“Mitte! Mitte!”

The cry assailed his ears, and he looked up dumbly. All across the tiers of spectators, the thumbs called for mercy. The cheers were good-natured, the opinion unanimous: mercy for the last of the Amazons.

His eyes burned. Sweat. He flung the blade away and dropped to one knee to slide an arm under her shoulders. She was bleeding everywhere—

Her eyes swept him feebly. A swaying hand reached up to tilt back his visor. And then he was jolted all the way down to his bones as she spoke to him in a language he had not heard for more than a dozen years. His own language.

“Please,” she rasped.

He stared at her.

She choked again on her own blood. “Please.”

He looked down into those great, desperate eyes.

“Please.”

He slid his hand up into her hair, turning her head back to expose the long throat. She closed her eyes with a rattling sigh. He eased his blade into the soft pulse behind her jaw.

When her crushed body was cold in his arms, he looked up. His audience had gone silent. He rose, stained all over with her blood and weighed down by unbelieving eyes.

The demon’s fury roared up, and with all his strength he hewed his sword sideways against the marble wall. He struck again and again, feeling the muscles tear across his back, and at last the blade snapped in two with a dissonant crack. He flung the pieces away, spat on them, then ripped the helmet from his head and flung that after. Rage surged up in his throat and he shouted—no curses, just a long wordless roar.

They applauded him.

Applauded.

They cheered, they shouted, they screamed praise down on his head like a stinging rain. They threw coins, they threw flowers, they surged upright and shrieked his name. They stamped their feet and rocked the marble tiers.

It was only then that he wept, standing alone in the great arena surrounded by the bodies of five women and a thousand downward-drifting rose petals.

Two

THEA

HE’S magnificent.” Lepida’s voice was lazy. “Don’t you think, Thea?”

I murmured something, reaching for the vial of rose oil. My mistress lay facedown on the green marble massage slab in the Pollio bathhouse, a beautiful black-haired mermaid among the tasteless fish mosaics and the gaudy clutter of perfume bottles.

“Really, I’ve never seen anything like him before. Much more interesting than Belleraphon. Belleraphon’s too civilized. This Arius, he’s a real barbarian.” She shifted an arm so I could massage the rose oil into her side. “There’s something untamed about him, don’t you think? I mean, no civilized man would kill women. But this Arius, he just mowed them down without a thought.”

I kneaded my fingers along her spine, and she arched her back. “He even looks like a savage! Covered in gore, and you could tell he didn’t even notice. A real man shouldn’t care about getting his hands dirty, don’t you think? Belleraphon, now, he never really closes in with his enemies. Too afraid of getting blood in that pretty beard of his. And really, what kind of show is that? I don’t go to the games to see someone being careful; I go to see something thrilling. Someone thrilling.”