Chapter 5 - The Arena of Blood
The Colosseum of the Sun was packed to capacity. Word had spread through the capital like wildfire: the peasant girl chosen by the Dragon Covenant was going to fight the Grand Chancellor to the death in the ancient sands.
Tens of thousands of spectators filled the towering stone tiers, a restless, murmuring sea of commoners and nobles alike. High up in the imperial box, draped in black velvet and gold, Vaelen sat like a statue of vengeance, his copper eyes locked entirely on the center of the pit.
Aeva stood in the blistering sunlight of the arena floor. She wore no heavy steel armor, no fine silks. She wore her simple dark trousers and tunic, her boots laced tight against the sand. In her hand, she held the iron dagger she had taken from the council room.
Across from her, stepping through the iron gates with slow, mocking arrogance, was Lord Cassian. He was encased from head to toe in gleaming, obsidian-plated armor inlaid with gold filigree. In his right hand, he wielded a massive, broad-bladed executioner’s sword that glinted lethally in the midday glare.
"You pathetic little rat," Cassian’s voice boomed across the silent arena, amplified by the stone acoustics. "You should have stayed in the dirt where you belong."
Aeva didn't answer. She didn't waste breath on words. She lowered her center of gravity, her eyes fixed on the heavy, clumsy movements of Cassian’s armored frame.
"So be it," Cassian snarled, lunging forward with terrifying speed.
The heavy broadsword cleaved the air with a whistling screech. Aeva threw herself to the side, the blade missing her shoulder by a hair's breadth. The impact of Cassian’s strike slammed into the sand where she had been standing a second before, kicking up a blinding cloud of dust.
High in the imperial box, several noblewomen gasped. Down in the front rows, partisans of the high council cheered.
Cassian spun around, following up with a brutal horizontal slash aimed straight at Aeva’s waist. Aeva ducked under the arc, but the backwash of the swing caught her across the ribs, sending her tumbling hard into the scorching sand. Pain flared through her side, sharp and hot.
"Get up!" Cassian mocked, striding toward her and raising his sword high for the killing blow. "Let the empire see how a peasant dies!"
Aeva rolled to the side just as the broadsword buried itself deep into the sand, wedging itself momentarily between two buried stones. It was the opening she had been waiting for.
Moving with the desperate, instinctive speed of someone who had fought every single day of her life just to stay alive, Aeva sprang to her feet. Instead of retreating, she rushed straight toward him. Cassian struggled to wrench his blade free, but before he could pull it back, Aeva slid beneath his guard.
She drove her iron dagger straight into the vulnerable joint of his armor beneath his left arm.
Cassian let out a strangled, breathless cry of shock as searing pain shot through his torso. He dropped to his knees, his hands clawing frantically at his side as blood poured through his fingers, staining the pristine gold filigree of his armor.
Aeva stood over him, her chest heaving, the golden mark on her collarbone blazing so brightly through her tunic that it cast a warm, ethereal glow across the bloody sand.
"This is for Myra," Aeva whispered, her voice carrying across the entire silent arena.
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With one final, decisive shove, she pulled the dagger free and stepped back as the Grand Chancellor collapsed face-first into the dust, motionless.
For three seconds, the Colosseum was entirely, breathtakingly silent. Then, a single spectator in the commoner tiers stood up and cheered. Within moments, tens of thousands of voices erupted into a deafening roar that shook the very foundations of the capital.
