Read Online In His Arena 1: Slave Eternal by Nasia Maksima - Free Book Online Page A

the Hail had been polished and glinted in the sunlight.
    The Empress ordered them cleaned after every Spectacle. Apparently, she did not want anyone dying of complications to their wounds. No, not when their lives could serve as entertainment for plebes and Citizens alike.
    His gaze traveled over the coats of arms of the seven houses—Lucia, Menelaus, Actaeon, Zaerus, Aeschylus, Priassin, and his own, Vulpinius. Some of their members could be his natural brothers or sisters, his natural parents, though both his mother and father were likely of an age to have passed into shadow of UnderRealm. He had no way of knowing.
    Only the Oracles knew, and they never spoke their secrets.
    Stratos snorted. It should have been easy to find his natural family. He was the only blond in the sea of brunets that was House Vulpinius. For a moment, he pictured Alession leaning over him, his black hair tousled and sweaty, that devilish smile and the glint in his ice-blue eyes… The glint that had promised Stratos everything.
    And yet he gives me nothing.
    He risked a squinting glance at the Empress’s balcony. The curtains were drawn. Stratos could only wonder at the depravities she ordered in her private chambers. Everyone knew that without her sight, her needs were amplified.
    Fight or fuck. Those were her rules.
    He looked up at the white clouds. A clear day, temperate for the desert region, the breeze giving the novices on these burning sands a modicum of relief. Whatever the Empress’s needs, someone must have been meeting them.
    Not Alession. Of course not. The consul was clear about his interest in men only. But he is ambitious. And preposterous though it was, Stratos feared the day would come where Alession would return to him smelling of her . Smelling of sex and exotic perfume and coitus with a woman.
    A stone slipped into his sandal, and he walked despite it, ignoring the stabbing pain in his foot. The shouts of the novices retook his attention. Lucan. Now Lucan Vulpinius. Gladiators had no choice which house purchased them. Stratos knew Alession had paid a hefty sum for the boy—ten aureus crowns—and had even enslaved him for Stratos.
    As a toy, nothing more.
    Did Alession think to distract him with lesser fare? No. He loves me. He just isn’t free to pursue me. Because of her.
    A flash of guilt stole into Stratos. He does not know I mean to kill his ladylove with his own gladiator. The thought was intoxicating, but he kept the thrill off his face as he stopped at the edge of the ring.
    Several of the novices glanced over. More than one lingered on Stratos’s dirty-blond hair, his light-hued eyes, corded biceps. He crossed his arms to afford them a better look. After all, there was no harm in ogling. He rather liked their attention.
    Lucan’s eyes were wary, but he put up his gladius and came to Stratos’s side. The boy looked peaked, as though he hadn’t slept. Stratos pushed back the boy’s hair—golden like wheat, where Stratos’s was the hue of hay—and looked at his teeth, as though he were a prize horse or piece of livestock.
    Lucan’s eyes rolled in fear, and he pulled away.
    “I’ll make sure the servants bring you an extra allotment of oranges,” Stratos said. “I don’t like the look of those gums.”
    Lucan blushed.
    Stratos patted his arm. Poor child. As though any of this was his fault. Lucan was just a convenient scapegoat. Stratos noticed the boy looking around. “What is it?”
    Lucan toed the ground.
    Stratos lost patience. “What?” he said, perhaps a bit too harshly.
    “Hektor,” the boy blurted. “Where is Hektor Actaeon? I thought he would be training me.”
    “Oh, he will.” Stratos smiled, but it tasted bitter on his lips.
    Hektor Actaeon, primus palus, sought after as both instructor and lover. He had once served Stratos well, if not willingly. A delicious slice of ass in the days when Stratos simply needed to forget about his woes. A delicious slice of ass and a competent assassin.