I should have expected that the inside of the grand theater would reek of wealth and desperation in equal measure.
It was the sort of building that seemed to have been constructed not out of stone, wood, or any other honest material, but out of ego pressed into marble and smugness poured into gilded molding.
Every column screamed excess. Every chandelier hung like a jeweled threat, daring the ceiling to collapse under the weight of its arrogance. I half expected the velvet curtains to start speaking, to recite poetry about how expensive they were, to demand applause simply for existing.
We were herded in with the rest of the competitors and their sponsors, moving like cattle dressed in stolen finery. The knight still carried Salem in his arms, and though the man was bleeding internally in ways only the knight could possibly know, his lips were still faintly parted, breathing in that fragile rhythm of someone straddling the line between living and corpsehood.
