Page 89 of Empire of Wrath and Ruin
Above us, I could hear the announcer's voice booming across the arena, though his words were muffled by stone and distance. The crowd's response was immediate and bloodthirsty—a roar of approval that made my skin crawl.
“They’re already inside the arena,” I said grimly. “All of them on the sand at once.”
Marcus frowned. “But there’s no way he could kill that many in one go.”
Jalend pushed past us. “There’s a viewing platform a little way from here for the trainers. Follow me.”
It was when we reached the viewing gallery that the full horror of our enemy's plan revealed itself.
The arena stretched out below us, its sand pale gold in the afternoon light, waiting to drink blood. But the sight that stopped my breath wasn't the familiar fighting ground—it was the cages. Row upon row of iron bars gleamed in the sun, each one crammed with bodies pressed so tightly together they could barely move. Talfen prisoners—men, women, children who reminded me painfully of Livia at that age. Thousands of them, packed like animals awaiting slaughter.
The sound that rose from those cages was a low, keening wail that seemed to come from every throat at once—the sound of people who had abandoned hope.
I felt Livia's sharp intake of breath beside me, saw her hands clench into fists. For a moment, I glimpsed the child she'd been—the little girl who had wept for her dead brother and sworn she would never let anyone else suffer as she had suffered.
"Gods," I whispered.
“Above,” growled Sirrax, and I immediately looked up. All around the top of the arena walls, dragons stalked the walls or flew above us. There must easily be thirty of them, and although Imperial dragons didn’t have the size and strength Sirrax and Tarshi did, two against thirty of them was completely hopeless.
“Why are the dragons here?” asked Antonius. “Why aren’t they on the borders or at the Academy?”
Livia reached out once again for my hand, gripping it tightly, as she closed her eyes.
“Because that’s how he’s going to do it,” she said quietly. “So many at once. Dragon fire.”
The words hit me like a physical blow, driving the air from my lungs. Dragon fire. Of course. The Emperor wasn't planning some elaborate series of individual executions for the crowd's entertainment. He was going to have his enslaved dragons incinerate thousands of people at once, turning the arena into a massive funeral pyre.
"He's going to burn them all," I said, my voice hollow with horror. "Every last one of them."
The tactical brilliance of it made me sick. One coordinated attack would eliminate the largest concentration of Talfen prisoners in the Empire while providing a spectacular show for the masses. The dragons would rain fire from above while the crowd cheered, and by evening there would be nothing left but ash and charred bone.
"We have to get down there," Livia said fiercely, already turning toward the stairs that led to the arena floor. “We-”
She froze as a group of guards rounded the corner, weapons gleaming. For a heartbeat, we all froze, predators caught in the open.
Then the violence erupted.
I moved without conscious thought, my body remembering the lessons learned in countless desperate fights. These weren't elite soldiers—they were jailers, used to dealing with chained prisoners and frightened spectators. Against trained fighters, they were already dead; they just didn't know it yet.
My blade found the gap between the first man's ribs with surgical precision, sliding home with barely a whisper of steel on leather. He dropped with a look of surprise on his face, as if he couldn't quite believe that prisoners would dare to fight back.
Marcus carved through his opponents with the fury of a man who had spent too many years taking orders from people he despised. Antonius fought with the grim efficiency of someone who had learned that survival meant being practical about violence. Even Jalend moved with lethal grace, his royal training evident in every perfectly executed technique.
But it was Livia who took my breath away.
I'd seen her fight countless times over the years, had watched her transform from a desperate child flailing with whatever weapon she could find into a warrior worthy of song. Butwatching her now was like seeing a master at the height of her art. She flowed around her opponent's attacks like water, her blade finding its mark with an inevitability that bordered on the supernatural.
This wasn't the half-trained fighter I'd once tried to protect. This was someone who had claimed violence as her own and reshaped it into something beautiful and terrible.
The fight ended as quickly as it had begun, but the damage was done. An alarm bell began to toll somewhere in the distance, its bronze voice echoing through the arena's depths. We had minutes before reinforcements arrived in numbers that would overwhelm us.
"The crystal," Taveth gasped, shadows writhing around him like living smoke. "I need time to prepare the ritual. To reach the dragons through their collars."
The young man looked barely human anymore, his eyes black pits that reflected no light. I'd watched him deteriorating over the course of our journey, seen the shadow magic eating him alive from the inside. Part of me wondered if we were simply trading one monster for another.
But then I saw how Livia looked at him—not with fear, but with compassion and determination. She saw something in him worth saving, and I'd learned long ago to trust her judgment about people.
"How long?" Jalend asked.
