Chapter 21
Kallias woke before Lea in the morning. Cool grayish light spilled over her body, turning her skin to silver.
He raised his torso onto the pillow behind him to better appreciate the sight of her.
She lay on her stomach, an arm beneath her head.
Her dark hair cascaded over her back. Beneath the sable tendrils, he glimpsed the marks that had pulled him up short last night—the unmistakable ghost of a brutal beating.
His stomach clenched at the sight. Kallias had been lucky enough to escape that level of violence in his past, but he saw similar marks often enough on those he treated among the palace staff.
Lea stirred, rolling onto her back. His gaze traveled over her elegant collarbones, the tempting swell of her breasts, and her taut, strong abdomen.
This side of her body bore other wounds, some of which he’d noticed before: a puckered scar on her shoulder, several healed slices on her stomach, and a jagged mark on her lower left leg.
He slid a hand over that one gently, noticing a slight crookedness to the bone beneath—the remnants of a broken leg.
Whoever set it had done an excellent job.
Her arm flopped out, catching him in the chest. The unexpected sensation must have roused her, for her eyes slowly opened. He braced himself.
This time, she didn’t greet him with a kick to the stomach. Instead, she curled her body into his with a pleased hum.
His heart felt like it was going to burst with delight at the warm feel of her in his arms. Gods, if he could wake this way every day—he wouldn’t even mind spending the rest of his life working for the emperor.
But that was impossible. Lea had a life she was beholden to, as did he…at least until he trained Sextus into a suitable replacement, which was years away at this point.
He stroked a hand slowly up and down her back, fingers feeling the slight unevenness left by the scarring. He recalled the forty thousand sestertii she needed to secure her freedom.
If he had that sum to hand, it would have been hers without a thought.
Then he realized—he might not have that amount now, but Gaius paid him a generous wage, remitted monthly. Sometimes Kallias forgot he actually earned money now. In a year, he might save up forty thousand. He could give it to her.
You’ve spent one night with this woman and you’re already plotting to give her all your money? What is wrong with you?
He discarded such ridiculous thoughts and murmured a morning greeting to her.
She propped herself up on an elbow, running a lazy hand through her hair to clear the tangles. “Good morning. Why were you touching my leg? You have a liking for women’s shins, do you?”
The unexpected question made him snort. “Not particularly. Though yours are quite pleasing.” Her legs as a whole were magnificent—lean, powerful, and sculpted with muscle.
“No, I was…” He hesitated, embarrassed to admit the detail in which he’d been examining her.
“I couldn’t help looking at your scars. I thought your leg might have been broken. It was, wasn’t it?”
She nodded. “Years ago.” She gave a rueful, crooked smile.
“Looking at my scars must have kept you busy for a while.” She grasped a corner of the blanket and pulled it up to cover herself.
“I’m sorry if they bother you. Maybe—that is, if we—ever again—” Her words were becoming choppy and tangled, and he struggled to follow.
“We could make sure it’s dark,” she finally said.
He blinked at her. She thought he was repelled by the marks her body bore? “That’s not what I want.” He cast aside the blanket and ran a reverent hand down one of the whitened lines on her stomach. “You think you’re anything less than perfect to me?”
“I don’t look…how women are supposed to look. Delicate, and soft, and flawless.”
He clasped a hand over her breast. “You feel plenty soft to me.”
That, at least, made her chuckle.
He massaged the swell of her breast. “That first time I met you, when I saw these pop out of the bindings you wore…I swear I almost passed out.”
Now, she let out a full-throated laugh. “I knew you were ogling me.”
He drew her tighter into his arms, holding her in an inescapable grasp. “You’ve enraptured me from the beginning, Lea. The only reason your scars bother me is because it kills me to think of what you’ve suffered.”
She was silent for a moment. “You want to know about the marks on my back, don’t you?”
He didn’t, not really, because he sensed it would only upset him. But at the same time, he was desperate to know more of her past, to understand what had led her to where she was today. “You don’t have to speak of it.”
“I don’t mind. It was a long time ago.” She shifted in his arms to lay her head on his shoulder.
“I grew up working in a household here in Rome, with my mother. She died when I was seventeen. I didn’t realize how much she’d been protecting me until she was gone.
Making sure I was never in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Never at risk of being…alone…with the wrong person. ”
A tendril of darkness spiraled within him. He knew the precarious struggle of which she spoke—always trying to make oneself as invisible as possible, striving never to be noticed.
“Then, my mother was gone and…things changed.” She gave a brief, mirthless chuckle. “Remember how you told me I was very brave and very stupid?”
“I’ve had multiple occasions to use those words.”
“It’s nothing new. My master, he tried to…
” She gave an expressive shrug. “I fought back, you see. Broke my master’s nose.
That’s where the beating came from. Then he sold me to Lucullus.
It was supposed to be a death sentence. But Lucullus healed me.
He trained me. Gave me a new life. A new name. And that’s where I’ve been since.”
The darkness unfurled in Kallias’s chest. “I’m so sorry,” he murmured, his voice rough. Her story prodded at the cache of memories he kept tightly buried in the depths of his mind, like old clothes stuffed at the bottom of a trunk.
Unlike Lea, he had never been brave enough to fight back.
Her fearlessness astonished him. She must have known she could have been killed outright for raising a hand against her master, and if he hadn’t wanted to extract profit from her by selling her to a gladiator school, she probably would have been.
Now Kallias understood how precious a gift the trust she’d placed in him truly was. Her courage both awed and shamed him.
“I never fought back,” he confessed in a low voice. Would she be repulsed by his cowardice?
She rolled over in his arms, coming to face him, and traced a tender hand down his cheek. Her eyes held no disgust, only sorrow. Then, an incongruous smile lifted the corners of her mouth. “Probably for the best. No offense, but I don’t think you’d do very well in the arena.”
He chuckled. Sometimes, the best way to chase away the darkness was to laugh at it. “How many matches would you give me?”
She lifted an eyebrow, smirking. “I was thinking in terms of moments, not matches.”
He scoffed, but she was probably right. Lea might have defied her odds, but life had taught him that self-preservation often required doing the cowardly thing. He wouldn’t be sorry for surviving.
He shifted the topic to something less distressing. “I’m glad Lucullus was kind to you. I clearly was wrong to shout at him the other day.”
Her fingers swept along his forearm, back and forth, brushing the light dusting of dark hair on his skin.
“He treats his gladiators well because it’s in his interest for us to be content and healthy, to fight and win.
But not all managers share that outlook, so I’m glad I ended up in his service as opposed to anyone else’s. ”
“It must have been very frightening at first.” He couldn’t imagine being plucked from his life—even an unhappy one—and thrust into a world as rough and forbidding as a gladiator ludus. For a young woman, it must have been a thousand times more terrifying.
“Yes,” she admitted. “A woman alone in a ludus full of men? Depending on the men, that could be very dangerous indeed. Lucullus made it clear that I was not to be trifled with, but he couldn’t be everywhere at once.
But then I met Hector.” Her eyes closed, and she smiled.
“He was the sort of man who felt it was his personal responsibility to protect those who couldn’t protect themselves.
Which was me at first. We didn’t start sleeping together until years later,” she clarified hastily.
“It wasn’t like that. But then Ferox arrived, and Jason, and Hector befriended them.
He had a nose for good people. With those three around, no one would look twice at me if I didn’t want them to.
” Her voice warmed as she spoke of her friends, but it was edged with melancholy.
Kallias felt an echo of the loss she spoke of. It was strange, but he wished he could have met this Hector, who’d protected her and whom she’d eventually deemed worthy of taking to bed. “I’m glad you had him.”
“I miss him,” she confessed, then shot Kallias an anxious glance, as if worried he’d be jealous of a dead man. “I mean—it’s been years since he died, and it wasn’t like we were—”
“Lea.” He stroked her hair. “You don’t have to diminish what you shared with him for my sake.”
She relaxed into his arms. “Thank you,” she murmured.
Another question occurred to him. “What was your name before?”
“Lethaea. But my mother liked to call me Lea, so when Lucullus was trying to come up with a better one, I suggested Penthesilea.” She grinned. “I also liked the thought of being named after an queen.”
Now he understood why those closest to her called her by the shortened name; it wasn’t just the convenience of an abbreviation, but Lea was her true name, the name her mother had called her.
It gave him a greater sense of who she truly was: Penthesilea was the celebrated gladiator, but Lea was the real woman beneath.
“My turn to ask a question.” She splayed her fingers on his chest. “Do you prefer men or women?”
He arched an eyebrow. “Right now, I prefer you.” His desires had never seemed to rely on something so banal as someone’s sex.
She chuckled, then slipped out of his arms and sat up, body extending into a luxurious stretch. The movement drew his attention straight to her full, soft breasts, and for a moment he wanted nothing more than to pull her back down to the bed and lose himself with her.
But he couldn’t succumb to such pleasures. Morning was dawning. Lea would need to get back to the ludus before she was missed.
He, too, had things to attend to. The early morning hours were often his most productive, as Gaius tended to sleep late into the day.
Today, Kallias wanted to check on one of the cook’s assistants suffering from a tooth abscess, as well as a washerwoman who’d come down with a severe headache yesterday.
Lea seemed of a similar mind, for she left the bed and found her dress, tugging it over her head. He did the same with his discarded tunic.
She combed a hand through her long hair. “I don’t suppose you know how to braid?”
“Of course I do. Sit.” He pointed to a corner of the bed, then sat behind her and sifted his fingers through her locks, separating them into three sections. He moved slower than necessary as he wove together the sections. Once this was done, she’d leave and this blissful interlude would be over.
“I almost forgot, I had another question,” she said as he braided.
“Yes?”
“You said something last night. In Greek. I didn’t know what it meant.”
His hands paused their plaiting motions, and he thought back to the words they’d shared. Much of the evening was a lust-filled haze. “Philé emé?” He flushed, suddenly grateful that she was in front of him and couldn’t see his face.
“What does it mean?”
He returned his focus to braiding her hair. “It’s just an endearment. Like…sweetheart.” It was more than that, but something held him back from revealing the truly accurate translation.
My beloved.
Last night, he’d uttered it without thinking, but this morning, it felt…weighty. Intimidating. It whispered of a commitment he couldn’t make.
It told him he was falling in love with her.
His hands stuttered to a halt in the midst of braiding.
He’d had lovers before, of course, but those affairs had begun and ended with little fuss, born out of a desire to find a reprieve from the oppressive restrictions of his life. It had been easy to keep his emotions safely in check, knowing there was no future in any of it.
Abruptly, he remembered that day he’d met Sextus’s parents, his bittersweet jealousy at their rapport, their care for each other. That was what he wanted: someone he could belong to in a way that had nothing to do with ownership.
But the timing was all wrong.
In his current life, he’d always be beholden to the emperor first. Anyone else would have to come second. He couldn’t love Lea as she deserved until his circumstances changed.
He forced his fingers to resume braiding.
“That’s nice,” she said as he secured the end of the braid with the leather strip she handed him. At least the endearment pleased her, even if it didn’t quite mean what she thought it did.
A touch of guilt plagued him at the dissimulation; after all, just last night they’d promised not to lie to each other. But it wasn’t really a lie. Sweetheart was an acceptable translation, and it was of little consequence.
Once they were both dressed and presentable, he walked her to one of the back exits to the palace, manned by a single bored guard who barely spared them a glance.
Kallias walked through the door with her, then pressed a kiss to the back of her hand, unable to let her go just yet.
“If I were to find my way to your ludus one evening, perhaps Thursday…do you think I’d be admitted? ”
She smiled. “I’ll let our guard know to open the gate for any handsome physicians that might wander by.”
“I hope there aren’t too many of us, or that could get rather awkward.”
She laughed, bid him goodbye, and then she was gone, walking confidently away from the palace. He watched her disappear down the street, and only when she was fully gone did he turn and go back inside, feeling lighter than he had in a long time.