Chapter 1
I would sell my soul to go back to that night, when I had just turned fifteen and had no idea who he was.
To begin it all again, from the very beginning, beside him. To live every second over and over and over, an eternity made of again. How sublime that would be... what a gift, what a life, what a paradise born from a hell I chose with my own hands.
I was fifteen.
An age when girls of my station learn to wear practiced smiles through the palace halls, but I had never been an ordinary girl. In my room, hidden behind heavy velvet curtains, the air had become impossible to breathe.
It was Aculina—my maid, and the only person who had ever truly known me—who came up with that reckless idea. To sneak out. To go to the arena, where every night men fought battles of celebrated cruelty, where our brave knights washed their honor clean in the blood of murderers, thieves, and every God-forsaken soul the world had long since abandoned.
It was savage entertainment, a forbidden pleasure reserved for men and for the kind of women society refused to call pure. And I... I felt an irresistible pull toward the very things I was forbidden to see. I didn’t hesitate for a second. I had to go.
My decision became final the moment Aculina—who somehow always knew everything that happened within the palace walls—leaned close and whispered that Amos would be entering the arena that night.
The man my father intended to marry me to. I wanted to see him with my own eyes, to find out whether the rumors were true.
Aculina had once told me between muffled laughs that he was so passionate, so violently animated whenever he spoke, that he spat. What kind of life was waiting for me?
The thought twisted around my stomach so painfully that I couldn’t swallow a single bite during dinner. I hid two apples inside the pockets of our disguises, we covered our faces, and slipped through the shadows of the palace corridors toward the distant roar of the arena.
I handed over the last coins I had painstakingly saved to one of the guards at the entrance, just so he would let us squeeze into a place near the very bottom of the arena. It was filthy. The nobles and the wealthy sat high above on spotless stone benches, safely removed from the smell of sweat—the sweat of fear—the blood, and the pain that lingered in the heavy air below. But I was down there, close enough to smell the damp earth itself.
“That’s Amos,” Aculina whispered into my ear, nodding toward a man who had just entered the arena, flanked by three soldiers.
I looked at him, and an odd calm settled over me.
Nothing.
His face stirred absolutely nothing inside me. Neither good nor bad.
He wasn’t ugly, but there was something faded about his features, something that kept him from ever becoming handsome.
The crowd, however, adored him. For five long minutes the arena thundered with applause while he bowed again and again, drinking in every drop of that cheap glory.
Then they brought in the condemned man.
Something inside my chest tightened the moment he appeared. He was much taller than Amos, far broader, his sheer size striking me before anything else.
His wrists and ankles were shackled in heavy black iron chains that clanged deafeningly against the stone with every step. Twelve armed soldiers surrounded him like a small army. At first, I couldn’t see his face. His chin was buried against his chest, his gaze fixed on the ground.
Long, filthy hair spilled over broad, powerful shoulders. He wore a loose, tattered shirt and plain black trousers caked with mud. His feet were bare. So was his chest.
He staggered as he walked, swaying with a sickly rhythm, as though every step was a battle against his own exhaustion, as though he no longer possessed even the smallest shred of strength to keep going.
They dragged him into the center of the arena and fastened the chain around his ankles to a massive iron stake driven deep into the earth. The soldiers immediately retreated to what they clearly considered a safe distance. Only then did one of them toss him the key to his handcuffs, forcing him to free himself. A sudden unease settled over me. Was he truly as dangerous as they seemed to believe?
No applause came from the stands. Only a few scattered jeers, sharp with contempt.
The fight began, but it was nothing like I had imagined. It was a grotesque farce.
Amos never came near him. Instead, he sent his three soldiers to do his work. Though the match was supposed to be hand-to-hand, without weapons, someone had conveniently scattered piles of stones throughout the arena. They began pelting him mercilessly, blow after blow, until the condemned man collapsed to his knees, his flesh split open, blood streaming down his body.
I knew he was a criminal, yet bitter outrage rose into my throat. Something was wrong. When he could no longer stand, Amos finally strolled over and threw a single punch to his face—a theatrical blow that sent him crashing to the ground for good.
The crowd erupted in triumphant cheers. I felt physically sick. My stomach turned. This was the great warrior everyone admired? This was the worth of the man who was meant to become my husband?
Before long, the city’s elite began filing out of the stands, hurrying toward taverns and lavish halls, eager to drown the rest of the night in wine and pleasure. In the middle of the now-empty arena, the condemned man remained alone, motionless, crumpled in the dirt.
“Aculina, what happens to him now?” I asked, unable to tear my eyes away from that broken body.
“They take him down to the cells,” she replied indifferently, biting into her apple. “Then tomorrow they do it all over again.”
“Tomorrow?” My breath caught. “But... does he even have time to recover by then? Do they care for him that well?”
“If by ‘care for him’ you mean leaving him alone in the dark with no food, no water, and no light. then yes.” She snorted, still chewing. “Though, to be fair, at least no one tortures him again until morning.”
“And how long does that go on?”
“Until he dies, obviously.”
I fell silent, completely horrified. Her words struck me like a sentence of my own. I knew he was a criminal, but there was something suffocating about such cold, calculated cruelty. What made us any better than he was, if we didn’t merely kill him—we turned his agony into a grand spectacle?
“It’s not fair,” I said, my voice trembling with helplessness and anger.
“No, but it’s not our decision,” Aculina replied, taking my hand and tugging me after her. The arena was almost empty. We had to leave.
Then, driven by an impulse I still cannot explain or understand to this day, I slipped my hand into my pocket. I pulled out my apple and, with one swift motion, threw it toward him through the stale evening air. It wasn’t much. I knew perfectly well that a single piece of fruit could never change the course of his miserable fate. It was only an apple. But it was the only thing I had, and the only thing I could give him in that moment.
The apple struck his bloodied, mud-streaked arm. The condemned man flinched, snatched it from the ground, and bit into it immediately with a hunger so savage it was almost animal. I watched his teeth—startlingly white—sink into the crisp flesh of the fruit. In that instant, something strange, warm, and violent surged through my entire body, sinking deep into my pelvis and stealing the air from my lungs. That apple looked so impossibly small, so heartbreakingly fragile, inside his enormous hand.
And then...
He lifted his head.
His eyes found mine through the darkness.
He looked straight at me, and in that single second—one that stretched into an entire lifetime—something inside my reality cracked beyond repair. The world split cleanly in two: a before and an after.
And I knew there was no going back.
