Chapter XXXV #2
“It’s too late for the game master to change anything, surely . . .” Jovan’s poor attempt to protest was drowned out by the man calling over several others and voicing his idea.
“We haven’t had a pair of lovers in the arena in years!”
Another man stared through them, chewing a knuckle, his painted eyebrows drawn in thought. “They could be Odysseus and Penelope—”
“Too old and . . . nearly monogamous.” A young man in apple green silk circled the platform, then spun as an idea struck. “But what about Pyramus and Thisbe. They can make love in the sand and then we can send in lions for them to fight!”
Adel’s pulse pounded. Fear and anger swelled in her chest until she could hardly breathe. Why hadn’t Felix kept his hands to himself? Stayed silent? All they’d worked for, all they’d planned, was crumbling at their feet.
Beside her, Felix drew in a ragged breath.
She turned her wrist, gripping his hand in warning. Do not react. Say nothing.
“They are not bestiarii,” Jovan argued. “And forcing a love scene failed for Adronicus, if you recall. That was his last year as game master.”
“But that was the story of the Sabine women,” the green-silked man whined.
“Ancient history—everyone finds that boring. This is racy young love and tragedy. A crowd favorite every time. We can send them out during the scene change for the battle. It’ll be the perfect transition piece.
Where is Giulio when you need him? Giulio!
” He disappeared into the crowd to find the game master and the others followed, all talking over one another.
“How can you endure this evil?” Felix’s rough whisper emerged from between his teeth. “Claim to love it?”
“It was endure it or die.” She released his hand and swallowed back the burn of tears. “At least if I pretended . . . the misery was less suffocating.”
“I have never wanted to tear a man apart like I do just now. It’s . . .” He let out a breath, the chain clinking around his ankle as he shifted. “Terrifying.”
They fell silent as another group of Rome’s elite circled them to gawk and prod, discussing them as if they were nothing more than inanimate statues, not living, breathing humans.
“I could endure the humiliation if it meant sparing you from it.” Felix stared straight ahead. “I never meant to inflict more upon you.”
“Well.” She let out a breath, her mouth drying at the thought of what this new humiliation would entail if the game master agreed to it. “If we needed one last distraction for the liberators before the battle reenactment, we have it now.”
Rubbing her fingers over her aching scalp, covered in a crown of tight braids, Adel sank to her knees in her cell, grateful the night was over and dreading the morning all at once.
The sky had paled as they wrestled over their predicament, as if it too was in shock at the shift in their fate.
The game master and his minions would waste no time setting their novel idea into motion, and she and Felix could not afford to sleep either.
Not that she could have slept, even if she had the softest bed in Rome.
Across from her, Felix ran his hands over his chest as if he could hardly believe he was fully clothed at last and might never take a tunic for granted again. His dark eyes met hers through the lattice of bars and he swallowed.
“I’ve ruined everything,” he whispered, regret thick in his throat.
“Not everything.” Her arms dropped to her lap. “But it was a stupid thing to do.”
“Did you expect me to just stand there while he touched you?” He slammed his eyes shut and raked his hands into his hair, cradling his head as if his scalp ached as badly as hers.
“Do not despair on me now, medicus. We do not have time for that.”
Felix slowly lifted his head and dragged his hands down the sides of his face, beard crackling beneath his palms. “I am not despairing. Not . . . all the way. Only trying to find a way out of this.”
“These are the games. We knew we would fight tomorrow. Perhaps not this way, but it changes nothing.” She shifted closer to the bars and lowered her voice to a whisper, lifting a finger as she spoke. “Escape is still possible.”
Felix stared at the floor, granite eyes blank and distant and she could nearly see his mind pulsing with ideas. “In fights to the death, the victor lives. And sometimes, in big spectacles like this one, the victor is awarded freedom—if they can win the crowd.”
She nodded. “So, we win the crowd during the opening ceremony, and then one of us wins the match while the other—”
“Is wounded and sent to the medical bay.”
“As long as your pater and the monks are successful in getting inside, we will both survive.” Her tone was more certain than her heart. But she was a master at making her heart believe things that couldn’t possibly come true.
There were other plans in place too: Several gladiatrices could request to use the latrine and get out of the holding cell with minimal guards.
Ruso could faint at will, requiring a medicus, or two trainers to haul him to one.
The number of guards and trainers in the holding cell would dwindle, allowing, in the darkness of the tunnels, beneath the roar of the crowd, the ability to steal away in ones and twos and find their way to the liberators disguised in ushers’ uniforms and sewer tunnels. It would still work. It had to work.
“He . . . Pater will come through.”
He did not sound certain. Not in the way she needed him to. “Why do you hesitate?”
“It kills me to wait and hope someone else will do their part.” He looked up. “I fear if I do not have my hands in everything, it will fall apart. Is that arrogant?”
“Yes.” She smiled slightly. “We share the same fear. The same need to . . . to not have to rely on others. There is nothing more terrifying or fragile than the hope that someone will do as they have promised.”
“And few things more hurtful than when they do not.”
“So where does that leave us?”
His mouth twitched. “Forced to face our fears and arrogance?”
She nodded. “And reliant upon God to come through.”
The hardest thing for the both of them, she knew.
The same reasons that kept her from trusting others had kept her from fully trusting God.
He had not seemed to care for her desires, so she’d met them herself.
Or tried to. And for a while she could trick herself into believing she’d done it, found purpose and independence and worth all on her own. But now? That illusion lay shattered.
“Perhaps God allows us to reach such depths to teach us to trust Him.”
“Perhaps.” Adel sighed. “But why must it be so deep?”
“Because only we are capable of digging so deep.”
She nodded. “Like you said, arrogant.”
He sighed and shook his head. “And where does that leave us?”
Adel met his gaze, the answer swelling with an obvious certainty. “In desperate need of prayer.”