TBATE: Let The Truth Be Known {Completed}

Chapter 1: A Parting Gift

There was movement in the high box—one of the only untouched spaces in the entire coliseum—and my attention settled there. 

A huge man with ornamented horns thrusting forward from the sides of his head moved into the dust-filled light. He was wearing a loose-fitting robe and a hungry smile. Though suppressed, his aura was heavy enough to bend the heads and shoulders of every Alacryan in the stadium. This was a Sovereign, Kiros Vritra of Vechor. 

He was underwhelming, compared to the likes of Aldir, Kordri, and Lord Indrath. 

I kept my eyes just slightly averted, not downcast or in a bow like the tens of thousands of Alacryans around me, but I didn't meet his eyes. 

The slow, resounding clap that came from the high box caught me by surprise. 

Kiros was applauding. His smile widened to a grin as his hands came together faster and faster. A confused and mistimed smattering of applause followed from the audience. 

"Amazing!" Kiros said, his voice projecting effortlessly through the coliseum and silencing the weak applause. "A beautiful display of power. Such unexpected death! And delivered with—" 

A pearlescent oval opened over the arena floor, twenty feet in front of the high box. 

Kiros frowned. 

Two figures stepped through. 

The first was someone I had never seen in person before, but I knew him instantly, and the mere sight of him was enough to sober me from my fatigue. 

Agrona's horns splayed out from his head like an elk's, the dozens of sharp black points ornamented with chains and rings. He had strong, sharp features that reminded me uncomfortably of Sylvie. 

The second, I was less prepared for. 

Tessia looked exactly as she had when I'd last seen her, speaking to her people from a balcony in Elenoir. She wore form-fitting battlerobes, similar to the dress worn by Seris, except the individual "scales" were emerald green and shaped like little leaves. The battlerobes left her arms bare, showing off the faintly glowing runes I'd noticed in my vision.

Although she looked the same—gunmetal gray hair draped down her back and over her shoulders, braids tucked behind her pointed ears, shining teal eyes—she was immediately and unequivocally not Tessia. 

Tessia... 

Tessia was a princess. She'd grown up in the royal palace in Zestier, been tutored in the manners of customs of elven, dwarven, and human nobility. That grace extended to the way she held herself, the resting expression of her face, the cadence of her walk... 

But all that was gone now. 

Instead, this person masquerading as my oldest friend moved with aggressive confidence—not the Cecilia of my youth, but not far removed from the young woman I had battled in the King's Tournament. Whatever harm that experience had done to her mentally, clearly it had carried through into this life, no doubt fostered by Agrona, just as Nico's misplaced rage had been. 

Logically, I understood what I was looking at. 

But the cold, distrustful look Cecilia gave me from Tessia's eyes still drove a knife through my chest.

Agrona's appearance wasn't unexpected, necessarily, but Tessia—Cecilia... 

I had buried her too deep, labeled her a problem that could only be resolved in the future when I'd had more time to consider... 

Could Tessia even be saved? Was she still in there, somewhere? And if she could...was protecting her more important than depriving Agrona of the Legacy?