gentlemen!" I call, voice edged with the kind of accent that makes girls lean closer. "Prepare to witness magic that baffled emperors and kings." If only they knew how little it takes to fool a man who thinks he can’t be fooled.
I palm the coin and let three more bloom out of nothing. Tourists film, students smirk, a businessman tosses a bill just to feel superior.
Phones track everything. One wrong angle, one scientist with ambition watching TikTok, and I’m back in a cage—this time with needles instead of chains. Guess that’s the price of freedom.
The city hums around me—louder, freer, more alive than Missouri ever was.
Don’t get me wrong. Laura Turner saved us. She rescued us from the ice, taught us English, gave us shelter when she could have sold us. I’ll owe her always. But the Sanctuary? It smothered me. Fields and fences, quiet nights. It felt like death wearing a friendly face.
While the others trained with swords or horses, I trained with screens—sitcoms, late-night, subtitles, the quick way people cut their sentences.
I wasn’t hiding, though everyone at the Sanctuary assumed I was.
I was studying. That’s why I sound like I belong here—I practiced until the lie felt true.
Survival’s the same in every century—learn fast, read people faster, and disappear until it’s time to be seen.
"Pick a card." I fan the deck, coin still dancing on my other hand. A girl in a Columbia sweatshirt grabs the seven of hearts. I knew she would. People announce their choices before they even speak—if you know how to listen.
I run the trick, and while the crowd laughs, I think of Titus.
An old drunkard back in the slums of Subura.
He had a cough like broken glass, and teeth like chipped tombstones in a graveyard.
He taught me that sleight-of-hand buys bread, but belief buys loyalty.
In exchange for knowledge, he demanded half my take. It was worth it. Kept me from starving.
"The real trick," he’d rasped, "isn’t hiding the move. It’s making them want to believe."
I didn’t care then. It was survival. But here, now? I feel it in the way the crowd leans forward, the way wonder flickers even in cynical eyes. For the first time, I realize I don’t just need magic. I love it.
I make the card reappear in her coat pocket—smooth, impossible, the kind of trick Titus said separates thieves from legends. She squeals, her friends shriek, and the sound hits me harder than applause ever did. For a breath, I almost believe the wonder myself.
"How did you know?" she asks, eyes shining.
"Magic, sweetheart. Ancient Roman magic."
The finale—four silver rings that knit and unknit in impossible shapes—brings down the house.
Applause, bills in my hat, questions about parties and weddings.
I smile, give them the stock line: trained under European masters, here’s my cell number.
Close enough. My first master was a drunk in Rome, and he kept me alive.
By the time the crowd drifts, I’ve pulled in maybe fifty bucks. I fold my kit, drop the take into the leather pouch I stitched myself the way I did in Rome. Some habits survive centuries.
That’s when I feel the bump.
A brush at my ribs, light and practiced. The woman mutters, "sorry" and keeps walking. Before my brain even registers what happened, instinct takes over, and I check my pockets.
Empty.
Son of a bitch.
She’s already twenty feet away, stride too casual. Two more kids peel off in opposite directions. Smooth choreography. My own con, turned on me.
I perfected that move when Rome ruled the world. Bump, lift, scatter. Now it’s cost me more than I could have made in ten lifetimes back then.
Gone: not just today’s bills. Ten, maybe twenty grand: some of it mine, most of it the cash Laura pressed into my hand before I left Missouri, saying it was only a fragment of my share of the Fortuna’s gold.
I took the money but shoved back the credit card with my name embossed on it—plastic feels too much like chains.
Guess I needed to prove to myself I could stand on my own.
Shit, that roll was my freedom. They even took my subway card, and the twenty I owed my roommates for groceries.
The October air cuts sharp as I shoulder my bag and stride off. The Brooklyn couch I’ve been crashing on feels like debt, not freedom. I won’t crawl back broke and owing.
The Upper East Side blurs by in gray stone and sharp suits. Then I see it: green. Real green. A wall of trees where there shouldn’t be any.
I find a gap in the wrought iron wide enough for a thief who knows where to look. On the other side: manicured paths, silence thick enough to feel staged.
Deeper in, a cottage waits. Roses climbing the walls, leaded glass gone wavy with age. Too perfect, too still. I circle once. No lights, no cameras. Inside: wilted flowers, fruit gone soft in a bowl, and a sweater draped like someone meant to come back and didn’t.
The door’s unlocked. Rich people forget the world has teeth.
Inside is a showpiece of wealth: antique furniture, a stocked kitchen, a bed that looks like sin and salvation. And yet the air feels wrong—like whoever belonged here stepped out weeks ago and never returned.
I should leave. Find a shelter. Swallow pride. But exhaustion wins.
Just a few hours, I tell myself, sinking into sheets softer than anything since Missouri. Rest, then move.
As sleep drags me under, one thought rises, stubborn as a coin refusing to vanish: Goddess Fortuna—if you’ve got any mercy left, spare a little for a thief who’s run out of luck.