Having overcome the disturbing events triggered by the Regent and Kastor, Damen and Laurent are finally crowned in their realms.
But a new enemy seems to be stalking the two lovers. On Laurent's 22nd birthday, strange events occur.
Is the Regent rea...
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The arena consisted of a central part of an amphitheater covered with sand, where fights between gladiators and wild animals took place. In it, blood, sweat, tears, and dust mixed with the dirty ground to form a pulp, as bodies had to be torn to death.
The arena was a miniature of the closed, circular space that surrounded every human being left to his fate and his most primitive state. This was nature. It was Naturalism. The natural in raw flesh and brutal cuts.
Similar to the arenas were the rings of Vere's pets, where, surrounded by powerful men, boys with limbs still uncoordinated and their arousal in a brutalized state, fought for supremacy and rape.
More to satisfy than to be satisfied. To mount each other, surrounded by shouting or booing. It was nature that was in the service of perversity. It was lust overtaken by sadism and by itself. For something devastating that is in every human being. And about which no one wants to think about it, for fear of understanding it.
There were also wars in which people since ancient times, incorporating death itself and deciding their time, reaped existence with a brandished sword.
Like the war in which Damianos of Akielos had fatally struck Auguste of Vere. A fair fight, but unfair as all wars in which people exploit each other. A prince was falling on his knees, looking up at the sun for the last time, missing the world the moment he left it.
And finally, there were the court arenas of Vere, which Damen had already visited during his time as a slave and in which Laurent had grown up. Politics was also an arena.
Horses, fortresses, entire cities, crops, lives, and soldiers could be pulverized or kept alive for an entire decade. Everyone leaned over the shoulders of their rulers, who drank wine and determined the future with a swipe of their finger or head.
Will we live or perish, Your Majesty? - they would ask with fear in their bloodshot eyes.
In the political arena, the sword stroke and the flattering endearments were done with words. The looks were complicit or verbose.
All arenas consisted of the dance of destruction that swirled life around until it was dizzy. And empty. But politics was a circus where people fought each other with their minds. And though it, therefore, seemed like a more pleasant space, it was cruel.
One wrong word and an entire country could perish or die in agony. Politics was the sophistication of brutality. A way to beautify the dust, blood, sweat, and tears of the arena with mats of ripe flowers. As people do with the graves.
Damen and Laurent took their positions in the Great Hall and listened to the congratulatory sounds of the four courts that occupied Arles.
