Origen left Thalia in the sand, making his way to his wife. Neri didn’t lift her head, keeping her face to the ground until he touched her chin with mocking gentleness. He lifted her face until she blinked up at him blankly, as if she’d already withered and died.
As if watching the butchering of my father’s men had killed what remained of her soul, that Origen himself hadn’t beaten out of her years prior.
Thalia’s father’s fist struck her mother across the cheek. Blood sprayed from her lip, staining the sand as she fell to her side. ‘Mommy!’ Thalia screamed, lunging forward as if she might try to intervene.
I pushed myself from my knees to stand, desperate to keep Thalia from interfering. There was no telling what her father would do if she got in the way, no reason to believe he would treat his daughter with any semblance of kindness, considering what she would see in a few moments.
She shouldn’t have been here at all. Only men were allowed inside ο λάκκος, except for the rare occasion where a woman’s infraction was severe enough to require more than one of the six families. My father being foolish enough to fuck Karras’ wife qualified.
Rough hands snatched the rope at my wrist, wrenching me back to the sand. Thalia’s brother, Jeno, stepped off the spot where he’d lurked by the wall, wrapping his arms around Thalia, restraining his sister as he watched his father strike his mother over and over until little remained of what had once been a beautiful face.
‘Daddy, stop!’ Thalia screamed, the shrillness of her voice echoing off the walls of the pit. The other families watched without a trace of emotion on their faces, no concern for the fact that they’d only just years ago moved to protect a child from her abusive father. My own father’s mistake had changed the tides of power, shifting it out from under me before I was old enough to shield Thalia from the consequences.
With her mother gone, what would my father’s punishment be?
‘Make him stop!’ Thalia snarled, turning in Jeno’s arms to push at his chest.
He shushed her, his voice oddly gentle. I barely heard it over their father’s savage roar as he stood up from his wife’s limp body. Her lungs filled with air in a ragged breath as she turned to stare at her daughter. ‘Close your eyes, Thalia,’ she murmured, using all the strength she had to warn her daughter of what was coming.
Origen grasped one of the axes hanging on the wall, hefting the heavy weapon and moving back toward Neri’s half-dead body where she lay in the sand. I lunged again, struggling against the hands holding me still. A fist connected with the side of my face, splitting the wound on my cheekbone open further and sending me stumbling forward until sand grated against my other cheek. Thalia’s struggles increased, tears streaming down her face as she watched her father stare coldly down at her mother . ‘No!’ she screamed.
‘Close your eyes, λουλούδι μου,’ I said, and Thalia’s tear-filled eyes found mine, her face twisting in horror. She was too young to understand, but just old enough to know what was coming.
She’d never see her mother again, and her final memory of her would be one filled with the shadows of blood in her mind.
Her lip trembled as she stared at me, her eyes slowly fluttering closed so she wouldn’t have to witness the death of the only person she loved. Jeno moved to step away, to drag her further from the carnage of her mother’s death, but Origen didn’t bother to wait.
He swung the axe down. The sound of the freshly sharpened blade slicing through flesh echoed through the pit as it embedded in the sand beneath Neri’s body.
Thalia whimpered as blood splashed onto her bare legs, the liquid trickling down over the skin of her shins. Jeno swayed her back and forth lightly, a rare moment of affection that I’d never seen in all the times I’d watched him belittle or ignore his baby sister. Her eyes stayed squeezed closed, waiting for the order from me. I knew without a doubt that Thalia wouldn’t open her eyes until I told her it was okay.
Perhaps her mother wasn’t the only person she loved after all. Perhaps she loved me in the way a girl loved her protector.
Two of Origen’s men stepped forward, grabbing Neri’s corpse by the ankles and dragging her through the sand as the bodies of our men were disposed of in the same way.
They’d be brought to το νεκροταφείο: the graveyard where those who died in the arena were left to rot.
There would be no tombstone. There would be no place to mourn.
Just countless bodies decaying in the catacombs beneath the building.
Only when Neri’s body was dropped through the hole at the edge of the pit and added to the pile of dead did I speak to Thalia. ‘It’s okay now, Thalia,’ I murmured, watching as the four other heads of family lined up at the top of the pit. Origen hiked the axe up onto his shoulder, waiting for permission to kill my father for his betrayal of what all the families held dear.
Marriage was sacred. Above all else.
‘Eugene Regas, you have been accused of betraying our ideals and taking another man’s wife to your bed. What do you have to say to the accusations?’ the head of the Hasapis family said, staring my father down.
‘Well technically I didn’t take her to a bed at all. We never made it that far,’ my father sniped like the idiot he was.
Theodore Hasapis ground his teeth, glaring at him. ‘But you admit to defiling her marriage?’
‘I don’t think you’d have permitted my men to be slaughtered if you thought otherwise.’
‘Then you leave us no choice. We have determined that the Regas family will be exiled from Philadelphia. We care not where you go, but you are henceforth banished from the families,’ Theodore declared/ordered.
Thalia’s father dropped the axe to the sand, his jaw clenching as he undoubtedly wanted to argue against the sentence.
My father’s death would have been preferable for all involved, leaving me to run the Regas family with him gone. Thalia would have remained protected. But with me banished from the city….
‘We are not all to blame for the actions of one fool. Would you truly punish an entire bloodline for the sins of one?’ I asked. My father turned his shocked expression toward me, but there was only one thought racing through my mind.
Protecting Thalia. No matter the cost.
‘A rotten apple creates rotten seeds, and we cannot allow the disease of the Regas family to spread. You will leave the city immediately, and all contracts and business deals will be severed.’
Thalia sobbed in her brother’s grasp as my father and what remained of his men were hauled to their feet. The man at my back tried to lift me, but I hunkered down and made my body as heavy as I possibly could.
I wouldn’t leave her; not knowing that she’d have no one to defend her against Origen.
Thalia screamed out as her father’s man drew a knife and pressed it to my throat. I swallowed against it, holding her eyes with mine and silently willing her to stay still. ‘Please no,’ she begged, shoving at her brother’s arms until her father approached the two of them. “You can’t!” He took Thalia out of Jeno’s grasp, twisting her arm behind her back until she cried out in pain.
‘Get up, boy,’ Origen ordered. ‘We both know you’re leaving the city one way or another.’
‘No,’ I spat, not daring to take my eyes off his. I might not have been big enough to truly fight for her, not compared to the men standing around and the sentries waiting to take me away from her, but if nothing else, Thalia would know that I fought to stay with her. She’d know I’d cared enough to protect her with my own life.
‘Get him out of my sight,’ Theodore said, waving a hand. Another man came up to me as the original sheathed his knife, his fist colliding with my face and assaulting me with a wave of pain. Another followed immediately, the pain inside my skull thundering as the blows kept coming.
Unconsciousness crept in alongside the sound of Thalia’s screams. With the final realization of just how gravely I’d failed her, blackness consumed me, drawing me to a place where nothing hurt.
Only my heart.
