Page 95 of Trial of Bronze and Blood
Dru crosses her arms. “I suppose. What about the riddles themselves? Any idea what they might be?”
He takes a bite of his soft-boiled egg. “Both gamemasters have been tasked with coming up with the riddles themselves, some seen in past trials, others completely new.”
She grabs an orange from the bowl and digs a short nail into the peel. “Any chance we can get a copy of that list?”
“What of the map your father told me about?” Marcus interjects. “The one of the maze partially drawn by some the royal proxies.”
Dru and Cato share a look he can’t decipher.What’s going on with them today?
She swallows a slice of orange. “Isn’t that cheating?”
Marcus laughs. “Says the woman who just asked for a list of the riddles.”
Dru pauses. “Fair enough.”
“The map, if it even exists, is worthless,” Cato says with finality, and Marcus doesn’t push the subject. When Cato’s father told him of it, it sounded like the ravings of a man losing his mind anyway.
They spend the next part of the morning trying to come up with possible riddles. But Marcus finds himself too distracted to concentrate. Watching Dru with Cato, he sees how much she cares about what happens to him, to Marcus. Even the other participants. But not herself.
The Dru he knew, the one he trained, wasn’t selfish. But neither was she altruistic, like this Dru has so far proved to be. She kills people who deserve it with little remorse, but she treats everyone else as if their lives matter more than hers.
Regardless, she’s become the woman he always knew she could be. Yet she’s still different in so many ways. And despite these differences—or perhaps because of them—he finds himself falling for her more and more each day. It’s not something he wants to think about as often as he does, but he can’t help himself.
Seeing her in the arena yesterday, being the master of her own body, taking what she learned from him and becoming someone tobe reckoned with… It’s no wonder she’s on his mind more than ever before.
When she’s not looking, he studies the gentle slope of her nose, the curve of her lips, and the long length of her dark eyelashes. The hard muscles of her arms and legs, too, present a distraction for him. When he knew her over six years ago, she hadn’t been training long enough to build them up yet. Now she’s an unstoppable force, smart, cunning—and willing to do whatever it takes.
The bard walks in through the palace doors then, bringing down the mood of the entire room. Marcus diverts his attention away from her.
The king looks over from his conversation with Dru and smiles warmly, clapping his hands.Cato, apparently, is more than happy to see him.
“Jove! What news do you have for me?”
“I honestly keep forgetting his name,” Dru murmurs to Marcus.
He cracks a grin. “Me too.”
“Not as much as I’d like,” the bard admits, placing his lute carelessly on the table. “Ambitus and Blaise haven’t been in the sharing mood. But I overheard a few of the more affluent Phaedrans lamenting this morning about how they wagered rather large bets on the man who tried to murder you yesterday.”
“That’s old news,” Marcus tells him, curious how the bard came upon the information Val only just relayed to him this morning.Perhaps heisdecent at spying.
Cato glares at Marcus. “Well, it’s new to me.”
The bard smiles brightly. “They were told he was a sure thing. That he was properly motivated to do all he could to take your life.”
“As we suspected,” Cato notes, gesturing for the bard to continue. “Anything else worthy of note?”
He places both hands on the table, glancing between them. Marcus shuts his eyes for a moment to stop them from rolling.He knows he has a secret worth hearing.
“This morning, I overheard a ship captain in one of the tabernaes talking about the difficulty of feeding a lion on a ship voyage.”
“What were you doing at a tabernae so early in the morning?” Marcus asks, right as Dru practically yells, “A lion!”
“You think there might be alionin the maze?” Dru asks.
“Or the final gladiator trial,” Cato supplies.
Nowthathe hasn’t heard. The bard might be worth keeping around after all.
