Chapter XXVIII
XXVIII
“AGAIN. STRIKE. STRIKE. STRIKE.”
The crack of rudes against wooden training posts answered each command.
Breath clouded the chill air even as sweat traced her hairline.
Adel faced Tilla, the battered palus between them as they alternated strikes on either side.
Mindless work. Meant to strengthen their arms, build endurance. But it left her mind free to wander.
Felix had given her instructions for weaning herself and the other women off Ignacio’s potions.
He’d tried to forbid Ignacio from bringing them at all, but the magister only waited until Felix was gone before making his nightly rounds.
Adel and two of the others had been swallowing some and spitting out the rest. Her limbs felt heavier than normal and her head ached.
But she’d not vomited nor fallen into delusional screaming, like Berit had before Felix had discovered what was ailing her.
“Strike. Strike. Strike.”
The rhythmic command gave way to a slave’s drumming as Ignacio and the other magistri gathered to warm their hands over a burning brazier.
It was likely they would also discuss new forms of strength-inducing torture.
Jovan had called her to his office once this week to console her over Ilona’s “death” and admonish her to get the other women up to his standards.
The preliminary matches held at the Ludus Magnus were fast approaching, and if the gladiatrices wanted to fight at the best times during the games, they would need to do better.
Again, he dangled the promise of joining the magistri.
She hated that she’d agreed instead of arguing.
Adel cast another glance in the trainers’ direction as if she might be waved over to join them.
Instead, she caught sight of Felix paused at the edge of the courtyard.
Their eyes met. Clashed together like two gladii.
She missed the beat, striking a half second too late.
The discord echoed and repeated for three more strikes before resuming the cracking harmony.
He’d been lurking about, as if trying to conjure some excuse to get close to her, talk to her.
Convince her that they ought to fake Berit’s death next.
But she’d hardly been able to sleep since Ilona was taken out.
Where was she? How was she? And even if she could ask Felix, how could she trust his answers?
Ilona had trusted him. But Adel wasn’t ready to let Berit go too.
At least within these walls, Adel could watch over her. Once she left, she’d be lost for good.
The next jarring blow sent her gladius skittering from her grip. Her jaw clenched as she spun to retrieve it. Felix was getting into her head, and there would be Ignacio to pay if he noticed her distraction.
She didn’t look his way as she wove and ducked between gladiators, the risk of retrieval drawing her focus. The wooden sword lay at the base of Wulfula and Ruso’s palus. The blond Visigoth, his chest covered in knots of blue ink, ignored her. Wulfula did not.
“Come and get it.” He smirked, not missing a strike. She edged closer, sticking out a foot to snag the handle and drag the rudis close enough to pick up.
His backswing went wide, catching her in the stomach, nearly knocking the wind from her.
She dove for her rudis as the stinging snap of wood slapped against her backside.
Gravel bit into her knees. She gripped the sword and rolled, sand grinding into her back as she swung upward to block his next strike.
Wulfula leered above her, an eyebrow raising. “On your back again. What a surprise.”
Adel sent a well-aimed kick to his loincloth and shoved to her feet as he sidestepped it. “Thinking with something other than your brain, Wulfula,” she mimicked through gritted teeth. “Dangerous.”
His dark brows flickered in challenge. “At least Jovan isn’t betting against me at the Ludus Magnus.”
“You think I’ll believe that?” Even so, she felt her chest constrict.
He lifted a shoulder and fell into motion again with his gladius. “Don’t believe it then. But I hope you have your funerary jar picked out.”
“You two!” one of the trainers barked. “Back at it.”
Gravel bit into her heel as Adel spun and stalked back to her place. The welts from Wulfula’s wooden sword began to burn. She took her place at the palus, waited two beats, and resumed.
Felix circled the courtyard.
One. Two. Three. Four . . .
“You’d best watch yourself with him,” Tilla panted. “He has the look of murder in his eye.”
Adel blinked. Felix?
Tilla grunted in a way that suggested Adel was an idiot. “You think you’re invincible, but Wulfula will prove you otherwise. The mighty always fall.”
Wulfula. Yes. Of course. There was a threat in Tilla’s words, and a warning.
But it would serve no one to recognize the sliver of fear snaking through her gut.
Adel clenched her teeth and swung harder, forcing her words to emerge with confidence.
“I’ve been dealing with Wulfula long before we ever came here. I know how to handle him.”
By the time the doctore called for the evening halt, the sun had fallen, and her bare feet were numb. Rudes hit the dirt as billows of white breath huffed through the courtyard.
“Gladiators to the triclinium. Gladiatrices to the baths.”
Adel braced her hands on her hips, gulping deep breaths as she joined the shuffle of women.
Hot water offered a welcome relief from the cold—at least until one had to emerge back into it and suffer through a meal with dripping hair.
The other women paused for a drink at the fountain, but Adel kept on, beckoned by the warmth.
Cold prickled her skin, quickening her steps along the frigid marble colonnade toward the bath entrance at the corner.
She stepped through the doorway, out of view from the courtyard for barely a breath before a blur of fabric whirled in front of her, grabbing her hand.
She drew back to strike and found her other wrist captured in a firm grip, her back spun against the wall.
“It’s me.”
Did Felix really think that would prevent her from blackening an eye? He apparently did, since he released his grip on her wrists. He was taller than she remembered, or perhaps she’d never been this close, never experienced the space between them shrunk to nothing.
“What are you—”
“We need to speak.” He opened his hand, offering a glimpse of gold and amber before he snapped his fingers shut and drew back. Tilla stalked inside, stride hitching as she gave them a quick up-and-down glance.
“Later,” he whispered, brushing past Adel. He flipped a towel over one shoulder and exited the baths the way anyone might stroll through the village square.
But the glimpse was all she’d needed. Gold and amber played in the light like the glow of a campfire in the night.
She’d seen it before, every day of her childhood.
An ember of light on her atta’s hand. She would know it anywhere, the honey bits of amber nested within looping, knotted strands of gold.
The burning spread to her nose and throat, cutting off her breath as if she’d inhaled the bath.
Handed down from father to son, the ring was priceless.
Treasured. At least to her family. To her atta.
Without sons to bear either his name or his ring, she’d always assumed he’d be buried with both.
For it to be here meant . . . it meant . . .
He would have never parted with it willingly.
Her legs went suddenly weak.
“You ill too?” one of the Hildas asked at her elbow.
Adel shook her head. “No.” Yes.
The Hilda didn’t ask a second time. She stripped and left a trail of clothes on her way to the heated pool.
Adel’s hands shook as she fumbled with her own clothing and followed the others into the steaming baths.
The chatter echoed off the ceiling, multiplying the voices from five to twenty.
She sank to her chin, eyes burning, and not from the scented oil Dreda had just poured into her palm.
Atta was dead.
He had to be dead. There was no other explanation for his ring to be in Rome unless he’d been stripped after the battle.
He was dead, and there would be no reconciliation, no redemption.
No homecoming. Would Aipei feel Adel was responsible if she returned home without him?
But where had Felix gotten the ring, and how did he know to show it to her?
The heat and questions were too much. She couldn’t breathe. Her fingers dug for a handhold on the slippery marble as she heaved herself out of the water. Berit backed away from the stairs, snatching up a towel and handing it to Adel as she climbed out.
“Are you well?”
“No.”