Page 22 of Kingdom of Darkness and Dragons
"They're alive," she said firmly. "I can feel it."
I hoped she was right. The alternative was either grief or a kind of torture I wasn't sure any of us were strong enough to endure.
We reached our quarters, and I watched as she moved around the small space, gathering clean clothes for after dinner. There was something different about her today—not just the exhaustion from her punishment, but a kind of lightness I hadn't seen in weeks. She'd been miserable since her falling out with Jalend, barely eating, going through the motions of classes and training without any real engagement. Today, despite everything, she seemed more like herself.
"You seem better," I ventured, settling into one of the chairs by the window.
She paused in folding a clean shirt, her cheeks flushing slightly. "Do I?"
"Mmm. More... present. These past few weeks, it's been like talking to a ghost."
The flush deepened, and she turned away to busy herself with unnecessary tidying. "I may have... resolved some things."
I raised an eyebrow. "Things involving a certain brooding scholar?"
"Marcus." Her voice carried a warning, but it lacked any real heat.
"I'm just saying, if someone's made you happy again, I'm grateful to them." I leaned back in my chair, studying her face. "You deserve to be happy, Liv. All of us do, but especially you."
She looked at me then, really looked, and I saw something vulnerable in her expression. "Do you think we'll ever have that? Real happiness, not just stolen moments?"
The question hit harder than I'd expected. We'd all been living day to day for so long, focused on survival first and freedom second, that the idea of actual contentment felt almost foreign. In the ludus, happiness had been simple things—a good meal, a day without beatings, the rare moment of laughter shared withfriends. Here in the capital, our wants had grown more complex, but somehow no less impossible.
"I think we'll make our own happiness," I said finally. "The way we always have. One day at a time, one small victory at a time."
She smiled at that, the real smile I'd been missing for weeks. "When did you become so wise?"
"Probably around the time I started looking after stubborn gladiators who think they can take on the world single-handedly."
She threw her clean shirt at me, laughing despite herself. "I don't think I can take on the world. Just the parts of it that annoy me."
"Which is most of it."
"Which is most of it," she agreed cheerfully.
I caught the shirt and tossed it back to her, feeling lighter than I had in days. This was what I'd missed—the easy banter, the comfortable familiarity of people who'd been through hell together and come out the other side. Whatever had happened with Jalend, it had given her back some essential part of herself.
"I should go meet Antonius," I said reluctantly. "Will you be all right here?"
"I'll be fine. Go." She waved me toward the door. "And Marcus? Thank you. For checking. For... everything."
I nodded, not trusting my voice. Sometimes the weight of how much we meant to each other was overwhelming. We were family in every way that mattered, bound by shared trauma and mutual protection and a love that had nothing to do with romance and everything to do with survival.
The walk to the city morgue took me through the lower districts, where the festival bombing had hit hardest. Even three weeks later, the signs of destruction were everywhere—collapsed buildings, boarded windows, makeshift memorials where peoplehad left flowers and candles for the dead. The guilt was a constant ache in my chest. These people had suffered because of choices our movement had made, because a few extremists had decided that violence was the answer.
I found Antonius waiting outside the morgue, his massive frame somehow managing to look inconspicuous despite his size. He'd gotten better at blending in since we'd come to the capital, learning to hunch his shoulders and avoid eye contact, to project the kind of harmless servility that made people overlook him. It was a skill that had served him well in his job at the tavern, where drunk patrons often said things they shouldn't around the "simple" kitchen worker.
"Ready for this?" he asked as I approached.
"No," I answered honestly. "But let's get it over with."
The morgue attendant was a thin, nervous man who seemed eager to get us in and out as quickly as possible. The smell hit us first—a mixture of herbs and chemicals that couldn't quite mask the underlying stench of death. Then came the sight of the bodies, laid out on stone slabs like pieces of meat at the market.
The explosion had been horrific in its completeness. Some of the bodies were barely recognizable as human, torn apart by the blast or burned beyond identification. Others looked almost peaceful, as if they'd simply laid down for a nap and never woken up. I found myself studying each face, looking for familiar features while simultaneously hoping I wouldn't find them.
"These are the last ones," the attendant said, gesturing to a row of six bodies near the back wall. "Found them in the rubble yesterday. Took this long to dig them out."
Antonius and I exchanged glances. If Tarshi and Septimus were here, it would be among these final recoveries. We approached slowly, both of us dreading what we might find.
