Chapter 28
When Lea stepped into the arena, her gaze shot straight to the area where the emperor sat, flanked by Praetorians.
A bolt of anxiety shot through her when she couldn’t spot Kallias’s dark head among those that filled the emperor’s box.
He wasn’t there.
He’d promised.
There had been no word from him, no note or anything. Something had to be truly wrong.
She tore her gaze from the emperor’s box and faced her opponent, taking up the starting positions as directed by the official who oversaw each match.
Her opponent was a stocky woman named Phoebe, whom Lea had fought before.
Phoebe was strong, skilled, and moved with the light-footedness of a doe.
She’d be a challenging opponent, especially as Lea felt far from her best today.
After a night of little sleep, her body was sluggish, and her mind was overwhelmed with worries about where Kallias was and why he wasn’t here.
The fight began. Phoebe leaped forward with an energetic strike. Lea spun to the side, barely dodging the point of Phoebe’s sword. Before Lea could gather herself to attack, Phoebe struck again, forcing Lea to jerk her shield up to meet the blow.
As Phoebe’s sword thumped against Lea’s shield, Lea couldn’t help glancing over to the emperor, hoping desperately that Kallias would appear. Maybe he’d just been hidden behind someone on her first look. Or maybe he was simply late.
But he still wasn’t there.
Her distraction kept her on the defense, and she was driven further and further back every time she had to block one of Phoebe’s powerful strikes. Her arm ached worse every moment, and her feet felt heavy and clumsy.
After blocking one particularly brutal attack, Lea stumbled, nearly fell, but managed to right herself.
Then a flicker of movement from near the emperor caught her eye.
Her head swiveled reflexively to catch it—Kallias?
—but it wasn’t him. By the time she returned her attention to Phoebe, it was too late to dodge the shield moving in an arc straight for her head.
It crashed against her skull, and everything went black.
Lea woke to a sensation of movement and uncomfortable pulling, centered in her arms. She blinked, but the sun overhead was much too bright, so she closed her eyes.
Sand scratched and shifted beneath her. Her head pounded, made a thousand times worse by the noise that seemed to crush her from all directions.
Someone was dragging her from the arena. It took her a moment to recall why they might be doing such a thing. Then she remembered—the blow from the shield must have knocked her out.
Somehow, she was still alive, and she registered mild surprise at that fact.
Shadows fell over her, and Lea realized they must have made it out of the arena, into the shaded gap between the stands where gladiators entered and exited.
Her body slumped to the ground as the person dragging her dropped her arms. She flailed, eyes still closed, struggling to find her feet. Her head felt like it was going to explode with pain, and nausea roiled in her stomach.
Before she could make any progress on the issue of standing, another pair of arms—gentler ones—slid beneath her shoulders and her knees, lifting her with practiced ease.
She shifted restlessly, but calmed when she recognized the slightly uneven stride of the man who held her: Ferox.
“Put me down,” she croaked.
“In a bit.”
He carried her into the back space of the arena and set her carefully on the ground, arranging her so her back was propped up against a wooden beam, feet stretched before her.
“Thanks,” she muttered. The noise of multiple people talking in the enclosed area made her head throb. She groaned and pressed clumsy hands to her ears.
“Quiet,” Ferox barked over his shoulder, and the noise reduced by at least half.
Lea tried to send him a grateful smile, but feared it looked more like a grimace. The side of her face was damp, and she rubbed a hand across it. Her fingers came away smeared with blood. She stared at it for a moment.
Then, the physician—the regular one from the ludus, not Kallias—was at her side, poking and prodding at her head. She shied away from him, but he grabbed the uninjured side of her head to hold her in place.
“Ouch,” she complained as he dabbed a cloth over the wound.
“Is she all right?” Velia’s voice, quiet but concerned.
The physician poked and prodded some more. “The skull does not appear to be broken,” he decreed with satisfaction. “She’ll feel like utter shit for a few days, though.”
Lea closed her eyes as the physician bandaged her up. Kallias would have done something special, adding some foul-smelling herbal concoction that somehow made everything heal faster. And his hands would have been much gentler.
“You didn’t see Kallias anywhere, did you?” she asked Ferox and Velia after the physician left.
Velia shook her head. “No.”
“He was supposed to visit me last night. And then today, he’s nowhere to be seen…” Lea swallowed hard against the tide of worry that still plagued her. “I’m afraid something’s wrong.”
Ferox frowned. “Is that what happened out there? You were so worried about that physician that you allowed yourself to nearly get killed?”
His incredulous tone made prickles of shame rise over her skin. That was exactly what had happened. She should have known better than to allow herself to get so close, to feel so much, to want so hard. It had led her here—to a bleeding skull, a pounding head.
A defeat.
“If I ever see him again, I’m going to strangle him,” she muttered. It was easier to be angry rather than let herself be consumed by fear and worry over what might have happened to him.
“Let me know if you need a helping hand,” Ferox said blithely, which made her laugh.
But laughing only hurt her head more, so she stopped.
Another question occurred to her. “Did the emperor really spare me?” Obviously he had, given that she was alive at this very moment, but she might have expected that he wouldn’t have been able to resist ordering her death, given their past contention. But maybe he really had forgiven her.
“He took longer to think about it than I liked,” Ferox admitted.
“But you were still unconscious, and there’s little thrill in watching someone like that be killed.
Besides, the crowd was calling for mercy.
” His tone was casual, but Lea knew him well enough to hear the intensity humming beneath his words.
A hefty dose of guilt added itself to the shame she felt over her conduct in the arena.
It was one thing to be out there, fighting and struggling.
It was entirely another to watch from the side as someone you cared about came within spitting distance of death.
It wouldn’t have been easy for him to watch her lose, not after Hector’s death.
But that was the life she led—a life where her very existence rested on the whim of one erratic emperor.
Not forever, she promised herself. She’d find some way out of this, whatever it took. She only hoped Kallias would be by her side when she did.