Chapter 93 Arena Trial
The iron door at my back slammed shut, the heavy clang vibrating up through the soles of my bare feet.
The guard behind me drove the blunt, wooden shaft of his spear hard between my shoulder blades. "Walk."
I stumbled forward out of the cold, damp shadows of the holding tunnel and into the blinding glare of high noon.
The heat hit me first. It was a physical wall, thick and suffocating, radiating from the vast floor of the Gladiator Arena. The ground wasn't dirt. It was coarse, white quartz mixed with crushed bone, baked by the sun and stained with large, overlapping patches of rusted brown. The sand burned against my toes, a sharp, searing pain that grounded me in the immediate nightmare of the moment.
Then came the noise.
Thousands of vampires packed the tiered, black stone seating that circled the massive pit. The smog that usually choked the Citadel had been thinned by the Emperor’s mages, allowing the harsh, unforgiving sun to illuminate the spectacle. The High Council, the wealthy lords, and the Ladies of the Court sat beneath dark velvet awnings, sipping thick crimson wine from crystal goblets. They were a sea of shifting silk and bared fangs, screaming for blood. Their collective roar was a deafening, chaotic wave of sound that made my ears ring.
I forced my spine perfectly straight. I ignored the screaming faces. I ignored the heat baking through my heavy, dark grey mourning dress. I lifted my chin and searched the highest tier of the colosseum.
The Emperor’s royal box jutted out over the arena, draped in massive banners of gold and midnight black.
My breath caught in my throat, a dry, painful hitch.
Klaus was there.
He stood to the right of the Emperor’s ivory throne, flanked by six heavily armored Imperial guards. He was not wearing his pristine Admiral’s coat. He wore only a thin, dark linen shirt and black trousers, the fabric pulling taut across the rigid, terrifying tension of his frame.
Thick iron chains wrapped around his wrists, bolting him to the heavy stone balustrade of the balcony. He was fighting them. I could see the heavy iron links groaning, pulled perfectly straight as he strained against the anchors. The muscles in his forearms jumped and corded with the sheer, desperate force of his struggle.
His skin was a sickly, ashen grey. The deep, bruising shadows beneath his eyes made him look like a corpse dragged from a grave. The curse was starving without my voice to feed it, but the centuries of accumulated black rot inside his dead heart were actively tearing his body apart from the inside out. He was dying on that balcony.
And yet, when his sapphire gaze found mine across the vast, baking expanse of the arena, he stopped pulling against the chains.
He froze.
Even from a hundred yards away, the absolute, devastating agony in his eyes struck me like a physical blow. He wasn't looking at me with the cold, dead stare he had used in the Grand Atrium. The mask was completely shattered.
Sing, his eyes pleaded, wide and frantic. Please, Nerissa. Sing.
I felt the familiar, hot sting of tears welling in my eyes, but I refused to let them fall. I raised my right hand, letting the dark wool of my sleeve slip back just enough to expose my wrist.
The thin strip of black silk I had torn from my dress was still tied there, a tight, dark knot biting into my pale flesh. My vow. My anchor.
I pressed my fingers against the knot. I looked right at the man who had traded his eternity for my ocean, the man whose chest was a canvas of necrotic, black veins because of my bloodline.
I shook my head. One slow, definitive movement.
No. I will not be your executioner.
Klaus’s face crumbled. He let out a roar that somehow cut through the deafening noise of the thousands of screaming vampires. It was a raw, guttural sound of pure, unadulterated heartbreak. He lunged forward over the balustrade, the iron chains snapping entirely taut, biting into his wrists until silver blood bloomed against his pale skin.
The six guards rushed him, grabbing his shoulders and hauling him backward. Klaus fought them like a madman, his boots sliding against the stone, his eyes never leaving mine.
"Silence the Admiral," a dry, papery voice commanded.
The Emperor’s voice was amplified by massive brass horns positioned around the arena, making it sound as though he were whispering directly into my ear.
One of the guards slammed the heavy butt of his halberd into the back of Klaus’s knees. Klaus dropped to the stone floor, forced down, but his chained hands remained locked around the balustrade, his knuckles bone-white.
The Emperor stood from his throne. He looked so frail, a skeletal frame wrapped in heavy silk, but his presence commanded absolute authority. He walked slowly to the edge of the royal box, looking down at me with his blind, milky eyes.
The crowd immediately fell into a hushed, trembling silence. The only sound left was the hot wind whipping across the sand and the harsh, ragged sound of my own breathing.
"The Arch-Duchess Nerissa," the Emperor announced, his voice slithering over the silent colosseum. "The Voice of the Empire. For days, she has refused her duty. She hoards the magic of the deep while our bays rot and our commercial fleets dissolve in the sludge. She believes her silence is a weapon. She believes she can starve us into submission."