—
A
ghavni often wonders if it was a curse or a blessing to have been born into the eclipse of the monarchy.Should she be thankful that the kingdom she has—had—been slated to rule, one day, was to her like a charcoal rendering of a storybook kingdom than anything close to the real thing? That, even after all she'd read, all she'd gathered, all she'd tried—she remembers near nothing about it?
Is she, somehow, better off than the Hajakhas, or the Azhades, or the Ieshans, or the Sevettas, that had been born early enough to remember? A monarchy in splendour, even if that splendour had been built on the broken backs of thousands. Gold treasuries. Silver collars. Gladiators in pits. Gladiators in graves.
Everything, except for love, aplenty. (But in Solterra, love has always been scarcer than water. So that is not anything different.)
So far, Aghavni has kept herself busy enough to refuse the halfhearted invitations back to the Hajakhan estate. Were it not for appearances they would not want her back, and anyway she did not want to be back. Did not want to see the little silk fans her aunts hid their sneers and backhanded compliments behind, or feel the eyes of the portraits mocking her as they marched down golden hallways like soldiers locked in two-step, or turn a bezelled corner and find a portrait of her mother staring back like a tawny-eyed hound, splayed on a bed of roses, eyes as dead as the boy besides hers.
She doesn't like to see her mother like that. Like Zolin's sister. Because, you see, Aghavni has her mother's face, and by extension—
a little of her uncle's, too.
The Colosseum is just as I remember it.
She wishes she can think this as her steps echo down through centuries of fallen monarchies, hundreds of chipped stone columns, and layers of blood packed down into earthen floor.
Before this day, Aghavni has never been inside.
She tries to tell herself there is not much to see, but the lie would be plain for the way she lifts her head to the sky (a blue circle, far above) and grits her teeth to keep from gaping.
If I screamed, she thinks, it would be swallowed up by the sheer enormity of this place. Rows and rows of seating fan outwards around the arena like an accordion, ascending half of the way up to Solis. Rusty metal cages buried by sand and time station themselves like guards in every pitted corner. Hallways as wide as cave mouths lead into darkness and end, she knows, in weaponries or seedy bars or slats of raised earth kept warm by bloody bodies.
She has read the books. She has seen the drawings. But without memory to sully the sight—
Aghavni stares, in astonishment and wonder.
But there is a time for gaping, and there is a time for investigation. She had not come today for the first. She had come to inquire into the illegal fighting ring she knew had started up again, like a cicada digging itself out of seven years of slumber, with the intention of waking the whole world up with it. She had come to ask the right people the right questions, and then to decide, when she made it back to the castle, whether Orestes needed to know about it or not.
Her fan flicks open in front of her face, blade-side glinting, red silk bleeding, when she catches someone looking too long at her. Quickly, she ducks into the nearest row. Recognition by the wrong sort could jeopardize her entire mission.
Her neck lolls as she sinks into the seat and bites back a sigh, wondering if she'll be able to hear herself think in the roar of the crowd. There is movement on the sands below, but she is too far up to see who has just entered the ring. Instead, Aghavni peeks to her right and stills when she catches sight of a dark head, and then below that, rivers of gold flowing from cracks in the steel-polished skin.
It can't be. Her mouth tips into a quicksilver smile. In a blink, she has pushed herself down the row, until her horn is just shy of nipping his shoulder. "Nazaret?"
He is just as I remember him, she thinks, and this time it is not a wish, but true.
You're scared to win, scared to lose
I've heard the war was over if you really choose
