Chapter Thirty The Big Show
"Evil begins when you begin to treat people as things."
They spent the following days locked together in the cell, not that they minded. The guards left them alone per Antonius's order, apart from their one meal a day.
They spent their days talking, and their nights enjoying each other with no thought to how many more they had left.
Until Nox tensed beside her one evening before the guards reached their cell.
A fist pounded against the iron bars. "Up. Time to make you pretty for the pits."
Nox was already on his feet, his body shifting into that terrifying calm she recognized—his battle-face. He extended a hand to help her up, and she took it, squeezing once before letting go.
The cell door creaked open and four guards stepped inside, flanking them. Neither spoke as they were shackled at the wrists. Adan's fingers flexed against the cool iron as she glanced back at Nox.
They were led down the winding corridors of the holding chambers, past other caged fighters who watched in silence. Some with pity. Others with envy.
Upon entering a chamber meant for preparation, the guards separated Adan and Nox.
They brought her silently seething to a room for the female fighters. Warm water steamed in large copper basins, but there was no comfort in it. Slaves moved with quiet efficiency, scrubbing, dressing, anointing like they were preparing corpses for a funeral.
Adan stood rigid as rough hands stripped away the remnants of warmth left on her skin. A guard moved quickly, tossing her head first into the water like a teabag into a pot. She came up spurting, only to be shoved back down again.
They washed her like she was an object, not a person.
She let them, too worried about what they might do to Nox if she did.
They scrubbed the sand and sweat from her body with hard bristled brushes, their movements efficient but far from gentle.
Her mind drifted to Nox—whether he was enduring the same silent ritual or already dressed and waiting in the tunnel.
She hated the separation more than the hands on her skin.
After her skin burned red, the same guard yanked her out by her arm, holding her steady while she dripped water on the cold stone. She didn't care to try to cover herself--let them look, let them watch.
A slave girl approached with a simple set of armour. Hardened leather moulded to a female form, light enough for speed, but not strong enough to stop a blade. As if she were meant to look fierce, not survive.
The girl didn't speak as she fastened the clasps at Adan's sides, her fingers trembling. When she met Adan's eyes, she quickly looked away again, as if staring too long would burn her.
Adan let her head fall back, the weight of her damp hair clinging to her shoulders. The faint scent of oils and steel filled the room.
When they painted the mark on her cheek—a crimson slash like a war wound—it felt personal. Like the arena had already claimed her. Again.
She raised her chin in defiance.
If they were going to throw her back into the pit, then she'd walk in like a queen.
--
Nox didn't flinch when the guards shoved him into the preparation chamber.
He'd already slipped back into the armour of stillness—the hollow quiet before violence. His mind was focused, honed like a blade, though the ache of being separated from Adan still pulsed under his skin.
He didn't resist when they forced him to strip. His body, marred by scars old and new. Steam coiled in the corners of the room as slaves moved around him, silent and efficient. Warm water sluiced over his back, but it did nothing to soften the coil of tension in his spine.
He closed his eyes briefly.
Stay, he whispered through the bond between them--A plea.
He stood still as they scrubbed him raw, their eyes careful to avoid his. Even the slaves feared him—especially now. They had no name for what lived behind his eyes.
When they dressed him, it was in armour similar to Adan's—dark leather reinforced with steel plates at the chest and shoulders. Lightweight. The coverings of a showpiece, not a warrior.
A body meant to bleed for the entertainment of the crowd.
As they painted his face, he exhaled slowly, imagining Adan's touch instead. Her fingers in his hair. Her breath against his skin. He needed her near. Every part of him strained toward her like a tether pulled taut.
The guards waited, their spears pointed high, nerves barely contained between them.
Nox rolled his shoulders once, then moved towards them.
The corridor beyond the preparation chamber yawned like the mouth of some sleeping beast—quiet, dark, waiting to devour. Nox walked it in silence, flanked by guards who gripped their weapons tighter than they needed to.
Torchlight flickered against the stone as they descended deeper, toward the thundering heart of the coliseum.
Each step echoed with the roar of a crowd just beyond the iron gate ahead—low and constant like a hungry sea.
The scent of blood and sand hit him before the heat did, metallic and thick in his nose.
At the final gate, the guards hesitated. One looked up at Nox, his lip trembling slightly, the keys in his hand rattling. He didn't meet his gaze. He couldn't.
Nox raised his wrists and the chains that circled them. Shaking hands unlocked them as they fell to his feet, and they handed him a spear.
The gate screeched open.
Sunlight, brutal and white-hot, flooded the tunnel.
Nox stepped into it, and the arena erupted in sound.
He walked into the center of the pit, the sand shifting beneath his boots, and let the noise crash over him like a tide.
His face gave nothing away, his body a statue carved from rage and restraint.
The pit was empty save himself, but the arena was a wound carved into the earth, ringed with stone and screaming mouths.
Thousands filled the seats that rose in concentric circles around the fighting pit, every level packed with bodies drunk on spectacle. The heat didn't deter them. Nor did the blood on the sand. It was what they came for—what they paid for.
The true mob of Lymia.
People roared and cheered for his death--for their entertainment.
Nobles lounged in shaded balconies, fanning themselves with silks soaked in perfume to mask the scent of death. They sipped from cups of blood-wine and citrus, eyes gleaming with morbid delight.
In the countless rows above them, the merchants and commoners roared just as loud, their cheers sharpened by bets and bravado. They wanted carnage. They wanted a show.
But dead center, seated like a god on a dais of cruelty, was Prince Darius. Reclined in luxury, shadowed by towering banners of his house sigil, his expression unreadable behind a golden mask. He was the architect of this blood sport. The crowd was his chorus.
Nox could feel their hunger—like claws scraping across his skin. They only wanted blood, it steamed, as it hit the sand.
His.
Nox stood still in the center of it all, jaw tight, eyes scanning the ring. Four other males had stepped forward all dressed like Nox--each with a different colour painted on their faces. Around him, the crowd surged like a wave that would never break, only build.
His green eyes dilated when he spotted her behind a gate directly in front of him. She was pointing at something, and his eyes moved to see the other four women caged around the pit. They had also been painted, to match a corresponding male.
Nox soon began to deduce what the game makers had planned.
This would be last-couple-standing situation.
Nox's stomach tightened as the realization hit him like a punch to the gut.
His eyes never left Adan as she stood behind the gate, her silhouette barely visible through the iron bars.
He could feel the heat of the crowd's anticipation, the frenzied energy vibrating through the sand floor beneath him.
The guards who had led him out earlier had scattered back into the shadows. The other four males flanked him, each one of them painted with an aggressive symbol—blue, white, black, and gold—their faces cold masks, hiding the same fear that twisted in his chest.
He wasn't concerned with the others. His only focus was Adan.
Adan, her back straight, eyes sharp, her paint was a deep red that matched the one slashed across his face, marking them as the paired gladiators, ready to fight together—or, at least, survive.
His breath quickened. The plan was simple, ruthless.
Every pair of gladiators was forced to fight to the death, but only one couple would survive. It was their idea of sport, their twisted enjoyment, watching the gladiators form bonds, only to tear them apart in the most brutal of ways.
The arena roared around them as the announcer's voice rang out, amplifying the tension with every word. "Begin!"
The gates creaked open and the woman slowly exited while the four males advanced. He would do whatever it took to protect her. Even if it meant he had to kill every other gladiator in the arena.
He glanced to the sky, where the sun hung low in a blood-orange hue, casting long shadows over the dirt floor. The large grate of iron that caged them all in--stopped anyone from flying away-- blocked out most of his view-- and his magic.
He didn't have a collar like Adan, the amount of iron in the building was enough to keep most people down.
Darius did that to her to make a point--along with the brand--that he thought she was his.
Nox couldn't wait to show him how wrong he was.
He glanced back down at the insufferable male--he would kill, but not for him--never for him.
For her.
--
The crowd's roar swelled around them, reaching a deafening crescendo as the gates creaked open, allowing the female gladiators to step out. Adan was one of them—her movements fluid, her gaze sharp, the painted red streak across her face like a war mark, looking nothing short of lethal.
Adan's eyes caught Nox, a silent communication passing between them, something deeper than words. She was ready. They both were. Whatever came next, they would face it together.