Chapter 27
When Velia left to obtain some breakfast for them both, Ferox kept pacing his room. His thigh ached, and he longed to return to the comfort of his bed, but after the news Velia brought, he forced himself to remain upright. He needed to get his strength back as quickly as possible.
Ferox had summoned all the detachment he could muster in front of Velia. He wouldn’t upset her more than she already was. It was best if she believed he could face this with complete equanimity. Treat it the same as any other fight.
He almost admired the emperor’s ingenuity in devising this retribution.
Likely, the man thought Ferox and Achilles were much closer to friends than they were in reality.
But even though Ferox found Achilles extremely irritating most of the time, he still felt a sense of ownership over the novice.
Achilles’s wins and losses seemed to belong equally to Ferox, and if the novice were to die at Ferox’s hand…
Ferox wasn’t sure he’d be able to live with himself if he killed the man he’d spent countless hours shaping into a passable gladiator. And Velia might never forgive him, even if she knew he had no choice. Ferox meant what he said to her: he’d give this fight his all, come what may.
But that might be irrelevant if Achilles killed him first.
He had to turn his focus to regaining his strength. This would be his last fight ever, one way or another, and he wouldn’t shame himself or his memory by limping into the arena like a weakling.
He spent the next day walking laps around the training area.
His pace was slow and shuffling at first, but with the aid of a few hearty meals, the strength he’d lost from the week of illness returned.
Then he had only to contend with the pain and weakness in his left leg.
He ignored the pain as best he could, even when it rose to an all-consuming ache by the end of each day, and stretched the muscle between bouts of training, hoping to restore some pliability to the injured flesh.
The day before the match, he sparred with Lea late in the afternoon. Her blunted sword jabbed him in the ribs, and he stumbled back a step. That strike would have been fatal in the arena.
“You win,” he conceded, breathing hard.
Lea tossed her sword to the ground. “Let’s have a drink.” She walked over to a bench on the perimeter of the training area and sat, reaching down for the jug of water and cups that rested on the ground nearby.
Ferox followed her, suppressing a hiss of relief as he took the weight off his injured leg.
Lea poured them each a cup of water. He gulped his down with a murmur of thanks.
Then, he retrieved the jug and poured the rest of its contents over his leg.
Though the coolness only lasted a moment, it was still a blessed release from the burning pain.
He would have killed for a trip to the frigidarium, the cold-plunge room at the baths, but he didn’t want to be seen limping through the streets before his final match.
On the other side of the training area, Achilles battered a punching bag, his back to them.
Ferox mentally corrected his form, but forced himself to glance away.
They seemed to have a tacit agreement not to speak to each other since the news.
It was best that way. They were no longer trainer and novice, but opponents.
Unfortunately, they knew each other’s fighting styles better than any usual opponents would.
Achilles’s left-handed maneuvers wouldn’t ruffle Ferox, but Achilles also knew Ferox’s own quirks and tricks.
They would be all too well-matched, and if not for the emperor’s decree that the match be to the death, Ferox would have bet every sestertius he possessed on a draw.
His gaze shifted to Velia, standing near the entrance to the ludus.
She was talking to the merchant who supplied the ludus with barley and flour.
Tension gripped Ferox’s body, but he shoved the feeling aside.
He knew this merchant to be peaceable and inoffensive.
Not like the stranger who had attacked Velia.
Nevertheless, Ferox kept his eyes on her.
Lea must have followed the direction of his gaze. “This is all for her, isn’t it?” she murmured. “Yet I’ve barely seen you exchange two words in the past few days.”
“This isn’t her fault.” But Lea was right about the fact that he and Velia had only spoken out of necessity.
They certainly hadn’t spent any nights together since he woke from his fever.
He wanted desperately to go to her, to speak to her and soothe whatever worries he knew she had, but he hadn’t been able to bring himself to approach, even though their time together was running out.
Maybe this was the least painful way for it to end—fizzling out in days of silence and avoidance.
“I didn’t mean I blame her for it,” Lea said. “Only that I wonder how you can defy the most powerful man in the world for someone and then, a week later, pretend she doesn’t exist.”
Ferox released a sigh. “I’m beginning to think dying may be the simplest outcome to all this.” He imbued the comment with dark sarcasm.
“Did she ask you to throw the fight? Did you argue?”
Ferox shook his head. “Not about that. When I woke from my fever, I told her I wanted her to come with me to Hispania. I told her I would marry her. But she doesn’t wish to leave this place.”
Lea made a noise of scathing mirth. “Normal women want marriage and children and things like that. Velia is not a normal woman, Ferox. If that’s what you want, you need to look elsewhere.”
“That’s not what I want,” he snapped. “I don’t care about marriage.
I don’t give a fig about children. I want her.
I only offered because I thought—I thought it would help her say yes.
” But he’d been a fool. He’d known from his first sight of her that Velia was no ordinary woman.
Ordinary women didn’t choose to live in a ludus or work to acquire their very own gladiators.
So when he’d offered her an ordinary life, her refusal shouldn’t have surprised him. “She asked if I might consider staying nearby. So she could visit.” He tried to keep the bitterness from his voice.
Lea was silent for a moment. “What’s left for you in Hispania? I doubt you’ll even recognize the place. Your family is gone. What do you expect to find?”
That was a question he somehow hadn’t considered. Lea’s words forced him to admit to himself that he hadn’t been thinking particularly far ahead. His entire plan comprised leaving the ludus and returning to Hispania because it was the only place other than Rome he knew.
Velia had finished talking with the merchant, who departed, so Ferox allowed his gaze to return to Lea. “I don’t know,” he muttered. “I just want to…not be here.”
“Because of Hector?”
The sound of the name made him flinch. “You of all people should understand.”
Lea raised an eyebrow. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Ferox hesitated, but he might be dead in a day’s time. He could afford to finally confirm his suspicions about Lea and Hector. “You and Hector…you were lovers.”
Her gaze slid away from his. She shifted on the bench, drawing one ankle up to rest on her opposite knee. “Yes, we were sleeping together. But we weren’t…lovers.” She grimaced at the word.
Ferox’s incomprehension must have shown on his face, for she sighed. “We were friends who enjoyed bedding each other,” she elaborated, which hardly helped. “We didn’t love each other. Not in that way. Not like…” Her gaze shifted to Velia, now talking to Achilles.
Ferox still didn’t understand—he had only ever had three friends in his life and had never been tempted to sleep with any of them—but he set it aside. “Even so. You knew him in a way Jason and I didn’t.”
Her voice softened. “The memories don’t have to be something you need to escape from, you know.
Yes, sometimes it’s painful when I stop in front of what used to be his room and think, just for a moment, I can hear him humming to himself inside.
Or when I see someone out of the corner of my eye who bears a passing resemblance to him but when I look, it’s not him.
But those little moments…they keep him alive, in a way.
If memories are the only thing I have left of him, then I’ll hold them close. ”
Ferox took a moment to absorb her words. It was tempting to view things as she did. To allow himself to bask in the memories instead of fleeing from them. But he couldn’t. He didn’t deserve to. “It’s different for you,” he said, his voice lowering. “It’s not your fault he died.”
“Neither is it yours.”
“It is,” Ferox grunted. “If I’d fought that day as I was supposed to, he would still be alive.”
“Oh, stop it.” Lea tossed her braid over her shoulder. “Velia thinks your match with Achilles is all her fault, doesn’t she? There are some who might agree with her. But you would never allow her to believe that. Why can’t you give yourself the same grace?”
Ferox blinked. He had never seen the two situations as remotely similar. In his mind, he alone was responsible for this match-up with Achilles, as he’d been the one to swing the sword that defied the emperor’s wishes.
But if that were true…could he view Hector’s death the same way? Could he admit the only person truly responsible was the man who’d actually killed him?
“I don’t think Hector sees it that way,” Ferox muttered.
Lea gave him a questioning glance.
Ferox hesitated; he hadn’t wanted to bring this up, but perhaps it was too late for such circumspection. “I’ve felt him haunting me,” he confessed. “I have these dreams of him in the underworld, all bloodied and wounded. I know he’s angry with me. He blames me for his death.”
The confession, painful as it was, eased something in his chest. This had been his burden to bear for so long, and there was relief in sharing it, even if it wouldn’t fix anything.
“You blame yourself for his death,” Lea said. “That’s where those dreams come from. Listen to me.” She swiveled on the bench to face him. “Hector didn’t relish this life. For better or for worse, he’s at peace now. No more fighting, no more violence. He’s happy now.”
The conviction in her voice tempted him. What if she was right? What if his dreams were merely the result of his own misplaced guilt, not Hector’s shade seeking to torment him?
“Hector is not haunting you,” Lea continued. “You’re haunting yourself. Hector is off frolicking in Elysium. I doubt he even spares us a thought. And if he does, you know he’d want us all to be happy. Even if you had wronged him, he wasn’t the sort to hold a grudge.”
That was true. Hector would forgive nearly anything.
Once, Ferox had witnessed Hector get into a fistfight with a man who’d insulted his accent.
Hector had bludgeoned the man into submission, then a quarter of an hour later, they’d been deep into a game of dice, laughing and chatting as if they were the best of friends.
Hector didn’t hesitate to solve problems with his fists, but he also was quick to forgive.
Ferox abruptly realized the version of Hector conjured by his guilt bore little resemblance to the real man.
You’re haunting yourself.
“Listen, you have many strengths, but you’re not exactly the most agile thinker,” Lea said.
“You get one idea in your thick head and you cling to it as if it’s the only thing that’s true.
Hector dies, you decide to leave the ludus with barely the clothes on your back.
A terrible idea, as Jason and I tried to tell you. How did that go?”
“Not well,” Ferox admitted.
“Then you come back, and all you can think about is this even more terrible idea of abandoning everyone who cares about you for a place you haven’t been in what, fifteen years?
And you talk about wanting to buy a farm or a vineyard or a mine or whatever it is—but you know nothing about any of that, do you? ”
Ferox stared at the ground. Maybe he had made some poor decisions in the past, motivated by a guilt which—if he could believe Lea—might have been misplaced. Maybe he was on the verge of another terrible decision.
“If Hector hadn’t died, would you have still wanted to leave?” she asked.
“No,” he muttered. Ferox had never considered leaving until Hector’s death.
He’d been…if not precisely happy, then content.
He had a better life than many in this very city.
Once he got too old to fight, assuming he hadn’t met his death in the arena, he probably would have convinced Lucullus to repurpose him as a trainer for the newer gladiators. Just like he was doing now, for Velia.
“I don’t begrudge you wanting something different,” Lea said. “None of us ended up here by choice, after all. But that doesn’t mean it’s impossible to build something real.” She fell silent, and her gaze grew faraway. “My mother’s favorite plant was the thistle.”
Ferox blinked at the incongruous remark, but stayed quiet, trusting she had a reason to mention it.
“She liked their purple flowers, but it was mostly because of how their seeds work,” Lea continued. “The wind carries the seeds far and wide, and they grow wherever they land. She used to say if a little thistle could make the best of wherever it found itself, then so could we.”
Ferox made a low murmur of acknowledgment. Lea rarely spoke of her past, but he knew she’d been enslaved with her mother, who died shortly before Lea ended up at the ludus.
“Do you understand what I mean?” she asked.
Ferox nodded. She meant he could be like a thistle. He could put down roots where he found himself, choose to make this life his own.
But in order to do that, he’d first have to believe Lea, believe her conviction that Hector was at peace, not haunting him.
That he bore no responsibility for Hector’s death, just as Velia bore no responsibility for the circumstances of this upcoming fight.
That what seemed like Hector’s ghost was just Ferox’s own misplaced guilt.
As he attempted to get his head around the idea, Nyx prowled up to them. The cat’s yellow gaze swung from Lea to Ferox, and he emitted a hiss in Ferox’s direction. Then he darted forward and swatted at Ferox’s foot.
Ferox jerked his foot back with haste.
“He wants you to leave,” Lea said helpfully.
Ferox grumbled, but he’d rested for long enough. He needed to get back to training. He heaved himself from the bench, and as soon as the spot was vacant, Nyx hopped up and rubbed his face against Lea’s arm.
Ferox picked up his sword and went to find another sparring partner, contemplating thistles and seeds and roots as he did.