Chapter XXV #2
She bolted to comply—only for Berit’s sake.
“Can she not go to her room? Jovan will not like two of them here. It makes us look weak. Berit is not weak. She does not need to stay here.” The words tumbled in a waterfall of panic, and she hated that they made her sound selfish.
Because was she truly concerned for Berit, or herself?
Old habits were like seasoned warriors. Hard to kill.
Felix twisted sideways through the door and angled for a bed next to Ilona, who sat up straighter when she saw them. “I can care for her better here. She’ll be fine with me.”
“What happened?” Ilona asked.
“Is it Tiber fever?” Adel had had fevers as a child, remembered them making her sluggish and heavy.
All she’d needed was to rest for a day or two.
A wave of homesickness swept over her at the thought, dredging up an old memory of her aipei’s soft voice warbling an off-key lullaby as she sat by Adel’s bed.
Why did the memories of good things gone hurt worse than the pain of the present?
If the ludus was a place for tears, she might have allowed them now.
But it wasn’t. And she swallowed them back.
“It’s not Tiber fever. Wrong time of year.” Felix bent and released Berit onto the bed, ensuring a basin sat nearby before he turned to Adel with a searching look. “But you know that, don’t you?”
“I . . .” She did know. Now. Her chin dipped slightly. So, he’d been right about the opium, but that didn’t mean—
He lifted a hand, beckoning her closer. An odd uncertainty fidgeted around his shoulders.
“What do you want?”
He lowered his voice. “We need to speak about Ilona.”
Her gaze went to Ilona, who was watching them with wide eyes even if she couldn’t hear them. “What about her?”
Felix swallowed. “She’s going to die.”
The breath left Adel’s lungs in a burst, as if he’d knocked it from her with his fists instead of his words. Her lips formed the silent word die? Ilona didn’t have the look of one about to die.
“That isn’t possible.”
His fingers curved around her arm as he turned her toward the clinic. She shook his hand off. “Look at her. She’s sitting up. She’s fine. What sort of medicus are you?”
“I want to help her—”
“Then do it!”
“I . . . I need you.” He shifted. “She wants your consent.”
Consent? “For what? What are you not telling me?”
“You will not believe me.”
“Likely not.”
He sighed and crossed his arms, drilling her with a hard look. “Have I ever lied to you? Tried to take advantage of you?”
She crossed her arms back at him. “You made the guards hold me down last night.”
“So I could put salve on your wounds without you pulling a knife on me.”
He had a point.
“Fine. Tell me.”
“You’ll listen?”
She nodded. She would hear the words he said, at least. Whether or not she would believe them would be another matter.
“Ilona will recover, but not with enough time to train before the games.”
Adel searched his face. What was he saying? “You said she was going to die, and now you say she will recover?”
He swallowed. “She is no longer an asset to the ludus. And if she cannot fight . . .”
“Jovan will use her as a reward?” The realization soured her stomach. Ilona would die. Just in spirit instead of in body.
“No.” Felix drew in a breath. “I have orders to kill her.”
“Why would Jovan make you do that?” The words left Adel’s lips on the barest of whispers. Her eyes shifted back and forth between his, as if reading everything he did not say, and then her throat bobbed in realization.
“Wulfula was telling the truth.” She lifted a hand and brushed a wisp of hair out of her eyes.
“He said the Victory Games were going to be mortal combat and I did not believe him. I told the other women that he was wrong, that Jovan would never risk our lives like that . . .” She sucked in two deep breaths that seemed to do little to calm the pulse he could see pounding in her neck.
“He wants her dead now because she will not win her match.”
Her world was shattering before his eyes, and he wished more than anything that he could hold it together for her. And yet, sometimes the best thing for another was earth-shattering truth.
“Mortal combat at the games is not Jovan’s decision,” he offered. A paltry comfort when it would not change anything. Jovan had still ordered the death of her friend.
“What do you need me for?”
He could see the questions and confusion churning in her face.
“I . . . can get her out of here,” he whispered. His words seemed to register in her expression with the same clarity as Greek. “But she will not go unless you allow her to.”
“Go?” She stopped. “What will you do with her?”
“Bring her to friends who will watch over her until she is well enough to go home.”
“You will bring her home?” The last word broke on her tongue.
Felix lowered his chin in a nod.
“Why?”
“Because it is the right thing to do.”
Uncertainty and desperation warred in her expression. The desire to trust him overpowered by her guarded heart.
“I have friends, friends who are liberators.” He spoke the last word on the back of a breath, mouthed more than spoken. “And we can save her from this place.”
“Liberators?” she repeated in a murmur, as if questioning that such a thing could exist.
He gave a nod and remained silent, letting her take it in before adding more pieces. About the Gaul.
She blinked at his revelation. “He wasn’t dead?”
“No.”
Adel searched his eyes as if for a fissure. Something that would betray his unbelievable confession. Make him a liar. She shook her head and turned away, raking her fingers into her hair.
“Why would you do this? Why risk everything for . . . for us?” she murmured. “It makes no sense to me.”
“Not everyone wants to take advantage—”
She spun back. “How do I know that? Can you prove to me that you are what you say? I have been lied to more times than I care to count. So you must understand why I will not blindly trust you now.”
He let out a slow breath and lowered his voice.
“I have not lied to you. Not once. And if I was trying to steal Ilona for my own purposes, I certainly would not have risked telling you. But murder is not an option for me, so you can ease her mind about abandoning you and the others and let her go home in peace, or she will go home wracked with guilt. Either way she’s leaving.
” He should have told her more, explained about Telemachus, and Alaric’s threat to the city, but it was enough that she brushed past him and went to Ilona.
He waited near the door while they spoke in low tones.
When he looked up, Adel was marching toward him like a warrior to battle, her face set and determined.
He was glad he would never have to face her in an arena.
“Fine,” she hissed, eyes blazing as she stopped toe to toe with him. Her voice dropped to a crackling whisper. “But if you’re lying to me—”
“You’ll hurt me in violent ways, I know,” he cut her off with a slight smile. “I would expect nothing less from you.”
Adel stared at him, bottom lip rolling between her teeth in a look of uncharacteristic uncertainty that sent a rush of longing through him to be the one she could rely on and trust.
She allowed a slight nod. “As long as you’re aware of that.”
The wind roared through the darkened courtyard below, snapping at the blanket Adel had tied to the bars over her window to break the draft.
She paced, as much in agitation as to keep warm.
Were the walls closing in? Could she still take the same number of steps to get from one side to the other?
Any moment there would be an uproar. An alarm sounding outside.
She tugged at the blanket and peered down into the courtyard. Nothing. Silence.
If she’d had any doubts about Felix’s claims regarding Ignacio’s draughts, the way the other gladiatrices started coming down with Berit’s symptoms throughout the day had put them to rest. Dreda and the Hildas had demanded the potion, and when Felix refused, they’d gone to Ignacio instead.
They’d trained that afternoon better than they ever had—or perhaps it was she who’d grown worse as a headache bloomed behind her eyes.
It chafed that Felix was right. That Jovan, her trainers, the ludus .
. . They only cared for her needs because of what she gave in return.
The knowledge raced inside her now like a wild thing, trapped.
Circling, clawing at the walls of her mind. But what could be done about it?
She tugged the cover back over the window, her tiny lamp guttering in the frosty breeze.
She pushed it closer to the cracked cup where the little seedling hung its limp head.
It was too cold. Too dry. The thing was fragile and could not survive in a place like this.
She’d carefully tended and watered it, willed it to live, and yet it seemed to only wilt further.
Don’t give up.
“It is not so bad here,” she whispered to the seedling like she might encourage the other women.
As if, with enough inspiration, the plant might find the will to live along with her.
Even so, her voice rasped in a tone more desperate to believe than assure.
The stem drooped under the tender brush of her finger.
They do not love you.
Familiar panic welled in her chest and she tried to suppress it.
The walls were closing in. She could feel it.
Pressing tighter, squeezing the air from her lungs.
Once, when she was a child, several village boys had rolled her into an old blanket and sat on it, laughing as she screamed and wriggled to get free.
The same sort of terror threatened to overtake her now.
Adel set the plant aside and pressed her face to the bars of the window once more, gulping air and staring at the blackened sky.
This could not be happening again. She’d armored herself against being manipulated and betrayed.
She’d fought her way to being the best gladiatrix, imagining, hoping, trusting that gaining something by her own merit would bring the security and independence she’d craved.
But how could it be just one more manipulation, one more betrayal?
Felix might be telling the truth about freeing the Gaul and rescuing Ilona, but the bars pressing solidly against her face told a truth of their own.
One she had tried so hard to ignore and now could not.
She was a prisoner. And there was no way out.
No way home. She’d made her choices over and again, each one separating her another step further from her family.
Even if she wanted to crawl back to her atta, beg his forgiveness, the Ludus Gallicus would never let her leave.
And now there would be mortal combat matches.
Could she walk out onto the arena sand and take the life of her opponent to save her own?
Could she sleep with blood on her hands?
Live with the knowledge of it? The memory?
And yet, the alternative was death, and she could not welcome that either.
She shifted, her hip bumping the table and rattling the object beside the seedling and lamp.
Her hand dropped from the bars, fingers closing around the jar full of seeds.
Her shoulders deflated with a shuddering breath.
It was a fine jar, lidded and glazed in red.
Not unlike the jars in the funerary hall.
It had been a gift, though she couldn’t recall from whom.
She’d been given many gifts and sold them all first chance she got.
Had she been able to keep more than a fraction of the profits, she’d have been able to buy her freedom four times over.
But the ludus did not give up its gladiators easily.
So this, this she had kept. It was worth nothing more than the smallest copper coin, at least by Jovan’s resale prices.
She pried the lid free and tipped the contents of the jar into her palm.
A crackling jumble of mottled seeds spilled out.
Surreptitiously collected from gardens, from window boxes hanging in the street, from weeds that bloomed in the cracks of the portico and the sand at the edges of the training ring.
She’d dropped them into the jar by singles and by dozens, telling herself that she’d plant them one day, when she had a room of her own.
And she’d tried, but even a room of her own hadn’t felt like home enough to plant more than one tiny seedling.
Perhaps she should have tried harder. Planted more.
Yet deep down she knew why she hadn’t. No matter how many seeds she planted, no matter how deep the roots went, this place would never be home.
Her nose burned, signaling the rise of a lump in her throat. She struggled to swallow it back.
“I want to go home.”
Five cracked words could dredge up more pain than a trainer on a bad day, and she welcomed it.
Let it roll over her and rush from her eyes.
Because the truth was, she was a prisoner in the Ludus Gallicus, trying to convince herself she loved her life when all she truly wanted was her aipei’s arms wrapped around her, her atta’s presence large and secure.
A place where she could breathe and feel safe.
The blanket flapped and movement in the courtyard below drew her attention. She leaned forward, pressing her face to the bars once more, the cold iron burning her skin. There it was again. A flash of white. The glow of a lantern. Her pulse began to pound.
Several men stepped into the open space between two portico columns, a linen-wrapped bundle swaying between them, glowing in the lantern light like a body-shaped beacon.
Felix carried the lantern ahead of the body-bearers, the light casting him in gold.
A wave of helplessness threatened to capsize Adel, hold her under.
She could do nothing but watch as he led Ilona’s undead body to the gate.
Was he one more manipulation? One more betrayal waiting to happen?
Her heart went solid in her chest, banging painfully against her ribs.
“Let it not be so. For Ilona’s sake, let it not be so. God, go with her, before her, all around. Bring her home.” The words tumbled from her lips, the first true prayer she’d uttered in months.
She dumped the seeds back into the jar and corked the lid, pressing it against her chest like a poor shield.
A blade of pain rammed through her anyway, bringing a wave of homesickness with it.
She should dump the seeds into the waste pot in the corner.
Let go of this painful hope. It was best if she accepted the truth.
That she would never leave this place. That even if she did, her family would never welcome her home.
And yet, she clung to the jar, and wept.