Chapter 24
As the physician warned, the fever set in the next day. Ferox almost didn’t mind it, as he was bedbound anyway and it addled his mind enough to distract from the pain.
But as the fever intensified over the following day and night, it brought vivid, unsettling dreams—or at least, what he hoped were dreams. Over and over again, he relived the moment he’d drawn his sword across his opponent’s throat.
But just as the blood began to spurt, Ferox glanced at the man’s face, only to see it shift and blur into that of Hector.
His friend clutched at his bleeding neck, slumping to the sand as the life drained from his body.
Other times, a squadron of red-garbed Praetorians, bristling with armor and weapons, burst into his room and dragged him from his bed.
His leg left a bloody trail behind him. As the Praetorians hauled him through the streets, he looked up to find that each had Hector’s face.
And not the smiling, kind face he wanted to most remember.
It was instead how Hector had appeared moments after death—bloodied, one eye a gaping hole, skull partially crushed.
When Ferox fought, the soldiers held him down. They shifted into the figures of Jason, Velia, and Lea. In his moments of clarity, he realized with relief that those three were the ones with him. Not the emperor’s Praetorians, and not the mangled Hector.
Velia was always there, day and night. She fed him bites of food and sips of water, and cooled him with damp cloths that smelled of lavender. He tried to tell her to leave, that she needed to rest, but either he never succeeded in saying the words aloud or she simply ignored him.
Gradually, the moments of clarity lasted longer and longer. His fever eased, and finally, he woke in the middle of the night not to a terrifying dream, but to the darkened surroundings of his room and the quiet sound of Velia’s breathing coming from somewhere on the floor.
Moving gingerly, he raised himself to a sitting position. His body felt weak—even the minimal effort of sitting up made his head spin—and his thigh ached, but the searing pain of the early injury had faded.
He squinted at the floor beside his bed. He could just make out Velia’s small shape, curled up atop the rugs, a pillow beneath her head.
She stirred. “You’re awake,” she mumbled. Then she was on her feet, a cool hand pressed to his forehead. “You feel better. Let me get you some water.”
“Velia.” His voice was scratchy. He’d once swallowed a mouthful of sand in the arena, and that was exactly how his throat felt right now. “You shouldn’t be here.”
She held out a cup of water to him. “I think you mean, thank you so much for taking such good care of me while I almost died from a fever.”
He flushed. Awake for barely a moment and he’d already said something stupid. “You’re right. I’m sorry. Thank you.” He took the water from her and drank deeply.
She rewarded him with a pass of her hand through his hair. He closed his eyes for a moment, luxuriating in the pleasure of her touch, but something less pleasant soon jumped into his mind.
“The…emperor,” he said, voice still raspy despite the water. “Any word?”
Velia shook her head. “Nothing.”
“How long has it been?”
“Nearly a week.”
Ferox lay back against the wall. A week with no word, no order that Ferox be removed from the games. Could he really be that lucky? Had the emperor forgotten, or did he not care enough to punish Ferox for his defiance?
No, Ferox decided. Something was still coming. And when it did…
“We need to talk,” he said.
“You should rest.”
“I’ve been resting for a week.” He held out a hand to her, and she approached the bed, perching on the edge. Her fingers twined with his. “Velia, if the emperor should force me to leave the games…I want you to come with me.”
He couldn’t see much of her expression in the darkness, but he felt her fingers tense. “What?”
He could sense her doubt, her uncertainty, but he pushed past it, laying out the plan that was hazily coming together in his mind.
“I don’t have as much money as I’d anticipated, but I still have more than I left here with the first time.
Enough to make it to Hispania, buy a bit of land, build a little house.
We could plant a field and keep animals.
It may be difficult at first, but we can make a life for ourselves. ”
“Ferox…” Her voice wavered. “I can’t…Achilles is here.”
“Sign him over to your uncle,” he urged.
She rose from the bed, pacing in the small room. “You’re asking me to leave the ludus. Leave Rome. Go to Hispania with you. Are you asking me to marry you?” She spoke the sentence as if it were the most ludicrous thing she’d ever contemplated.
Ferox had not been thinking in such specific terms. All he wanted was her; he didn’t much care about marriage. But he realized she might want the security offered by marriage, a legal promise of protection and care. “Yes, if that’s what you wish.”
She paused in her pacing and stared at him. “I’m not sure it is,” she muttered. Her voice became sharper. “I hardly know how to cook. I can mend, but I’m hopeless at weaving. I would make you a terrible wife.”
“You can learn those things.”
“But I don’t want to!” The words burst from her mouth, hot with frustration. “You don’t understand. The life you’re offering—it’s exactly what I left. I grew up on a farm in the countryside, and I didn’t much like it. Hispania, Italy—I don’t think it makes much difference.”
But this time, it would be with me. Was that not enough for her?
“Do you really have to go so far?” she demanded. “I don’t see why you can’t find land in Italy. Somewhere not so far from Rome.”
He considered her words, attempting to view them rationally and disregard the ache spreading through his chest at the fact that she seemed to be rejecting him.
It made sense she’d wish to stay in Italy.
Her uncle was here. Maybe she didn’t wish to be far from him.
If she went to Hispania, she might never set foot here again.
Perhaps a compromise was in order. Though he’d set his sights on Hispania because it was the land of his birth, maybe, to keep Velia, he’d have to adjust his vision of the future.
“I would stay in Italy,” he finally said. “If that’s what it took for you to agree.”
“You misunderstand me,” she said quietly. “I meant…if you stayed in Italy, I could visit.”
“Visit,” he repeated, the word echoing around his skull. Visit. She means to visit me? Not…The ache in his chest intensified into a sharp, piercing pain that made the wound in his leg feel like he’d nicked himself while shaving.
Velia sat on the edge of his bed and reached for his hand, her small fingers closing around his. In the dark, her eyes glimmered with gathering tears.
“Ferox,” she murmured. “I…” She swallowed hard. “I love you. But I don’t love the life you’re offering me.”
He let out a long breath. She loved him. But somehow, it wasn’t enough. “You would really rather stay here, surrounded by gladiators and violence and death, than come with me? I can offer you peace, Velia. Somewhere quiet, somewhere that just belongs to us.”
“I don’t want peace! I like it here, Ferox.
I was only supposed to be here for a month, but I stayed because I found something here that I never knew existed.
All my life I thought the only future for me was getting married, bearing children, spending my life caring for them and my husband.
It felt like I was going to suffocate every time I thought of it.
But Lucullus showed me there’s another way.
There’s more I can want, different choices I can make. ”
“That’s the difference,” Ferox said sharply. “You chose this life. I didn’t.”
She was silent for a moment. The scraps of light caught on a tear sliding down her cheek. “You could choose it now,” she whispered unsteadily.
“No,” he said. “I can’t stay here. This time when I leave, it will be forever.” Though it would be difficult to leave Jason and Lea—and it might kill him to leave Velia—he needed a life free of ghosts, of guilt. A life that was truly his own.
He still prayed she would change her mind, that the prospect of such finality would sway her. But deep down, he knew her decision was made.
She wiped a hand across her eyes. “Very well,” she murmured. “Excuse me. I should fetch you some fresh bandages.” She rose from the bed and slipped from the room before he could say anything further.