Chapter One

Jona

Leaning on a column beneath the Senators’ balcony of the Colosseum, I smoothed the silk of my skirt across my hip, my fingers running over the delicate beading, and tapped restlessly on the glass of champagne in my hand as little beads of condensation spilling over my long nails. The night was warm, as all our nights were. I nervously checked my phone for the thousandth time that evening, and was relieved to see that the news hadn’t broken yet. My High Priestess had been tight-lipped about my new position, but there were members of the press everywhere. Those merciless vultures. They were bound to notice that I’d been invited into the Senators’ box, a place no lower priestess should be.

The gladiators were soon to assemble on the sand below, but I would keep my focus on one particular person on the balcony with me—the person I needed to change my destiny. 

I was pocketing my phone and straightening to walk in his direction, when a clumsy hand seized my elbow. My stomach lurched, and I looked up and saw a man I knew to be one of the husbands of Helena Da Nerva, High Priestess of the Goddess of Marriage and Women. His eyes were bleary and watering. He smelled like whiskey and disappointment. And then there was the way he was looking at me—like a starving dog. Ugh.

“Hello, beautiful.” I winced—I hated the way his sour breath itched my face. “I haven’t seen a priestess of Aapheira here for ages. What are you doing in the Senators’ box?”

My nerves coiled more tightly. If I didn’t quiet this drunkard, he was sure to draw the attention of the press, and if they swarmed too soon, I would miss my chance. My fate would be sealed.

“I was invited,” I whispered, hoping he would believe me and leave me alone.

I tried to pull away, but his hand tightened around my elbow. “Not so fast,” he said, pulling me back. “If you snuck up here to rub elbows with the rich and powerful, I understand it, girl. After all, how do you think I caught the High Priestess Helena’s eye?” He gave me what was supposed to be a dashing grin.

My expression was flat as I said, “Family money?”

I could have slapped myself. Keep him happy, Jona. Watch that tongue. Funny how my inner voice sounded like my High Priestess.

He glowered. “I know about your Cult, girl. You might act all prim and proper, but I hear what they say happens behind closed doors in that pretty Temple of yours.”

“Don’t believe everything you hear,” I said with a glare. I was used to protecting the Cult of Aapheira in this way. It was sort of a quid pro quo—the Cult protected us by putting a roof over our heads, and we priestesses protected the Cult by keeping its secrets.

He narrowed his eyes and leaned toward me, his sour breath creeping across my skin. “If you won’t tell me, maybe you can show me what a priestess of Aapheira can do. And maybe then I won’t have you dragged out of here.” He glanced toward the press box nearby. Several photographers had their cameras trained our direction—those in the Senators’ box were as much news as the gladiatorial competition itself. “Then maybe you can avoid your face plastered all over the news sites, yeah?”

Crap. He was smarter than he looked.

As he spoke, he let his hand trail lightly down my arm where my pulse raced and then over my hip, edging toward my backside. 

One learns after a few nights in the Cult of Aapheira that the gods did not balance the scales of justice themselves. They expected us to do it. So that’s what I did. Helena’s husband or not, I couldn’t allow this. My hand shot to his, gripping it painfully, and I snapped it back. I heard a quick pop as his wrist broke, and I smiled as he squealed like a pig. 

I risked a glance at the press box—one or two photographers had turned their heads at the sound of the man’s scream, and I quickly checked to make sure my veil was still in place. No one on the Senators’ balcony even looked up from their conversations. They were far too focused on their own issues to spare any attention for the fool who’d been unfortunate enough to approach me. I hoped he felt it, their lack of notice. I hoped he realized just how little he mattered to these people.

“No touching,” I said, and I shoved him off of me. 

He balked at me. “You—you broke my hand!”

“I broke your wrist. Be glad it wasn’t a different appendage.”

His eyes blew wide, watering in pain and looking at me like he’d reached down to pet a rabbit and just realized it was a viper. “You’re insane…”

It was time to extract myself from the situation before he made a scene. I blew him a kiss and walked away. Thank the gods, he didn’t follow. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him scamper through the door, and I allowed myself a smile as I tucked his wedding ring into the bodice of my dress, enjoying the thrill of the steal. I didn’t need gold—but I needed the weight of that idiot’s ring against my skin and the knowledge that I could take what I wanted from under anyone’s nose. Anyone’s.

They didn’t expect a privileged girl from an affluent family to know how to play dirty, but I was so much more—and so much worse—than what they’d bargained for. And by the gods, I would take more than jewelry from them for what they’d done to me. If I could just get through the Ludis, and get him alone… 

But I hardly took two steps before I was stopped again, this time by a much friendlier face. The bulky figure of Benedictus Aurelius, legionary and frequent guard of my High Priestess, marched toward me, intention in his step and worry in his eyes.

“Are you alright, Domina Jona?” he asked, using the formal title for priestesses.

“Yes, Ben, but you won’t be if you don’t stay put next to the Madonna.” I pointed to my High Priestess, sitting on her tufted settee, fanning herself for show more than because she was hot. 

“I saw an altercation between you and—”

“I took care of it,” I told him with a smile. 

He frowned at me. “I wish you’d called for me.”

“Why?” I said. “You couldn’t have done anything.”

Ben was one of the few legionaries that sympathized with the priestesses. He made it known in little frowns and flinches when we were subjected to some mistreatment or another. But he never made a move against Madonna Regina. No one did.

I watched his lips tighten before he offered me a muscled arm. “Can I help you back to your seat?”

I hardly needed help walking, but I knew Ben needed to feel like he’d done something for me. So I took his elbow and walked with him to where Regina sat watching the Ludis.

The day before the Ludis, Madonna Regina had named me her Priestess-Ascendant, her heir, and in a single breath destroyed all the fragile hope I’d gently carried for the past year, the hope of leaving. I had survived those long months in the Temple, and most nights it was only the thought of getting out when my three-year indenture was up kept me alive. But if I was her Priestess-Ascendant, I wouldn’t be able to leave. I would stay, spending the rest of my life training to become just like Regina—a cruel and beautiful mistress to the priestesses of the goddess Aapheira. The Goddess of Love and Death was a monster, and though I might have been forced to serve her in the light, in the dark I blasphemed her name. Goddess of Love and Death? Please.

Goddess of pain. 

Goddess of greed.

Goddess of nightmares.

I sat down primly on a seat between the Madonna and Jozif Eligius, Chairman of the House of Commons. He draped himself elegantly over his seat, expensive carpets rolled out beneath his leather loafers, one long leg crossed over the other as he sipped his whiskey, glinting like gold in the dying light of the Colosseum. For the leader of the democratic half of the Senate, he was anything but a man of the people—expensive, cold, and untouchable. I truly loved that about him.

I sat beside him and automatically linked my hand around his arm, my default position when he was near, and he smiled charmingly down at me. If I was going to get what I needed from him, I needed to behave perfectly. Jozif had bought exclusive rights to my company months before, but that arrangement was about to end with me being named heir to the High Priestess. I needed to work quickly.

If my plan was going to work, I had to get him away from the crowds, away from Regina, and away from Ben and his duty to protect at all costs.

“Enjoying yourself, Domina?” Madonna Regina whispered to me, and I looked up at her, my eyes meeting hers for the first time that night. Everything about that woman defied death, from the smoothness of her bronzed skin, to the way her eyes blazed like coals through the layers of dark makeup around them. I looked away and convinced myself it was from indifference, not fear, despite the sudden clamminess of my hands on a warm night. I felt the Madonna’s eyes on me as I tried very hard to focus on the crowds, but her gaze burned into my cheek.

“Of course,” I said.

She paused, the toxicity of the silence building every second. “You have a question to ask me,” she said.

“What question do I have to ask you, Madonna?” I asked, careful to keep my tone supplicant.

“Ask me why I chose you.”

I bit the inside of my cheek. Instinct told me it was wisest so say nothing.

She cocked her head as she looked at me. “I know you’re disappointed, Domina. No need to hide from me.” She said it like a concerned mother, which was all the more disturbing because there was nothing motherly about the Madonna. I tried to control the urge to tremble by holding Jozif’s arm more tightly.

“I’m not disappointed, Madonna. I’m grateful.”

Her smile told me she didn’t believe my lie. She reached out and curled one long strand of my hair around her finger. My hair was nearly black, and with it coiled taut and glossy around the Madonna’s finger, it reminded me of a serpent. The familiar taste of fear crept up my throat, and I did everything I could to keep it from showing on my face. I was stone. I felt nothing.

By the way Regina’s red lips twisted into a smile, I didn’t think I had her fooled.

“The other girls…Well, you know as well as I do that service to Aapheira changes them. They became pretty and obedient and…broken. But you didn’t break, Domina. After you came to me, I watched you harden under pressure. You’ve thrived in the Temple, brought in more income than any of the others. I think it’s time you were rewarded for it.”

She was right about one thing—I hadn’t broken. I wore my pain like a crown.

I refused to let myself look away from her as she continued. “A good priestess is beautiful. A good High Priestess is cunning. You are both. That’s why I chose you.” She dipped her head. “I hope you realize how critical your performance is tonight. This role is sacred. Who you are now is sacred, set apart.” 

I felt set apart—set apart from life. Set apart from hope. 

My eyes fell in deference and landed on the Parazonium sheathed at her hip—the sacred dagger of the Goddess of Love and Death and the symbol of the Cult of Aapheira’s power. Kings had crowns—the High Priestess had the Parazonium.

In mere minutes, Madonna Regina would stand before the world and declare me her heir, and then she would hand me that dagger. I swore to Elysium that I would make sure she regretted giving it to me before the night was over.

Chapter Two

Lysander

On the day I was supposed to die, I lay face down on the dusty floor of a cell beneath the Colosseum. I was pretty sure those cells were typically used for animals—flies swarmed everywhere, and a bale of hay and a water trough took up one corner. Plus the whole place smelled like horse shit.

Three days I’d been in custody—three days to reflect on my choices, to sit back and take a good, honest look at my life, at the kind of man I’d become. 

Apparently, I was the kind of man who took bets on how much prison wine I could drink without vomiting.

Turns out, it was a lot. But also not enough.

I cursed my own stupidity as the harsh light of the setting sun sliced through the window near the ceiling. In the Valladian Empire, it was always hot, and it was always night…while we were awake anyway. The temperatures in the peak of the day were unbearable for anything more than lying about in the shade, so we slept while the sun was high and lived under the moon. The darkness hardly mattered in a city so well-lit by neon displays and city lights—Valladians treated darkness like a thing to be tamed.

But the sun hadn’t quite ducked below the upper ridge of the Colosseum, and I wanted to spit on the stupid burning ball of pain. I breathed deeply on the floor, willing my headache to go away and my stomach to settle. It was not the best day to have a hangover, but then again, do people usually make good decisions when they have one day to live?

The others were making jokes and laughing as they peered through the windows in their own cells, trying to get a better view of the arena—like they were mere spectators and not the entertainment themselves. I suppose that was one way to handle facing one’s death.

But I didn’t need to look out the window. I knew what I would see. Just now, the sand would be raked, fresh and clean and gleaming like the city surrounding us. Before long, it would turn to blood-soaked mud. 

Only one of us would survive the day—whoever could prove themselves bloodthirsty enough to kill every last one of the competing gladiators. And the oh-so-benevolent Senate would release that person, the one who was willing to kill anyone and everyone to obtain their freedom, back into society with a laurel crown on their head. 

Traditions in the Empire could be so fucking stupid.

I heard the roar of the crowd pick up, and I groaned, covering my head with my arms.

“Drunkcules, you’re going to miss the opening ceremony,” said the gladiator in the cage next to mine, repeating the terribly uncreative nickname I’d earned for my great feats of wine drinking. 

“I’ve seen it before,” I grumbled.

“No kidding,” he said, plopping down by the bars separating our cells. “I’ve never been to the Ludis before.” 

The kid was all of eleven—maybe twelve. When we were all swapping the customary “What are you in for?” stories in our last hurrah the night before, he’d told me he’d shot his own father. He didn’t say why, but there was a vacancy in the kid’s eyes that told me the bastard deserved it. Yet, here he was, locked in a cell with the likes of me. I wondered if I would have to kill him before the day was over.

I could’ve probably gotten out of the Ludis if I’d wanted to. Just one word to the guard…But no. They’d seen the tattoo on the back of my neck, the one marking me as a dirty, rotten deserter—worse than any other criminal sentenced to participate in the competition of gladiators. In the Valladian Empire, you could do just about anything and still earn the Senate’s forgiveness. Not if you were a traitor. No one was going to vouch for me. Never again.

“The Senate is being seated,” someone said from another cell. 

Fantastic.

I wiped a hand over my face. I wasn’t looking forward to facing that particular set of assholes today. 

I heard the familiar voice of Madonna Regina over the sound system. I couldn’t hear what was being said, and, to be honest, I didn’t want to. But then Regina said something that had the whole place shouting. I lifted my head up and looked toward the window.

“What is it?” I asked.

The gladiator next to me shrugged. “I couldn’t quite make it out over the noise. Something about naming a priestess…offendent?”

“Ascendant,” I corrected, finally interested enough to stand up. “It’s her heir, the girl she’s picked to be High Priestess when she retires.”

I peered through the window in my own cell, and the setting sun cut through my skull like a hot knife. I had to blink a few times before the arena came into focus. Gods damn that sun. I was Valladian to my core, made for night. 

In the center of the Senators’ balcony stood Regina, looking like a queen, dressed in…gods, her dress was solid gold, wasn’t it? And was she wearing a crown? Oh for fucks’ sake.

Regina had been edging into the center of power in the Empire for ages, too smart to contend with the other powerful High Priests when she was young and inexperienced. But in the last decade or so she’d been slowly chipping away influence from the other Cults of the Pantheon through clever political maneuvering and cultivating a Temple known throughout the world for the beauty and skill of its priestesses. Now she was wearing an actual crown.

The other High Priests were sure to love that.

Religion and politics were inseparable in the Valladian Empire. In the House of Clerics, the High Priests held lifetime appointments to the Senate. But in the House of Commons, senators only served for three years and had to be elected. For all the Empire’s talk of democracy, it wasn’t the people that truly held the power. That fell to the High Priests of the Pantheon—Madonna Regina among them.

If she was naming her Priestess-Ascendant today, what did that mean? It was clearly a power move, but why now?

Very interesting.

I watched Regina reach toward a scabbard at her side and withdraw a small golden dagger, displayed in a hundred feet of perfect resolution on the screen suspended over the Colosseum. Rubies the size of dung beetles adorned on the hilt, intricate gold swirling around them. Regina’s blood red lips smiled above it.

“People of the Valladian Empire,” Regina’s voice echoed through the Colosseum, “I present to you the Parazonium, the sacred artifact of the Cult of Aapheira. I have wielded it for two decades as your High Priestess. Once, the goddess Aapheira was mortal like you. She was betrayed by her lover, and when she discovered his duplicity, she used this blade, the Parazonium, to strike him through the heart while he slept. The gods, seeing her suffering and bold spirit, made her Goddess of Love and Death.”

The crowd roared, and a raucous chorus of “Great is Aapheira! No mercy in love, no mercy in death!” broke out. The Cult of Aapheira’s favorite hymn.

Regina let them chant their worship for a few beats before interrupting, her voice drowning out the noise over the sound system. “The Parazonium will now be presented to the Priestess-Ascendant, symbolizing her role as the future High Priestess of Aapheira, Queen of Death, Matron of Love. The Priestess-Ascendant is promised to her people. She belongs to no one because she belongs to all, and today I present her as a gift to you.”

Madonna Regina stepped to the side as the crowds roared, and she swept her arm wide, gesturing to a figure standing in the shadows of the balcony. I watched closely as the girl stepped into the light. She looked small next to Regina, completely shrouded by a blood-red veil. But then the Priestess-Ascendant raised her arms and lifted the veil over her head. The crowds erupted in howls of approval as the cameras zoomed in on her face.

Gods, she was beautiful. 

No, that didn’t even begin to describe her. Her eyes were dark and hooded, and her lips full with a small creased pinching the bottom. Thick, ebon hair hung down over her shoulders, and the dress of deep vermillion she wore caressed every line of her body, and gods, those curves were so…indulgent…excessive…irresponsible. And damn if I didn’t love all things irresponsible.

She was positively dripping in gold—bangles on her wrists like shackles, pendants and chains weighing around her neck, piercings littering her face and ears in a dozen different places. I don’t know why they bothered with the gold, really. All they needed was her and the whole Empire would be worshiping at Aapheira’s feet. 

But despite the glamor, I didn’t miss the shadows in her eyes. Like winter without the sun.

I’d heard the rumors that floated around Regina and her Temple—stories of the cruel things done to the girls in those ancient stone walls.

I’d never stopped to wonder if they were true until I first saw her dead eyes. 

***

The time came for the fighting, and I faced the inevitable not with fear, but with exhaustion. The roaring of the crowd washed over me and heat radiated off of the white sand as I trudged into the arena with the other gladiators, gripping my gladus, the traditional short sword used in the Ludis. As we took our positions, I allowed myself a steadying breath, willing myself to not puke on the sand before the games had even started. And I needed a minute to tune out everything, to brace myself for what was about to happen, what I was about to have to do.

I had perfectly justifiable reasons for getting myself into this situation. That’s what I kept telling myself, anyway. At every turn, my decisions had felt right. But ever since things had begun to spiral so dramatically out of control, and I’d been in the rare position of doubting myself. How had things gone so bad so quickly?

Despite all appearances, this wasn’t a party, and it wasn’t a game. Forget that there were rose petals and confetti in the air. Forget the neon advertisements blaring over the stands, the cameras drones whirring overhead, the music, raw and pounding, setting the pace of my pulse. Before the end of the day, I was going to kill a lot people. Either that, or I would be dead, but I knew better than to hope for that. Aapheira, Goddess of Death, was an asshole, and she had time and time again proven that she was hellbent on denying me the afterlife for as long as possible. Probably trying to maximize my suffering before spending an eternity in Tartarus.

I was raised in Basileia, the capital city of the Empire. I’d attended the Ludis every year since I was born, and that should have made me just as keen for the fight as the people cheering around me. But it didn’t. Because unlike them, I knew the reality of killing. I knew what it was to take a life. And I didn’t fucking enjoy it.

“The games will begin at the boom of the cannon. Good luck, gladiators,” rang the voice of the announcer. As the others prepared for the fight, my body reacted on instinct. My mind sharpened. My feet shifted into a fighting stance. This was pure muscle memory.

The cannon sounded.

The crowd roared.

And I’d barely lifted my gladus when I heard a metallic creak behind me. I turned. The great steel doors, the very ones that I and the other gladiators had just walked though, begin to rise.

“We have prepared something special for you all today,” the announcer’s voice said. “In honor of the Priestess-Ascendant, a new challenge has been introduced to the Ludis for your enjoyment.”

I heard it before I saw it. Heavy footsteps. A deep growl that filled the night air. 

“What the—,” whispered the kid next to me.

I blinked, trying to see into the darkness of the tunnel. There—in the shadows—two unnatural yellow eyes. Was the Senate having us face a lion? That would be very old school of them.

But then a thing stepped into the sun. 

I’d seen a lot of weird shit, but never anything like this. My brain refused to accept what my eyes were taking in. Maybe I’d had more to drink than I’d thought. Because this wasn’t possible.

A monster prowled onto the sand.

It was bigger than a tank. Like something from a nightmare. The head of a lion grinned widely at us as it pawed the dirt, its mouth too wide, too human, too…toothy. A strange, fiendish smile curled on its lips up to its ears, and above its mane another head jutted from the same pair of shoulders—a goat with wicked, feral eyes that spun wildly in their sockets. On its back were broad, black wings that twitched and stretched, reminding me of a crow. As though that weren’t horrific enough, its tail swung into view—and I realized it wasn’t a tail at all. The tongue of a viper flicked out between two long fangs.

Such things did not exist outside of mythology. And yet, there it was, stepping into the arena, its enormous cat-like paws kicking up dust as it set its eyes on us—its prey.

There were two things that I knew to be self-evidently and devastatingly true. First, that the gods were takers. They were not merciful, and they were not kind. They were crude alloys of recklessness and glory. We were their subjects, and they did as they pleased. 

I knew that truth as well as I knew my own surname. Not the one I was born with, but the one they gave me—D’Aapheira. The Cult of Aapheira claimed me and erased me and redrew my edges. It was an honor, they said, to serve the Goddess of Love and Death, whatever the cost. And I knew the cost.

The second thing I knew was that I was done paying it. 

It was at the Ludis, the annual competition of gladiators in glittering Basileia, that my unhinging began. There, among the roaring rabble and diamantine night sky, I lit the fuse that could not be unlit.