Chapter 35
Lea clasped her hands behind her back and stretched her arms upward, working out the tight muscles of her shoulders and chest. Noise resounded all around her. She and the other female gladiators were waiting in the arena’s back area for their archery tournament to begin.
Jason was fighting in the arena right now, and ordinarily she would have watched, but she couldn’t risk jeopardizing her focus.
She fixed her gaze on a whorl in one of the wooden beams on the opposite side of the space, willing the image to remain crisp. Her vision had been unreliable since her head injury, and the last thing she needed before an archery tournament this important was to be unable to see the target.
Phoebe, the gladiator who had dealt that injury, approached her. She glanced over the healing wound on Lea’s forehead. “I’m sorry about that.” She rotated her shoulders. “I really thought you were going to duck.”
“It’s not your fault.” Lea released her stretch. “I wasn’t at my best that day.”
“And how are you feeling today?” Phoebe gave a wry smile. “With archery, I think the only way any of us have a chance is if you’re not at your best. But that still leaves second place to fight for.”
“Not much of a prize, is it?” Lea muttered.
Phoebe gave her a strange look. “What do you mean? The chance to join the Praetorian Guard?”
“I’m not sure that appeals to me.” A vast understatement.
Phoebe lifted her arms over her head. “Really? Imagine the honor. The glory. And I bet it’s a far cushier job than this. All they do is stand around and escort the emperor here and there. And imagine, if someone tries to kill him, and you get to be the one to save him!”
“I suppose you have a point,” Lea conceded, though the prospect of life as a Praetorian still made her stomach turn. But apparently, not everyone felt the same way.
Behind Phoebe, Lea caught sight of Jason returning from his match. Her stomach dropped. He was white-faced, covered in sand, his gaze blank and flat.
She ran up to him. “What’s wrong? Are you hurt?” She glanced over him anxiously. There was plenty of blood on him, but she couldn’t detect any serious injuries, and he was on his feet, after all.
He shook his head slowly. “I—I don’t know.”
“What do you mean you don’t know?” she demanded. Had he hit his head?
His stunned gaze finally focused on her. “I…I think I was about to lose. And then she was there.”
“Who?”
Ferox came up beside them. “One of the Vestal Virgins. I saw it.”
Lea took an involuntary step back. The Vestal Virgins were the most revered priestesses in the city, with powers that rivaled the emperor’s—one of which was the ability to free a slave with a single touch. “Did she…?”
Jason ran a jerky hand through his hair, causing a cascade of sand. “She said…something about the goddess. The goddess had—had spoken to her. And then she touched me…” His hand, trembling, rose to brush a spot on his chest.
Lea’s mouth dropped open. For a Vestal to be moved to exercise her power…that meant Jason had attracted the attention of one of the most powerful deities in their pantheon.
Why him? Jason wasn’t particularly pious at the best of times, and he’d shown no great devotion to Vesta.
“Penthesilea!” The official managing the archery contest snapped her name as he gathered the competitors.
Jason still looked utterly shaken, and she didn’t want to leave him, but Ferox stepped forward. “I’ll see to him. Go. And good luck.”
With one last look at the pair, she turned to join the other gladiators. The official inspected their bows and arrows, then lined them up at the entrance to the arena.
Music sounded, horns blasting above the thumping of drums. That was their cue.
Lea’s heart pounded as one by one, the female gladiators proceeded into the arena. Her palms were sweaty, and she surreptitiously wiped them on her tunic. A slippery grip would not help her shoot.
The crowd cheered, shouting the names of their favorite competitors. Lea heard her own name ringing out from several spots in the stands. It should have bolstered her confidence, but nerves still stormed within her.
In the center of the arena, a row of targets stood directly in front of the emperor’s seating area, so the ruler and his entourage had the best view of each shot.
Out of habit, Lea’s gaze flicked to the emperor’s box, searching for Kallias’s familiar figure. He’s not there, she reminded herself.
But then—she stopped short and blinked, squinting. No. Surely it couldn’t be. Her vision must be failing her again.
The woman behind her collided with her back. “Move,” she hissed.
Lea forced her feet into motion, muttering an apology. She didn’t take her eyes off the figure behind the emperor, and her foot caught on an uneven patch of sand. She stumbled, caught herself, then her gaze snapped back to him. She was closer now. Close enough to recognize him.
It was Kallias. What happened? How is he here?
Her fingers tightened spasmodically on the bow, knuckles straining as she gripped it. He must have been discovered, somehow, in the time since he’d left her yesterday.
A new rush of fear joined the preexisting riot of nerves. This was not good.
The announcer was saying something, introducing the rules of the tournament, but the words jumbled together in Lea’s mind.
Kallias was too far away to make eye contact with, but somehow, he seemed no different from the other times she’d seen him sitting just there, behind Gaius and Drusilla, his bearing upright but casual. Almost as if he’d never left.
His appearance was so disconcerting that for a moment she wondered if she’d hallucinated everything that had happened since her head injury. What if her addled mind had simply imagined his plan to leave?
In any case, he was here somehow—outside in public, not imprisoned or otherwise incapacitated. And from what she could see, he appeared unharmed.
For the sake of the competition about to start, she had to fixate on those facts. He was in no immediate danger, and she couldn’t let her anxiety about his fate threaten her performance. The stakes were too high.
So she turned her back to Kallias, faced the target, and withdrew an arrow from her quiver. Her hands only shook a little as she notched it on the bowstring. Then, at the signal from the official, she let her first shot fly.