He reclined against the racks, his fingers playing about the hilt of a sword as he leveled his gaze on Stratos. “Forgive me,” he said in a tone that said he wanted none of Stratos’s forgiveness at all. “I was delayed these past few days with duties to my house.”
“Of course.” Stratos smiled his duplicitous smile and slipped off toward the door. “You have a lot of work to do, don’t you, Lucan?” A knowing glance at the stricken boy. “I’ll leave you to it.”
And then Stratos was gone.
One look at Lucan—trembling, his face white, fingers digging into his chest as though he would tear out his own heart—and Hektor’s mind was made up.
He strode after Stratos.
Most days just the sight of the man filled Hektor with rage, with the need to smash him, to see his face bloodied and beaten.
He held back now for the sake of Lucan.
Stratos slowed, as if to allow the gladiator to fall in step, but Hektor motioned for them to go farther into the deeps of House Vulpinius. The darkness, lit only by guttering braziers, reminded Hektor of the vomitoria tunnels. Beneath the theatre, he always felt as though he were being slowly crushed. Even when the stands were empty, he felt the weight of all those people, all those eyes upon him, seeking their approval and theirs alone—his only hope of evading the terrible capriciousness of the Empress.
He hated the trepidation that crawled across his skin, and so he wasted no time. “Leave the boy alone, Stratos.”
Stratos opened his arms wide. “As you can see, I have left him alone.”
“That is not what I mean.”
Stratos seemed unconcerned by Hektor’s looming. “Oh?” He raised an eyebrow.
Hektor wanted to slap that supercilious look right off his face, but he restrained himself. Stratos was plotting something, something that required Lucan. Hektor was certain the quaestor wasn’t interested in the boy for sex. With his sleek looks and charm, Stratos had his pick of the councilors and concubines. Rumor had it he was obsessed with Alession and the Empress.
What, then, could he want with Lucan?
What did he want with me three years ago?
A shiver of horror raced through Hektor, but he staved it off. Lucan was not a champion gladiator. He had nothing. He was nothing.
Only the man I—
No. Hektor would not think that. The last time he’d allowed himself to love it had nearly destroyed him. Instead, he focused on his distrust, his hatred of the man standing before him. “What are you concocting?”
But the quaestor only continued to smile infuriatingly.
Hektor’s control burst. He grabbed the man by his fine tunic and slammed him against the wall. “Whatever dark plan you have for the Melee, leave him out of it.”
The fear in Stratos’s eyes turned to anger in a fiery flash. “Get your hands off me, gladiator. All I have to do is raise my voice, and the praetorian guard will put you in chains.”
Cursing himself, Hektor released the man. Sweat trickled down his nape. What was he thinking losing his temper, putting his hands on a magistrate? One word from Stratos and being the primus palus would mean nothing. Still, Hektor’s fury boiled. The thought of Lucan—innocent Lucan—being used as puppet and pawn…
“Whatever you’re scheming, whoever’s life you are about to ruin, leave Lucan out of it.”
Stratos leaned in, his face ugly. “I’ll not hear such accusation from a slave, not even a slave from the House of Warriors.”
Hektor heard the threat in Stratos’s voice. The man knew he had the upper hand. He did not fear anyone, not even a primus palus. And though Hektor hated himself for it, he changed tactics, pitched his voice low to entice. Brawn and beatings were not all he had at his disposal. And he would use anything—everything—he had to keep Lucan safe.
“What do you want?”
“Want?” Stratos seemed shocked.
Hektor could see it on his face. The man was contemplating. Somewhere in the dark recesses of that depraved mind, he wanted something from Hektor. Time and time again, Hektor had refused Stratos’s charms. Now he was here before Stratos, asking what he wanted.
Stratos turned toward him and loosened his tunic. “I want you on your knees, sucking my cock.”
His words did nothing to shock Hektor. Men pleasured men all the time in Arena, from the highest consul to the lowliest slave. Hektor himself had blown plenty of his conquests. Sucking cock did not have to be an act of love.
Even so, uneasiness gripped him as he stepped in. “That’s all you want? For me to suck you off.”
Stratos’s green eyes glittered. “On your knees, bitch-boy. Suck my cock and let me come on your face and down your throat.” He massaged his crotch.
Hektor moved in. To spare Lucan the pain Hektor had suffered, it seemed a cheap price to pay—a little embarrassment, a sore jaw, the taste of Stratos’s spunk in his mouth, on his face. Cum washed off just like blood. He reached for Stratos, grabbed him by the back of the neck.
But as he leaned in to kiss him, all he could think of was Lucan. Lucan, with his golden eyes and golden body stretched out below Hektor, taking his pole like a wanton whore. Lucan smiling at him as Hektor pushed into his body. Lucan writhing in ecstasy.
With all his strength, Hektor shoved Stratos away. Stratos staggered but righted himself as quick as a snake. His eyes darkened in fury. He was not a man who took rejection lightly.
He pushed Hektor away, as though to prove it was he who had rejected the gladiator and not the other way around. “Get away from me, filth.” He sneered. “We’ll see how your little pet fares in three weeks in the Grand Melee.”
Hektor’s heart constricted. “The Grand Melee? But you can’t. He’s a novice. He’ll… I’ll speak with Alession.”
Stratos’s grin was malicious. “Alession is too busy attending our whore of an Empress. I have the choosing of the house champion. And I will choose Lucan.”
“That is a death sentence.” Hektor was panicked. All because he refused Stratos? There had to be more to it than that. It was Leander all over again. No, he wouldn’t. He couldn’t go through it again. “Let me—”
“Oh.” Stratos’s smile was cutting. “He will be entering.”
“No.”
“Train him well, Hektor. Only you can keep him alive now.”
Chapter Ten
VICTORIOUS
Days in the arena
Blended together
Until one led into another
Into another, into another
—Agrippa, Champion of House Vulpinius, the Slaver-Priests
The rush and roar of the crowd deafened Lucan, the sun hot overhead and the sand scorching beneath his feet. Sweat flew as he ducked his opponent’s blow and came up alongside him.
A quick slash with the trident prongs, followed by a strike with the haft, and the other man staggered into the dust, bleeding. His back was turned, the desire to finish him off pounding within Lucan like a desperate drumbeat.
This one is no novice. Finish him. Be smart, don’t wait.
But Hektor was watching from the portico. And Hektor would not approve.
“The masses, the odds-makers, the Empress. You must win them all.”
Lucan hearkened to the shouts, the screams, the jeers and bloodthirst of the crowd, the smell of all that humanity piled into the stands above him, the weight of it crushing down, as though he carried them on his shoulders. He let it all wash over him, let it take him with its power and pull.
He raised his arms and preened while his opponent got his bearings, while he reached back for his spear. Lucan’s eyes went to it as it flashed in the sunlight. This was his test. If he passed, he would carry the proud name of Lucan of House Vulpinius. And he would have the chance to become a champion.
The crowd’s energy burgeoned at his display. They cheered and shouted; the wealthier waved pennons emblazoned with the wolves of House Vulpinius; the poor threw clay tickets down onto the sand. They screamed for blood and the victory that came with spilling it.
Lucan kept his opponent in the corner of his eye while he paraded around. He lifted his arms high, sweat and a trickle of blood from where the man had nicked him on a backswing streaking his biceps. Lucan had been lucky.
The arena was like that—good to some men, ill to others. Today she was kind to Lucan. She had been ever since Hektor had come into his life. He’d been blessed.
By wisdom and training. And love.
“Yahhhh!”
The war cry jerked Lucan from both display and reverie. He pivoted, and his opponent’s slash grazed his ribs rather than burying itself in his back. Blood seared down his side. His opponent postured, but only for a moment.
Lucan’s hand went to his net. Expertly gathered it in his hands, letting the weights swing as he backed off a pace. His opponent’s eyes narrowed. He minced in and then charged.
He was fast. Lucan was faster. He cast. The golden net flew through the air, and Lucan pulled the cord taut.
His opponent cried out. Too late, he realized his peril. He would not be fast enough to outpace the net.
Weights and golden cord wrapped him up, fouling his spear, tangling his legs. His forward momentum carried him two more steps across the sand.
With ease, Lucan seized him by the hair. In one swift move, he dashed the man to the ground. The crunch of his shoulder breaking echoed out over the theatre.
The masses screamed for more. More violence, more blood. Death.
Lucan caught Hektor’s gaze from where he stood in the portico’s shade. Hektor nodded, the look on his face clear.
Give the masses what they want.
Lucan glanced down to the secutor gladiator struggling on the sand. It could as easily have been Lucan lying there, his shoulder broken, him choking on the taste of fear and his own blood.
Sudden anger swept through him. Hektor. What did he know?
“Iugula! Iugula!”
The crowd began to scream in unison.
“Iugula!” Put an end to him.
Anger, fury drove Lucan to straddle his opponent. Frustration balled his hands into fists.
Hektor. He loves me and then flees.
The screams of the throng rose to an insane and fevered pitch. They got into him, under his skin, and in the hot sun, he began to strike his opponent. Two hits to either cheek. The crowd went riotous, the masses stomping, making the entire amphitheatre shake.
He fucks me and then looks at me as though I am some kind of monster.
Blood flew. It stained Lucan’s fists, red and hot and bright as a brand. It lit within his brain, and he could not stop himself.
The iron horns sounded for him to stop, and now the theatre shook with the force of the praetorian guards’ approach. The Empress’s Tribute. It would be her decision whether the secutor lived or died.
In a daze, Lucan looked up. The sun was bright, glinting off the double-headed eagle of her standard, the proud and silver raptor riding high, plumes of royal burgundy fluttering out from beneath its jeweled form. And as her praetor took the field, surrounding Lucan and his fallen opponent, she took her balcony.
Resplendent in white, she stepped to the edge, her handmaidens parting the curtains for her. Her chestnut-brown hair flowed free in the hot breezes. Her eyes were a jade green and truly sightless given the way she kept them fixed. Not even the slightest movement garnered her consideration.
She raised one white arm, and the crowd’s roar reached a wild crescendo. Cheers and shouts, wild gesturing—all their efforts were futile, and yet still the crowd vied for her attention. In response, she tilted her head, as though seeing what she could not through their raucous jeers and catcalls.
Every movement alive with tension, Lucan got to his feet to await her decision, the masses doing likewise, every man, woman, child, guard, and gladiator rising in a thunder of movement that rippled across the Grand Theatre.
She raised her hand, her palm sideways.
Blood dripped from Lucan’s fist. The crowd stilled into silence.
Lucan struggled for breath as her sightless jade-green eyes found him, found him and fixated. The groans of his downed opponent were slowly blotted out by the pounding of his heart, louder and louder, until the insidious connection between him and her seemed to pulse with life.
On all sides, the praetorian guard hemmed him in, their bloodred banners caught high in the breeze. Their gazes were shrewd, their intention unified upon him.
This time, they would force him to obey.
Sweat trickled into Lucan’s eyes, stinging. He was pinned by the Empress’s gaze, like a living sculpture from the Grotesqueries of House Menelaus.
She lifted her hand higher, and the hush swelled, anticipatory, as though the entire crowd was holding its breath. And then she spoke, her voice ringing out over the theatre. “Men are born in blood. But in mercy, they are tempered.” She tilted her hand down.
To the ground. Let him live.
For the briefest of breaths, the masses quieted, a disappointed rush waving over them. And then her decree was taken up with wild abandon by the crowd.
“To the ground! To the ground!” It rose to thunderous heights, the masses—plebes and Citizens alike—stomping and screaming as the iron horns sounded the Empress’s Tribute.
In the stands, someone spit at one of the praetorian guard, and they swarmed him. In moments, they had jerked him from his seat and thrown him to the sands below. The sharp crack of bones told the tale. He would not survive, and as the throng roared and shrieked bloody approval, the praetorian on the sands finished the man off, their swords rising and falling, hewing and hacking, until the bloodlust of the crowd seemed assuaged.
Lucan waited until his screams and the cries of the throng had diminished, his gaze upon the Empress.
She betrayed no emotion, only the smallest smirk tilting the corner of her lips.
The crowd was subsiding. Lucan was all but forgotten on the sands.
He glanced once more at the portico. Hektor leaned against a column. His face was impassive, but Lucan saw it in his eyes. This was part of what it meant to be a gladiator. The oath they took upon entering the arena—to die at steel and shaft and the whim of the masses— was part of the price they all paid for glory beyond their station.