Page 116 of City of Secrets and Shadows
He lunged then, a clumsy attack that I sidestepped easily. My training had prepared me for opponents far more skilled than this drunken fool. I slashed at his sword arm, opening a deep cut from elbow to wrist. He cried out, his weapon clattering to the cobblestones.
“Please,” he gasped, clutching his bleeding arm. “I have a wife. She depends on me. I’m not the man I was then.”
“Did you look my brother in his eyes?” I asked, circling him like a predator. “Did you actually look at any of them before you cut them down?”
“I don’t remember your brother,” he said, his face pale in the moonlight. “There were so many... so many villages, so many people. They all blur together after a while.”
His words struck me like a physical blow. He didn’t even remember Tarus. My brother’s death, the moment that had defined my entire existence for the past decade, was nothing more than a forgettable incident in this man’s life.
“You don’t remember?” I whispered, rage building inside me like a gathering storm. “You murdered him, and you don’t even remember?”
Arilius sank to his knees, still clutching his bleeding arm. “We were told they were all traitors. Every village we cleared, they told us we were protecting the Empire from Talfen sympathizers.” His voice cracked. “After a while, you stop seeing them as people. It’s the only way to keep doing it.”
“And now? Do you still believe that?”
He looked up at me, his eyes haunted. “I see their faces when I close my eyes. Children. Old men. Women. I drink to make them go away, but they never do.” A bitter laugh escaped him. “I’ve killed so many, and I can’t remember any of their names or faces. But they remember me. They’re waiting for me in the dark.”
For a moment, I hesitated. This broken, pathetic man wasn’t the monster I had carried in my heart for thirteen storms. He was just a soldier who had followed orders, who had become the Empire’s weapon and then been discarded once he was too damaged to function properly.
But then I remembered Tarus. The light fading from his eyes as he reached for me. The warmth of his blood on my hands as I tried desperately to stop the bleeding. The sound of my own screams as the soldiers dragged me away from his body. the horrors I’d endured after they’d sold me as a slave.
“You’re going to kill me no matter what I say, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
He went to get up, but I moved closer, touching the point of my gladius to his throat.
“No. You stay on your knees. You die like the coward you are.”
“Fuck you,” he spat.
“I hope my brother’s face haunts you in the afterlife,” I whispered, and then I struck.
The blade slid across his throat in one smooth motion, opening a crimson smile beneath his chin. His eyes widened in surprise, his hands rising instinctively to the wound, but it was already too late. Blood poured between his fingers, splashing onto my face and chest as he fell forward. I stepped back to avoid being pulled down with him, watching dispassionately as he collapsed onto the cobblestones, his life leaking away in a widening pool of darkness.
It happened so quickly. One moment he was alive, speaking, breathing, and the next he was just meat, cooling in the night air. I had killed many times in the arena, but this was different. This wasn’t combat. This wasn’t survival. This was an execution.
I stood over his body, waiting to feel something — triumph, satisfaction, relief. But there was nothing. Just an emptiness that seemed to expand inside me, threatening to consume everything it touched.
From inside his house came a woman’s voice, sleepy and concerned. “Arilius? Is that you?”
I stepped back into the shadows as the front door opened. His wife stood framed in the doorway, a lamp in her hand, her sleep-tousled hair falling over her shoulders. For a moment, she didn’t comprehend what she was seeing. Then she saw the body, the blood, and her face transformed into a mask of horror.
The scream that tore from her throat cut through the night like a blade. It was a sound of pure anguish, of a world shattering into irreparable fragments. It was the same sound I had made when Tarus died in my arms.
I turned and ran, her screams following me through the darkened streets. I ran until my lungs burned and my legs threatened to give out beneath me. I ran until the eastern quarter was far behind me, until I reached the training grounds of the academy where the dragons were kept. I slipped in roundthe back, where the guards rarely patrolled. Who would be stupid enough to steal a dragon after all?
The dragon pens were quiet at this hour, most of the great beasts sleeping, their massive bodies rising and falling with each breath.
Sirrax was awake, as if he had been waiting for me. His massive head rose as I approached, golden eyes gleaming in the darkness. A low rumble of greeting vibrated in his chest.
“Hello, friend,” I whispered, reaching out to stroke his scaled snout. “I did it. I killed him.”
The dragon nudged my hand gently, sensing my distress. The blood on my skin and clothes didn’t bother him — dragons were predators, after all. They understood death.
I sank to the ground beside him, my back against his warm flank. Now that I had stopped moving, my body began to register what I had done. My hands shook uncontrollably. My stomach heaved, and I barely turned away in time before vomiting onto the straw-covered floor. Cold sweat broke out across my skin, and an uncontrollable trembling seized me.
“It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” I gasped, once the spasms had passed. “I was supposed to feel better. It was supposed to be over.”
