Rise of a Fallen Man (A Look in the Mirror #2)

Chapter 18

Ari

“ C areful, please.” Mother rushed forward, catching the end of Father’s robe that had draped from the chair in which he was being lifted into the carriage.

Walking still proved uncomfortable for Father. Even getting up from bed left him exhausted and panting for breath. But he insisted on coming to the games today.

“It was almost worth getting hurt,” he chuckled, “to have Your Majesty fuss over me all this time.”

Mother shook her head. “You should thank Ari for taking over most of my responsibilities. I wouldn’t have been able to spend this much time with you otherwise.”

Father grinned at me through the open door of the carriage where one of the seats had been removed to accommodate his chair.

“Thank you, sweetie. I’m immensely enjoying the queen’s undivided attention every day.”

“Just try not to get hurt again, please,” I retorted. “If you want to spend more time with Mother, just ask me to free some of her time for you in the future. There is no need to throw yourself under a horse again. Deal?”

He laughed, making a smile tug on my lips in response.

As Mother climbed into the carriage after Father, I walked over to the one I was to share with my husband.

Leafar was already there.

“Morning,” I said, taking the seat opposite from him.

“Good morning, Your Highness.” He fluffed a cuff of his frilled shirt. The sunlight sparkled in the diamonds and rubies of his new cufflinks.

On Mother’s suggestion, I bought the cufflinks and had them delivered to the prince’s rooms with a note of apology. I had a hard time finding the words to explain what exactly I was apologizing for. Kicking him out of my bedroom? Delaying the consummation? Marrying him while having feelings I shouldn’t have for another man?

As determined as I was to be honest with Leafar, I couldn’t tell him about Salas. With his secret past, Salas’s situation remained vulnerable, and his secrets were not mine to tell.

Writing the note and giving the cufflinks to Leafar did little to assuage my guilt, but Leafar seemed to enjoy his new jewelry. Stroking the precious stones fondly, he turned his wrist to make the sun play in the brilliant facets.

“Do you like the cufflinks?” I asked as the carriage moved.

He pouted, but far less sulkily than before.

“Yes. They’re lovely,” he said, demurely folding his hands in his lap. “Your apology was a move in the right direction. The next right step would’ve been visiting my bedroom last night.”

I hated the almost-forgotten feeling of hopelessness that spread inside me at his words. But even more, I hated that it was my own husband who made me feel this way. Though, I managed to stop short of hating him.

Leafar had done everything that was expected from him all his life. Understandably, he expected certain things to happen in return.

“The prized mare of Prince Elbon of Tresed Queendom had a male foal last week,” he said unexpectedly.

“Um... Congratulations?” I offered, unsure of how to react to that news.

“With the foul’s lineage, he’s expected to grow into the champion stallion of the world.”

“I suppose he is,” I humored him.

What did the mare and her baby have to do with anything right now?

“There is a line of buyers forming already, with the auction starting soon. Since I was forced to leave most of my horses back in Olakrez, I was wondering if Your Highness would be so kind as to put a bid in for me.” He tilted his head with a sweet smile on his lips. “It’d be a great way to start a new collection for me.”

I’d never bought a horse before. Acquiring them fell under Father’s responsibilities. Revlis had been my first and only horse, and even she came to the royal stables long before I started taking horseback riding lessons.

“I’ll see what I can do,” I replied uncertainly.

The smile slipped from the prince’s face, and I feared no amount of diamond cufflinks would put it back there anytime soon.

“My aunt is leaving two days after Queen Anna’s ball,” he said gravely. “The...um, consummation is arranged for the day after the ball.”

With a deep sigh, I ran a hand down my face. The grand duchess insisted on having her nephew fucked by his wife before she left. Publicly, if it had to be.

“I’ll talk to her,” I promised.

“Don’t...” Leafar leaned to me, grabbing my hand. “Please don’t aggravate her even more.”

“Well, I find it extremely aggravating that she keeps meddling in our marriage.”

“She... she cares about me. She wants our marriage to succeed, which I fear is not what you want, Your Highness.” He glared at me with an added emphasis in his voice.

“Why would you say that? Of course I care.”

“Do you? Really?” His voice rose even higher. “Ever since our wedding, you’ve been avoiding me and my bedroom.”

“That’s not true. I have invited you to spend time with me on many occasions.” I kept my voice and my temper down, mindful of the coachwoman in the front and the footwomen at the back of the carriage. They couldn’t see us, but they would hear the argument if we spoke loudly enough. The whispers about our marital troubles would spread through the palace before we’d even return to the palace.

“None of those occasions included an invitation to your bed,” Leafar snapped.

“Is sex the only thing that matters?”

He leaned even closer, staring me down.

“At this moment,” he hissed through his teeth with force, “for this marriage to be valid, yes, sex is the most important thing that needs to happen.”

I kept my back straight, refusing to cower, but my composure wavered in the face of his aggression. Alarm stirred my anxiety, urging me to flee, but I forced myself not to move.

Anger seemed like a perfect weapon to combat fear. I could let it loose and lash out, but I reined it in. Taking a deep breath in, I clasped my hands and counted my heartbeats until their pounding in my head subsided.

“You married me out of fear of your mother, Leafar, and to please your aunt,” I said calmly. “Both are very wrong reasons to tie your life to a stranger.”

He huffed in my face.

“What were your reasons for marrying me, Your Highness?”

A white-hot whip of anger slashed through me, but his question was valid.

Morally, I held no higher ground over Leafar. My reasons for marrying gave me no right to look down at him. I married to gain a political advantage for Rorrim and to grow my power in council.

“Why did you even propose to me if you refuse to have me now?” His bottom lip slipped out in that spoiled kid expression that I found rather irritating.

But Leafar was right, I had proposed to him. I’d chosen him over every other man in this world to be my husband. And within days, our marriage was already unraveling.

Guilt twisted painfully in my chest. I had to put more effort into making this work.

Swallowing my anger and irritation, I attempted a peace offering. “I... I can find a few minutes this afternoon. Would you like to have tea with me? I’ll have it served on the main patio downstairs. It’s a lovely day. You can finally meet my dog. Ria. She’s the cutest.”

I smiled. If only he would smile back at me to complete this thin, shaky bridge of a connection I tried to construct between us.

Sadly, his sulky expression deepened.

“The place where you should meet me is in my bedroom.” He turned away from me and opened the window of the carriage, which effectively ended our conversation, since with the window open, everyone outside the carriage could hear us.

The smile slowly died on my lips.

Leafar felt scared, and he blamed me for it. By rejecting my every attempt at reconciliation, he thought he was punishing me for not letting him have his way. It was childish from him. But Leafar hadn’t been an adult for that long yet. In this relationship, I was the mature one.

My frustration with Leafar bubbled into anger against his family. They had molded him into a shape that suited them, and they never stopped pressuring and intimidating him even now when he was a married man.

The urge to turn this carriage around and march into the grand duchess’s room right now to demand she stop intimidating her nephew burned through me. The only thing that stopped me was Leafar’s plea not to antagonize his aunt. He knew her better than I did and had a better idea about how far her vindictiveness could go. I couldn’t risk her delaying her departure for Olalrez. No one would win from that.

I had to think of a diplomatic approach to deal with the duchess, one that wouldn’t inadvertently hurt Leafar or deteriorate our relationship with Olakrez to the point of war.

A part of me wished I could just go to his bedroom tonight, take his clothes off, and do what everyone wanted me to do, even if all of them watched if they so wished.

But even if I were capable of such an action, any intimacy between Leafar and me felt unthinkable now. The pressure had grown into coercion and manipulation, killing whatever feelings I could’ve had for him as a man and a partner. If I attempted sex with him now, I feared I’d break down again, like I did that night with Salas. Except that this time, there wouldn’t be the circle of Salas’s supportive arms to help me become whole again. There’d be no safety of his understanding, either.

Fear crushed me at the thought of being vulnerable in front of people who might mock me for my weakness. I had no trust in Leafar and didn’t count on his support. With him, I had to be the strong one. His respect for me depended on my showing no weaknesses. And without his respect, I feared that our marriage would not survive.

In the days since our wedding, I’d hoped Leafar and I would grow closer. I never expected us to drift even further apart. We were no longer strangers. But the more I got to know him, the less I felt connected to him in any way.

THE ROAD TO THE GLADIATORS’ Games Arena was decorated with banners hanging from every streetlight along the way. And on every one of those banners was a picture of Salas.

In all the pictures, he was wearing his costume of the fur cape and the crudely constructed helmet with animal horns and thick rivets. The visor of the helmet concealed most of his face, leaving only a feral scowl of white teeth framed by his wild beard. His eyes in the slits of the visor were replaced by a red glow, further making him appear like a wild beast or some manic demon on the loose.

Through the open window of the carriage, the clamor of the people on the road to the arena reached Leafar and me.

Children jumped around one of the streetlight poles, pointing at the picture of the Mountain Bear on the banner.

“I want to be just like Bear when I grow up.” A boy hopped on one foot around the pole.

His father took his hand, stirring him to follow the rest of their family. “You’d better eat all your dinner every day then, to grow as big as he is. Did you see how big Bear is?”

“And strong,” another boy said from a group of people walking along. “He fought against a hundred men last week and won!”

“He’s stronger than any man,” a girl chimed in from the road up ahead. “He fights bears and tigers. He wrestled a sword-toothed alligator last week, and I heard he’s going to fight a dragon today.”

A dragon?

The games master claimed to have the three-winged dragons in her possession, but I haven’t heard of her using them in any of the shows yet.

Also, gladiators usually performed the same act for a few weeks, slowly rotating a few over a year to keep things entertaining. The games master clearly used a different approach with Salas, throwing everything from men to beasts into his acts.

It had only been about a month since I’d last been to the games, but Salas’s fame had soared.

The pictures of him were everywhere around the arena too, as well as inside it. Many in the crowd wore animal furs and replicas of his helmet, chanting his name so loud, the music drowned in the noise.

As Father’s chair was placed on the royal platform and Mother took her seat next to him, Leafar and I sat to the right side of the royal couple.

“Now I wish we came here last week too,” Leafar said, leaning to me. “If this gladiator really is so good, we’ve been missing out.”

I came here for my father and to spend some quality time with my husband. However, apprehension pulsed through me. The last time I’d come here, I watched Salas getting hurt. I didn’t want to see that again.

From the rows behind us, a court lady all but moaned. “Goddess, I’ve been trying to see him in private for weeks now. The games master said he hardly makes himself available to anyone and is already fully booked for months to come. Is there any way to get into the master’s good graces and speed things up? I’ve already made a generous donation for the upkeep of the boys, but she wouldn’t budge.”

“Do you really want to be alone with that beast?” another woman gasped. “Have you seen him crushing rocks with his bare hands last week? He’d tear you to pieces before you even make it to his bed.”

“Does he even have a bed?” someone wondered out loud. “Or does the games master keep him in a cage day and night?”

“Actually, I’ve heard he’s fairly tame outside of the arena,” another woman said. “Countess Ciryl claims she’s been domesticating him through music.”

“Oh, no, I don’t want him domesticated,” the first lady protested. “I want him to ravage me in all his wild, untamed glory. I’d take him covered in blood and rolled in the arena sand.” She sighed wistfully. “If only the games master let me have him for a night or two.”

I was glad when the music surged higher and the chatting behind us finally stopped.

Acrobats bounced into the arena. Jumping and flipping in the air while holding long strips of sheer, colorful material, they created a weave of movement and color in ever-changing fantastic patterns.

The crowd’s enthusiasm swelled as the gladiators entered the arena. They marched around it, and I counted forty-eight muscular bodies. Salas was not among them.

The weave of multi-colored scarves parted in the middle, and his cage rose from the sand. The man-beast character that Salas portrayed so well raged behind the thick bars. His growls overpowered both the music and the noise of the crowd.

As warmly as the crowd had welcomed their queen and king earlier, they seemed to have lost all restraint when greeting their favorite.

People screamed, clapped, and cheered. They stomped their feet and tossed their helmets into the air. Bouquets of flowers flew to the arena, with precious gems attached to them glistening in the sun. All of it happened before Salas had even left his cage.

For a moment, he stilled completely, staring in my direction, and my heart stilled too. I lifted a hand from the armrest of my chair in a small wave. He lowered his head with a deep rumble through his chest, playing the part of the beast.

A pair of swords criss-crossed his back, and I wondered if those were the ones he’d created himself. Drawing them out, he lifted them above his head, and the crowd quieted in anticipation.

Salas dragged his swords across the bars of his cage, eliciting a powerful melody that mimicked the music played by the horns and drums of the orchestra. I smiled. Countess Ciryl had finally taught him to play an instrument, only the instrument was the cage.

The crowd’s enthusiasm exploded with excitement. The chants of Salas’s arena name rose high into the sky.

Leafar covered his ears with his hands.

“They’re exceptionally loud today,” he complained.

They were. And I reveled in their adoration of the man who deserved every drop of it. He played the crowd well, conducting their delight as if it were a powerful orchestra of clapping and cheers instead of instruments.

Even after the cage and the man-beast inside it slid back into the floor of the arena, the chanting of his name didn’t quiet down. It rolled and undulated over the crowd that demanded to see their hero again. The pull in my chest resonated with the crowd’s demands. I missed him too, the moment he was gone.

“Why did they put him away?” Leafar wondered as the gladiators exited the arena and a set of props appeared for the first act of the show.

I leaned back in my chair, summoning patience. “The games master must be saving the best for last.”