All These Dying Things

Part 3

The carriage drove idly by on the crooked paths, the steady beat of the horses trot, the only thing Clarke chose to focus on, instead of the gushing giggles of the crowd outside.  Her father sat loosely next to her, waving and smiling, all teeth, at the crowds, she knew, enjoying the adoration they held for him.

She almost wanted to roll her eyes, and when she caught herself wanting this, reigned back, trying to regain the image of the perfect princess her father expected her to be. Especially, when in public.

Except, prefect princesses did not sneak away from their fathers, did not fake ill health in order to deceive them, and they most certainly were not corned in dark alleys, alleys where Apollo’s horses did not rule supreme, where the darkness crept in and concealed you away from the glittering light, only just long enough, for you to commit the darkest of deeds, so sinful and so-

and she was off again, thinking about that rotten gladiator.

She simply refused to call him by his name.

Even if it, had maybe, been her insistence to call him by his name in the first place, she refused anyway.

And she was most definitely not thinking about the way he’d held her up against that wall, the warmth of his hands somehow managing to diminish the cold of the stone wall behind her, the way his dark eyes had fixed her in place with a different kind of look to the first one he’d ever given her. The one he’d given her, when he actually knew her identity, that was.

Her slight fascination with the gladiator unsettled her. She was a princess, the princess of Rome, and the daughter of the great emperor Griffin. It was not the correct thing to do, to let her mind dance away with the nymphs, swirl and leap and twist with the thoughts of the-

the common as her father would say.

To occupy herself, she slid a quick, calculating glance to her father. He had insisted, now that he saw Clarke to be in better health, that she accompany him to the coliseum today. To an outsider of the family, no meaning would be seen behind the words of his actions of the day, as Clarke was usually on his arm, her mother too faint hearted to see such carnage, (she wasn’t really, but the queen really was, quite an excellent liar) but Clarke knew better. However distant and cold their relationship had become, he was still her father, and Clarke had saw the gleam in his eyes, the tiny little smile, that tugged impatiently at his lips, as though it wanted to escape, and fold out fully and truly over his lips.

Oh the emperor had a scheme forming.

And it was coming nicely together.

And something told Clarke, had it been her father’s unusually smirking mood, or the way her mother had held her to her tightly before she’d left, whispering the words ‘I love you’ over and over again as if they were a lifeline to cling to, that this scheme involved her.

All of her.

And truthfully, she was just a tiny bit terrified.

.              .                .

The crowds’ roars rise as the man’s head is ripped away from his body, blood and guts and gore settling the prowling beasts the Clarke thinks may roam inside them. She should be disgusted, she is truly repulsed at the sight of the severed head, and she can feel the gag of vomit at the back of her throat, but still her gaze drifts to him. Him, cradling the head between his arms like a child.

She has no schoolgirl deceptions about him. She knows exactly what he is, and she knows he is a murder. But by default, does this make him a monster? She finds it a most troubling thought, a murder blinking though the eyes of a monster. Entwined, for an eternity.