The transformation in the crowd was almost laughable in its predictability. Where moments ago the air had been alive with raucous cheers and good-natured jeering, now a heavy silence pressed down upon the arena like a burial shroud.
The same nobles who had been howling with laughter as runners face-planted in the sand now sat in stiff-backed solemnity, their faces carefully arranged into expressions of grave stoicism.
Alpheo watched them from the royal pavilion, his fingers steepled before his lips to hide the curl of his mouth.
How quickly they shifted masks - from revelers to pious spectators, as if they weren't all secretly salivating at the prospect of violence.
He could see it in the white-knuckled grips on the railings, in the way eyes darted hungrily toward the closed gates where the combatants waited, in the barely suppressed tremors of excitement running through the crowd like a current at the notion that high noble's blood would be spilt.
