Page 11 of Kingdom of Darkness and Dragons (Empire of Vengeance #4)

I barely made it ten steps from the training yard before his hand closed around my arm like a vice.

"Don't." Jalend's voice was low, dangerous, carrying a fury I'd never heard from him before. "Don't you dare walk away from me."

I turned to face him, and the raw anger in his dark eyes made my breath catch. Gone was the gentle, thoughtful man I'd fallen in love with. In his place stood someone I barely recognized—someone whose pain had transformed into something sharp and deadly.

"Let go of me," I said quietly, though I made no move to pull away. Part of me wanted this confrontation, needed it. The past weeks of his cold silence had been a special kind of torture, and even his fury was preferable to indifference.

"No." His grip tightened, and he began dragging me toward the main building. "We're going to talk. Now."

I could have broken free—my gladiator training had taught me a dozen ways to escape a hold like this.

But I let him pull me along, through corridors filled with curious stares and whispered conversations.

By tomorrow, the entire Academy would know that Jalend Northreach had hauled Livia Cantius through the halls like a common criminal.

The irony wasn't lost on me. After all, that's exactly what I was.

He kicked open the door to his quarters and shoved me inside, slamming it behind us with enough force to rattle the windows. Then he turned to face me, his chest heaving with barely controlled rage.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" The words exploded from him like a physical blow. "You could have killed her! In front of everyone, in broad daylight—you could have murdered another student!"

I lifted my chin, meeting his fury with my own cold defiance. "Maybe I should have. Maybe the world would be a better place without people like Valeria poisoning it."

"People like Valeria?" His laugh was harsh, bitter. "What about people like you? What kind of person are you, Livia? Because I thought I knew, but that... that thing I just watched in the training yard... that wasn't human."

The words hit like a slap, and I felt something crack inside my chest. "You want to know what kind of person I am?" My voice rose to match his. "I'm the kind who fights back when cornered. I'm the kind who doesn't lie down and take whatever abuse people like her want to dish out."

"Abuse?" He stalked closer, his eyes blazing. "She said some cruel words, so you decided to butcher her? That's your idea of proportional response?"

"You don't know what she said." My hands clenched into fists at my sides. "You don't know what she—"

"Then tell me!" He roared, close enough now that I could see the flecks of gold in his dark eyes. "Tell me what could possibly justify what you almost did! Tell me who you really are, because the woman I thought I knew wouldn't have blood on her hands and smile about it!"

The silence stretched between us, taut as a bowstring. I could see the pain beneath his anger, the hurt that was driving this rage. He'd seen something in me today that had shattered whatever image he'd built of who I was, and now he was scrambling to understand how wrong he'd been.

"You want the truth?" I asked quietly. "All of it?"

"Yes." The word came out as a whisper. "God help me, yes. I need to understand what I've been... what we've been..."

"What you've been fucking?" The crudeness made him flinch, which was exactly what I'd intended. "Is that what you can't say? That you've been sharing a bed with someone you don't actually know?"

"Don't." His voice cracked. "Don't make this about sex. You know it was more than that. At least... I thought it was."

The pain in his voice almost broke my resolve. Almost made me reach for him, try to comfort away the hurt I'd caused. But comfort was a luxury neither of us could afford anymore.

"Was it?" I asked instead. "Because from where I'm standing, it looks like you decided I wasn't worth the trouble the moment you found out about my other lovers. Funny how quickly 'more than sex' turned into running straight to Valeria's bed."

His face went white. "That's not... I didn't..."

"Didn't what? Didn't fuck her last night?" I laughed, the sound sharp and ugly. "I saw her go into your room, Jalend."

"Nothing happened." The words came out strangled. "I sent her away. I was drunk and angry and hurting, but I sent her away because..." He stopped, his jaw working as if the words were fighting him.

"Because what?"

"Because even when I'm furious with you, even when I hate what you've done to me, I still..." He turned away, running his hands through his hair. "God, I'm pathetic."

The admission hung in the air between us, raw and vulnerable. I wanted to reach for him then, wanted to tell him that I understood, that I'd been drowning in the same impossible feelings. Instead, I forced myself to stay where I was.

"You want the truth?" I said again. "My name isn't Livia Cantius. It's Livia Aurelius, and I'm not a noble. I'm not even technically free."

He turned back to face me, his expression shifting from anger to confusion. "What are you talking about?"

"I was sold into slavery when I was a child." The words came out flat, emotionless. I'd learned long ago that the only way to tell this story was to drain all feeling from it. "Along with Septimus. We were taken to a ludus—a gladiator school—in the outer provinces."

I watched his face change as the implications hit him. The horror, the disbelief, the dawning understanding of what those words meant.

"You're lying," he whispered.

"Am I? Look at me, Jalend. Really look." I held out my arms, showing him the scars that crisscrossed my skin. "These aren't from dragon training accidents. They're from years of learning to kill or be killed for other people's entertainment. I was a gladiator."

His anger vanished, snuffed out like a candle flame, leaving a profound, stunned silence in its place.

The word hung between us, ugly and sharp.

Gladiator. It was a world away from the polished floors and polite cruelties of the Academy.

It was the world of blood and sand, of death as sport. The world his kind ruled over.

His gaze dropped from my face to my arms, tracing the silvery network of scars he had kissed and caressed, but was only now truly seeing.

He took an involuntary step back, his expression one of dawning horror.

I saw the moment the pieces clicked into place in his mind.

Septimus and Tarshi—they weren’t just my lovers.

They were my fellow slaves. My family. The men I had fought alongside, bled with, survived with.

“All this time,” he whispered, the words ragged. “Everything… your fighting, the way you…” He couldn’t finish, his mind clearly reeling as it re-contextualized every moment we had shared.

“Yes,” I said, the single word a confirmation of his worst fears. “This is who I am, Jalend. Not the lady you were slumming with. A killer. A slave. The monster you saw in the yard today? That’s what they made me. That’s what it takes to survive.”

He stared at the evidence written on my body, his face growing paler. "No. No, that's impossible. You're a dragon rider. You're at the Academy. You can't be..."

"A slave?" I finished. "But I am. Legally, I still belong to the man who bought me for his ludus. Marcus, Antonius, Septimus, Tarshi—we all do."

"The men you..." His voice broke. "The men you've been with."

“They were my family,” I said. “The only family I had. In the ludus, you find people to watch your back, or you don't last a season. We kept each other alive, trained together, fought together. And when the Talfens attacked our town last year, we escaped together."

I moved to his window, staring out at the Academy grounds where I'd spent the past months pretending to be someone I wasn't. "I'd always dreamed of being a dragon rider when I was a child.

Even in the ludus, even when hope seemed impossible, I held onto that dream.

When I found Sirrax in the pens—when he bonded with me—it felt like fate. "

"Sirrax. Your dragon."

"Was supposed to be killed in the arena." I turned back to face him. "Our owner bought him to provide entertainment—watching gladiators fight a dragon to the death. But when I saw him, I couldn’t pull myself away. There was a… connection. He learned to trust me."

Jalend sank into a chair as if his legs could no longer support him. "So you escaped. And then what?"

"We came here. To the capital. The men helped me create the identity of Lady Livia Cantius—a minor noble from a distant province, recently orphaned, with just enough holdings to qualify for the Academy trials.

" I laughed bitterly. "It took most of our stolen gold to buy the forged documents, but it worked. "

"Why?" The question came out barely audible. "Why risk it? Why not just... disappear? Start over somewhere safe?"

"Because there is nowhere safe. Not for people like us." I moved closer, needing him to understand. "Do you know what happens to escaped slaves when they're caught? They're crucified. Slowly. As an example to others."

He flinched as if I'd struck him.

"And Tarshi..." I continued, my voice softening despite myself.

"Tarshi wanted more than just survival. He got involved with the resistance movement.

People who believe that maybe, someday, we could live in a world where loving someone with pointed ears doesn't make you a criminal.

Where having children doesn't mean watching them sold into slavery. "

"The resistance." His voice was hollow. "You're part of the group that bombed the festival."

"I am part of the resistance, yes. But the bombing..." I shook my head. "That was supposed to be a peaceful demonstration. A few members went rogue, took things too far. Septimus and Tarshi were there trying to stop it from happening. You saw them. They've been missing ever since."

"Missing or dead?"