“How many years have you burned at the Rites of Spring?”
It was the nature of people to look away when they lied, but this woman’s eyes remained steadfast. “I don’t understand.”
She possessed a lyrical voice, her accent almost aristocratic.
He closed the space between them. Her breath hitched, and she went rigid, though she didn’t give ground at his approach. Despite its lank appearance, her hair drifted thick and soft through his fingers as he lifted it away from her neck. “Your hair is black, your eyes are brown, and you aren’t as well-fed as these clothes make you look.”
He stood close enough to feel her limbs quake. Before she could escape, he imprisoned her wrist and raised her hand. Under the illusion, her palm was smooth and pudgy, the hand of a merchant’s pampered daughter perhaps. To his eyes, it was slim and work-roughened, and bore a telltale color. “You have green hands, woman. Stained by the sap of the long nettle. I’d wager a herd of breeding mares you’re a Beroe dyer.”
He’d never seen the village of Beroe itself, but it was common knowledge the popular green dye used to color the rugs and clothing of wealthy Kraelians was made there.
A whimper escaped his companion. She closed her eyes, her arm suddenly limp in his grip. He released her and stepped back. He had her. It was time to bargain. An uncomfortable twinge settled under his ribs when she opened her eyes once more and gave him a bleak stare.
“How can you see this?” Her voice had flattened to a dull monotone.
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I only see it with you. I’ve watched you for five years. Each year the same woman with many faces walks to the pyre, is burned in the arena, and walks away untouched by the flame, with none the wiser. My people would call you an agacin, spirit of the goddess Agna made flesh.”
Desolation turned to desperation. She clutched his arm. “Please, I beg you. Have mercy. Say nothing. Other lives depend on this deception.” He stared at her, then at the hand gripping his arm, letting his silence play out. It unnerved her as he had hoped. She dropped her hand in favor of curling it into a fist. “I have nothing to offer for your silence.” She admitted this failure between clenched teeth.
“You can give me my freedom.”
Her jaw sagged, disbelief lifting her eyebrows. “What?”
Again, he’d shocked her. “You can change faces.”
“Yes.” The guarded look masked her features once more.
“Tomorrow, after the burning, you’ll come back to the catacombs as Hanimus and unlock my cell door.”
She gave a croak of laughter. “You are mad. We’ll be discovered. They’ll kill us both before you can step outside this cell.”
He hadn’t survived ten years and the savagery of the arena to die in the dark at the hands of guards no more intelligent than their own shit. Death wasn’t an option. Not now. But she didn’t need to know that. “Better dead than held here any longer.”
“Good for you,” she snapped before lowering her voice. “I don’t have that choice. I can’t die. Not yet. Beroe depends on me, on this lie. Find another to help you. I help enough already.” Bitterness poisoned each word.
“There is no other. You’ll do this.” He’d expected her resistance and planned for it.
Her face hardened. Finely cut cheekbones stood out, and though shorter than he was, she managed to stare down her nose at him as if he were one of the filthy puddles dotting the floors.
A subtle shift in the air lifted the hairs on his nape, and he straightened, arms hanging loose at his sides. This woman was no match for his prowess. Still, that inner alarm put him on guard, growing louder when she lifted her hands, palms cupped. Within the cages of her fingers, a blue-tinged flame burned brightly.
She was indeed an agacin—a fire priestess—and watched him with an imperious disdain worthy of the goddess who bequeathed her such power. “I’m not only safe from fire, gladiator,” she said, her fury as hot as the fire she held. “I can burn you to ash where you stand.”
Azarion laughed aloud. No helpless martyr here. She was as fierce and stubborn as any Savatar woman. Her initial passivity was no more real than the illusion of her crossed eyes or plump body. His admiration for her grew, as did his sense of purpose. She’d help him or he’d kill her.
Undeterred by her threat and the flames leaping in her hands, he stalked her until he backed her against the wall near his pallet. Her shallow breaths warmed his neck as he braced an arm on either side of her head and leaned closer to nuzzle her ear. Heat glazed his sides, warning that her fingers still blazed.
She might be as fierce as a Savatar, but she lacked the honed instinct that signaled danger. This close and he could snap her neck before a single hot ember touched his skin.
His mouth drifted lower until he reached her neck. She flinched when he grazed his teeth across the long vein below the skin and felt the heavy pulse of her blood surge under his lips. “Another knows your secret and will only keep it as long as I’m alive. Burn me,” he murmured, “and you seal your fate and the fate of Beroe.”
His heart beat as hard as hers did as he waited to see whether she’d sniff out his lie and call his bluff.
Rage bubbled in her voice, deepened it until she was almost growling. “It would be worth it.”
She didn’t break easily. A woman who willingly suffered through the Rites of Spring each year for half a decade wouldn’t. Strands of her hair, fine as silk threads, tickled his nose. “Would it?” He drove the point home. “Do you want Beroe to become another Midrigar?”
Midrigar. The township that once refused to tithe its women and grain to the Krael Empire and paid a terrible price. Even for those who thrived on watching the violence and bloodshed of the arena, the destruction of Midrigar was an abomination, its name spoken only in whispers.
For a moment, the heat strengthened, searing his sides before disappearing altogether. A soft sob broke the tense silence as gladiator and witch stood together. To other eyes, it might seem as if they embraced, his face hidden in her neck, her hands now resting against his ribs.
“You bastard,” she said in a defeated whisper.
Azarion kept her trapped, determined to gain her cooperation and content to taste her skin. “What say you, Agacin? Help me and none will ever know the village of Beroe has made a fool of the Empire.”
She leaned away from him so that her gaze met his, and in the dark depths of her eyes a calculating hatred settled. “What do I have to do?”
Triumph nearly made his knees give way. The plan he had strategized for the last three years, with this agacin at its heart, had only a slim chance of working, but it was at least a chance. Without her consent, extorted via threat, it had no chance at all.