Free In His Arena 1: Slave Eternal by Nasia Maksima Page B

shadow of the Ebon on Lucan’s chest. The hair on his nape prickled ominously. Stop it, Hektor. He’s just a boy. An innocent.
    Hektor pushed aside his ponytail and rubbed the back of his neck, touched the raised skin there. The old, burned-out mark.
    He’d kept his hair long to hide it. He’d lied to Lucan.
    The Ebon. Like a blight on his skin, it was feverish and swollen beneath his fingers. His hand trembling, he traced its indistinct edges. Once, it had been a true enslavement—a black circle with two slashes, imbued with the will of his Vulpinius slavemaster. Now, its magick used up, it had bled out into a dark circular blotch as indistinct and unfocused as Hektor’s life, his future.
    Everything taken from him in that one horrible moment.
    Stratos had used him—used him in ways Hektor was not proud of, used him in ways that broke him, that left him bereft and wanting, and unable to even hope the touch of another would heal him.
    No one came back whole from being enslaved to the Ebon.
    Only true love could break it. Hektor’s love for Leander had been true. And in the end, it hadn’t mattered.
    He ascended the stairwell, pushing through the crowds toward the upper tiers of the Grand Palestra. He wished he could leave the weight of Leander’s death behind as easily as he left behind the burning sands of the Empress’s Theatre.
    Leander.
    Part of Hektor had grown his hair long out of mourning for Leander. The other part had been ashamed, so damn ashamed of the slaver mark on his neck that he’d wanted—no, needed—to hide it. No one else had realized he’d been enslaved. After all, no one had even known about him and Leander.
    Except Stratos.
    A warning needled Hektor’s mind. The boy is one of Stratos’s toys, here to torment me, somehow. He glanced back at Lucan, where he struggled and cursed to gain each stair, the bulk of the weapons and shield overburdening him. His retiarii dagger began to slip from beneath his arm. Hektor looked away.
    More cursing. A clatter. Hektor didn’t turn back to make good on his threat.
    Lucan, a spy? He seemed too innocent, all golden hair and eyes, a gladiator who lacked a mean streak, the hardened killer’s instinct Hektor had seen in so many men.
    Lucan Vulpinius had never killed a man. That Hektor could tell without even checking the odds-makers’ records. No. Lucan was as innocent as they came in Arena.
    Leander was innocent too.
    Hektor steeled his heart. As long as Lucan was Stratos’s man, Hektor could never fully trust him. Stratos was acquisitive, a man of dark lusts and darker agendas. To this day, Hektor still never knew why he’d been chosen for the Ebon, why Stratos had set him on the man he loved.
    Leander. Every time Hektor closed his eyes, he saw Leander’s face, his golden eyes dazed, his golden beauty ruined by blood and bruises.
    The day had nearly broken him. The Grand Melee. He had walked into the Empress’s Theatre so certain of his victory, so certain it would be him to walk out those bronze gates a free man. Free to pursue his life. With Leander.
    And then the final bout. Leander shoved, stumbling, onto the hot sands.
    Three years ago, and now the Grand Melee was once more upon them.
    He came out of the darkened stairwell and into the bright sunlight. Above, the crimson and purple awnings snapped and waved, the white bulls of House Zaerus emblazoned upon them dancing in the breeze. Far below, the theatre was a bloodred speck, the Bronze Gates glinting like lethal blades in the sunlight.
    The Empress ordered them kept pristine—a shining beacon of hope for every man who stepped one sandal into her deadly theatre.
    Still, Hektor could see the blood and lives heaped at the foot of those doors. A Grand Melee every three years; hundreds of gladiators dead. Legal murder for the glory of the Empress.
    Once, Hektor had fought hard to be one of the fifty chosen, to win and walk out of the theatre a free man. Now…
    He let his gaze rise to the tops