The people had stopped calling her *little lion:* a name that had once softened her, made her small in a way that amused them. Now she was **the Black Comet**, the chantd of it rolling through the stands like raining artillery within the minutes of lead-up to her gracing their presence for the first bout of that day.
The gates groaned open, and when she came striding then into the blaze of battle, it was with all the gravitas and surety of a chaplain going to perform a ceremony. Jagged plates of steel crowned her shoulders, lacquered dark as pitch and veined in crimson such that even at a distance she appeared to be outlined in a trickles ooze of congealed blood. Greaves, polished to a gleam, sharpened the line of her legs. "Armor" custom-built to frame rather than conceal, to accentuate more than to defend, in effect closer to negligee. Wearing sunlight upon her bare arms, her midriff and her thighs, no less comfortably than as she wore the afterthoughts of metal and ogling attentions of her many, countless lusting admirers.
She lifted her hammer overhead in a wild salute and spun it once in her grip before leveling it toward the Demacian line across the sand, chin tipped high, grin sharp.
She spat her greeting without mercy:
"Which one of you bozos has the balls to take a shot at me?"
The boos that answered her fell from the opposite side of the arena stands like thrown stones, but they only further fed the rallying din behind her. Someone screamed her name in rollicking admiration. Nary a month ago she had entered this same pit measuring distance and escape routes, mapping the angles of survival. Now she measured proximity and timing, gauging the exact second a flourish would crest into applause. With guidance from Draven, naturally, she had become a student of the geometry of crowdpleasing and now moved within its breadth with confident fluidity.
A bell rang, commencing the bout. She leapt high—perhaps higher than what was necessary—and landed hard—harder than what regular prudence allowed. She let blades skim dangerously close to her bare torso, the crowd gasping at the sheer audacity of it. Where other warriors armored themselves against fear, she reveled in and was driven by it.
During this, like many bouts before it, a Demacian soldier overextended: believing her cornered; believing her offering of a flash of skin as a suggestion of vulnerability. He lunged straightaway into the snare.
She met him with a single, ringing hammer blow that shattered his shield and sent him sprawling into the sand.
Across the arena, Darius watched. He stood with his arms folded, broad as a fortress gate and alike to one in his statuesque stillness. Not one to share in the revelry of her other comrades or her audience.
And to her, this was painfully so. She felt his gaze even when she pretended not to. After every victory she angled herself just so, bowed with theatrical excess over her fallen opponents and let the ovation crest and crash around her—always cognizant of where he stood, searching always for the smallest fracture in that stonehewn composure. A slightest tightening at the jaw perhaps. A flicker of mirth in the eyes. A sign that something in him had shifted because of her actions.
Nothing like that ever transpired.
So, she turned the dial higher. After victories she drank openly with the soldiers. She climbed onto benches, let rough hands steady her waist as she laughed and tipped her head back. She allowed kisses along her jaw and throat and returned them with an ease that surprised even herself. Sometimes she shoved them away. Sometimes, she did not. The flings were brief, the lovers whenever she took them nameless and gone from her chambers by morning. Leaving behind only the vague aftertaste of wine, alongside a spark of reassurance that she could be wanted—that she was wanted—and also wanted others in turn—and that satisfaction came easily to her, if she only reached for it. This last truth she repeated until it crystallized into something like a credo. In the arena she jeered at her former allies by name, calling the Demacians shining peacocks, and asking whether their armor came polished or if it was really the tears of their dogfaced womenfolk being ravaged by Noxian outriders that gave it that sparkly luster. The Noxians, most of them, ate it up. They loved her laughter, the way she blurred the line between warrior and entertainer, that she had stopped hesitating when it came to simply giving them all what they came for.
Their approval soaked into her skin, intoxicating in its warmth. And yet, each time she left the arena: all flushed and triumphant, half-clad in black steel and dust and sweat…she found Him standing just a little bit farther from the firelight that night. Just a shade deeper in shadow. The distance between her and Darius stretched invisibly even as it was unmistakably clear, widening with every hearkened cheer she drew. She could never seem to impress the one she sought approval from the most.
It became clear to Poppy that it would not be possible, continuing on like this. By allowing herself to be content with simply remaining in his orbit, she could not ever hope to bridge the space between them.
And so, she thought of trying to veer off-course. That she would blaze bright enough so as to be impossible to ignore.
She would burn hotter still.
…to this end, she chose her night well. The servants had cleared the banquet hall an hour ago and the last of the torches were guttered in their sconces, the stone halls of the manor settling into that perfect late-night stillness that comes after all of the festivities have burned out.
Yet one chair had remained conspicuously empty for all of that night.
Poppy…had made no appearance.
By itself, this meant little; she was an unpredictable creature by nature, as of late. But she had also not been seen leaving the grounds all day. Nor training. Nor drinking and carousing with the soldiers throughout the day as she normally would be.
She had simply locked herself away. Confined to her bedchamber.
…so Darius went to her himself.
He stood outside her chamber door a moment before knocking—once, firm enough to carry through the wood.
Silence.
Then another knock.
"If you intend to starve yourself," he called to her evenly through the door, "I will not permit it. Eat of your own volition, or I will force it down your throat."
For another fleeting moment there was no reply.
But then—
A giggle. Soft. Breathless.
Followed by a voice that curled through the wood like smoke:
"You can come in."
Darius frowned.
The latch turned beneath his hand. The door opened.
And he stopped.
Candlelight burned low across the room. The curtains had been drawn, leaving the chamber steeped in warm gold shadow.
Poppy lay across the bed.
Her armor was gone. The dark steel that had become her arena skin was nowhere to be seen. Her hair, usually bound tight for battle, spilled loose over the pillows in pale strands. Silk clung to her in a way that suggested far more than it concealed.
She watched him with a small, deliberate smile.
Darius closed the door behind him.
Softly.
"What," he asked, voice lowered now, "is the meaning of this?"
Poppy shifted. One thigh slid over the other as she laid on her belly, silk and sweat glistening flesh catching the candlelight.
She propped herself on one elbow, eyes glinting.
"Is something wrong?" she asked sweetly.
He did not answer immediately.
His gaze moved over the room once, assessing, controlled.
Poppy shifted again, sitting up and turning her exposed back toward him. "Don't you like what you see?" she said, the ridges of her shoulder blades and the shallow line of her spine glistening with sweat like a thin sheen of oil.
Darius sneered but remained silent.
"Claim me, Lord Darius," she murmured as she glanced back over her shoulder with a coy grin, punctuated by another soft giggle. Then she laid on her back with her knees pointed up swinging her thighs, open and closed, each collision marked with a suctiony clap, her head tilted back and chin tipped toward him with a look of expectation. "Make me yours."
The words lingered in the room like a haze of perfume.
For a moment, nothing moved.
Then: Darius stepped forward. Once. Twice. His boots landed heavy against the stone floor. He stopped at the edge of the bed, close enough now that she could see the tension working along his jaw.
His hand hovered over her forehead, brushing aside a strand of hair.
Just this single touch—
It was enough to make her burn with desire.
"My lord," she whimpered.
…then he withdrew his hand.
"You misunderstand something," he said quietly.
Poppy blinked.
The answer had not been the one she expected.
Her smile faltered—only slightly.
"Do I?" she asked.
"Yes."
He reached out.
For a moment her breath caught—expectation flashing across her face.
But his hand did not touch her.
It closed instead around the haft of the hammer leaning beside the bed.
He lifted it.
The weight of it settled naturally into his grip.
"You ask to be claimed," he said.
His eyes lifted to hers.
"And yet you still carry this."
The words landed with a strange finality.
Poppy frowned.
"What does that have to do with—"
"Everything."
He rested the hammer against the floor, the iron head dull in the candlelight.
"That weapon," he said, "is not an ornament. It is not a trinket from a past life. It is a promise."
Her confusion sharpened.
"I don't—"
"You wield it because you believe it belongs to a hero," he continued calmly. "Because you believe it carries a purpose greater than yourself."
His gaze did not waver.
"And because of that belief, your heart still belongs to another."
For a moment she simply stared at him.
The words struck harder than any blow she had taken in the arena.
"That's ridiculous," she said weakly.
"Is it?"
"Yes!" She pushed herself upright now, the silk straps of her gown falling around her as she sat upright. "That hammer doesn't mean— it's just— it's mine, I use it because it's useful, because it works—"
Darius watched her without interruption.
The silence stretched.
Then something shifted in her expression.
Only a thought. But a horrible one.
Slowly, she turned to look at the hammer in his hand.
"The hammer…" she murmured.
Her brow furrowed.
Then her eyes widened.
"The hammer."
She looked back up at him, something sharp and wounded flickering there.
"Of course." The words came out hollow at first. Then anger began to creep into them: "Was this your plan all along? Or someone else's? To get to the hammer?"
Darius said nothing.
Her voice rose. "To make me—"
She stopped.
The thought would not pass her lips.
Her fingers curled against the bedsheets.
"No," she said quickly. "No. I would never."
But the idea had already taken root.
The hammer.
Always the hammer.
She looked back at him, suspicion flaring now.
"You knew," she whispered. "You knew what I was going through this whole time. What you were putting me through. What I'm becoming…"
Silence again.
Then Darius spoke—
"Yes."
The word dropped into the room like a stone into deep water.
Poppy's breath caught. "You…"
"I had a servant place the books," he said. "Those scandalous accounts you discovered in the library, so that you would find them."
Poppy stared at him. "This was all planned."
"Yes."
Her mind reeled.
"You manipulated me."
"Yes. I did." The calmness of it only made the admission cut sharper.
Rage surged up through her chest.
"All of this— the arena, the soldiers, the— the—" She looked down and saw that her hands were trembling. "You did this to me! You made me a…plaything!"
Darius's expression did not change.
"I revealed what was already waking in you."
"That's not what you've been thinking from the start!"
"No," he agreed. "It is not."
His continual quiet agreement disarmed her more than any denial would have.
"You really think…this is helping me?"
"In part."
Her laugh broke out—sharp, broken.
"You're…despicable! You're sick."
"Perhaps. But nothing I told you was a lie." His voice softened slightly. "What I have said, my opinion of you, has never been a lie."
She glared at him, holding back an urge to strike. Or kiss him. Or both.
Instead she said nothing.
The hammer between them loomed larger than ever as the room seemed to twist around Poppy, the candles wavering in their sconces as though the air itself was in a preternatural flux. It rested upright between them, where Darius had set it, its iron head drinking in the low gold light.
She looked from it to him and back again, her expression tightening with each pass. Disbelief, and raw hurt, curdling slowly into fury.
"You arrogant—" She slid off the bed in one furious motion, silk trailing behind her like torn banners. "You planted those books, the dresses, you nudged and pulled me along, you let me clean your armor and you stood there watching while I—while I—"
Her hands lifted helplessly, grasping for the shape of her own humiliation.
"You let me make a fool of myself!"
"You chose your actions," he said evenly.
"Oh don't you dare." She rounded on him, eyes blazing now. "Don't you dare pretend this was all my idea. You were there at every step. Watching. Pulling the strings."
Her gaze dropped to the hammer again.
"And all the while you knew." The word came out like a wound. "Knew that this—" she gestured violently toward the hammer "—would keep you safe. Because as long as I still carried it, you could stand there pretending this was bigger than me, than you. That it was all part of the game."
Darius's expression remained unchanged, though she thought she glimpsed something faint in his eyes—or maybe it was a trick of the light.
"I never treated this like a game."
That only made her angrier.
"Oh no, of course not." Her laugh was sharp enough to cut glass. "You were very honest, weren't you? That's what you keep saying. Very noble of you." She began to pace now, the small room barely containing the storm she had become. "You know what the worst part is?" she snapped, turning on him again. "For a while I thought—"
She stopped herself, jaw tightening.
Darius waited.
Her fists clenched at her sides.
"I thought maybe you actually respected me."
"I do."
"Then why—"
She broke off with a sound somewhere between a growl and a laugh.
"Why what?" he asked.
"Why drag me through this?" she demanded. "Why make me doubt everything I thought I knew about myself? Just to prove some point about destiny, or loyalty, or whatever grand philosophy you've convinced yourself this is about?"
"Because," he said quietly, "the doubt was already there."
That did it.
The nearest object—a goblet left on the bedside table—Poppy grabbed and sent flying across the room. It struck the far wall with a dull crack, spilling dark wine across the stone like a splatter of blood.
"Stop doing that!" she shouted.
"Doing what?"
"Acting like you know me!" The words tore out of her with more force than she intended.
Her chest rose and fell with quick, uneven breaths. "You think because you kept me in a cage for a few months that you know me better than I do?" she continued. "You think you can just poke and prod at my life like it's some puzzle box to solve?"
"I think," Darius said calmly, "that you are angry I didn't return your affections."
Her laugh came out ragged. "Angry?"
"Yes."
She looked at him again, rearing her arm back as though she might strike him then and there. Instead she turned away abruptly, dragging both hands through her loose hair.
"This is so wrong," she muttered. "You're insane."
Darius said nothing as she turned away.
The silence stretched again—heavy, immutable. For the last time.
Poppy was mid-sob when she glanced just as he was reaching for the door. "That's it?" she demanded, incredulous. "You're just going to walk out after—after all that?"
He paused with his hand on the latch. "You asked a question," he said without turning. "I answered it."
"There wasn't an answer!"
"I have given you all that I have to give."
Her mouth opened, another protest rising—
But he had already pulled the door open.
For the briefest moment he stood there in the dim corridor light, his broad shoulders filling the frame the way she'd admired countless times before.
Then he spoke again, voice unstirred as ever:
"You should eat something."
The practical cruelty of it left her speechless.
"I will have the maid bring you a tray."
Then he stepped into the corridor and closed the door behind him.
The latch clicked.
And Poppy was alone.