37. Drusilla
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
DRUSILLA
D espite a Durevolian attempting regicide on Cato, Dru manages to fall back into a fitful sleep in her own bed, waking only at the sound of the bell tolling eight times.
She lies in bed for a while, enjoying the sunrise until the bell tolls ten times.
A part of her wishes she could’ve returned to Marcus’s bed, but she’s not sure she would want to leave it again if she did.
Last night was…
She stretches out her limbs and sighs contentedly, words eluding her.
More than the act itself, she finally told Marcus that she loved him.
And he didn’t deny her. In fact, he did the opposite.
He showed her just how much he loves her in return—to the point she feels like a fool for believing otherwise.
She recalls his hands on her, inside her, the heat between them undeniable. Inevitable. Even now, she craves him more than she does food or water.
You have to get him out of your thoughts now, so you can focus on not dying in the final trial.
It appears Sabina has let Dru sleep in, so she decides to dress herself before the girl can knock on her door.
Pulling on her undergarments, she can’t help considering the consequences of what happened.
If all Marcus said was true, it changes her plans about leaving here once the trials are over.
She has no idea how everything’s going to turn out today, but if somehow all three of them manage to survive, she wants to stay—something the Faithless are unlikely to allow.
Tightening the belt around her beige tunic, she places the metal breastplate custom made by the royal armorer for Cato’s sister over her head, tightening the straps until it fits snug enough around her.
She’s shocked at how light the metal is, wondering what it’s made of and if it’ll be strong enough to stop a spear.
Next, she attaches a thick leather pauldron to her left shoulder, leaving her right unadorned, then places leather armbands around both forearms.
Sitting on the bed with her back to the balcony, she laces up her sandals and tightens the greaves and polyens made from the same metal as the breastplate around her shins and over her knees.
Standing, she sets to braiding her hair. I’ll need to check on Cato fir ? —
She doesn’t get the chance to finish her thought before someone behind her places a thick gag around her mouth.
Instinctively, she bucks against their hold on her, but they’re too strong for it to do much good. Especially when they yank her arms behind her and place irons around her covered wrists. Deodamnatus . They’ve effectively taken away any chance of her fighting back.
A knock at her door gives her some hope. She screams against her gag as Sabina enters her room. For once, she’s glad the girl didn’t wait to be invited in.
Sabina stops in the threshold, eyes widening, mouth open. She doesn’t make a single sound, feet rooted to the floor. Stellae, scream, yell, run, do something .
Dru screams again right as her captor places a blindfold over her eyes, tying it so tight her head aches.
“Dru?” she hears Sabina squeak out. It’s not loud enough to bring anyone running to find out what’s happening.
With a grunt, her captor lifts Dru off the ground and carries her over to the balcony as she squirms in his hold.
Tying a rope a few times around her midsection and her calves, he lifts her over the bar.
The sound of rope chafing against metal accompanies her as she’s lowered down the cliffs of the palace.
She curses herself. I never did warn Marcus about this particular vulnerability.
Breathing hard through her gag, she tries to think of a way out of this, of who would want to abduct her before the final trial and what good—or bad—it could possibly do.
A pair of rough hands grab her waist right before her feet touch down on what she assumes to be the path that leads down to the beach. Whoever they are, they throw her over their shoulder like a bale of hay, not speaking a single word to her. She squirms in their grasp, but to no avail.
They walk in the open air for some time, the morning sun beating down on them. Sweat dampens her neck and back as she continues to buck against her captor.
It doesn’t feel like they’re going down as much as she thought they would by this point.
Maybe we’re not on the path to the beach.
She listens for something that might tell her where she is, but only the sounds of the waves fill her ears, the smell of dead seaweed hitting the back of her throat through the cloth.
Not long after, her vision goes completely black, with not a stitch of light to be found—she figures they must be inside somewhere. For a moment, she panics, wondering if they found the cave on the beach. The Viverna . But she’s assaulted by the smell of wet stone and hay, not burnt plumeria.
Where are they taking me?
“Finally,” a voice says—a voice that sounds a lot like Venatus Magister Blaise. “What took so long?”
“She put up more of a fight than the king,” the man holding her says, his northern accent thick.
Cato. She squirms in his grasp again.
“See. ”
“Lock her up with the others. She won’t be able to do much then.”
A few more steps and her captor sets her down hard .
She nearly collapses, her legs tied too tight to attempt balance.
Leaning back, harsh, rounded stones bite into her back and exposed arms. The sound of more manacles clinking around her ignites her anger further. I’m not the only one who was taken.
Someone yanks her chains back and locks the middle link to the wall before untying her legs. They remove the gag from around her mouth and, lastly, the blindfold over her eyes.
Without wasting any time to identify her captor, she smashes her head into his. The man—a Phaedran soldier by the look of him—stumbles back, a hand pressed against where she split open his skin. White stars flash across her vision and her head aches, but it was worth it.
“Durevolian scum,” the man growls, raising his hand to strike her?—
“Enough,” Blaise commands quietly, appearing from the shadows of what she recognizes as the room where she killed the lion in the second trial. “You can’t rough her up too much. We have to at least make it appear like a fair fight.”
The young soldier grumbles something unintelligible before stalking off and busying himself with something else.
Blaise approaches her. “Forgive him. He’s never abducted anyone before today.”
“You know what they say—practice makes perfect,” a familiar voice beside her mutters, but she ignores them.
“Blaise.” She says his name like a curse. “What’s the point of capturing me, of keeping us down here?”
Blaise smiles eerily, baring his teeth. “Why don’t you ask your king?”
Dru turns to her left, then her right, finding Cato beside her. He appears to be unharmed, even outfitted properly for the gladiator trial, as she is. At least they let us dress for the occasion before taking us. Though she imagines there’s a reason for that too.
“Did they hurt you?” she asks.
“No.” He sighs. “I should’ve prepared for something like this.”
“You can’t blame yourself for this.” She lowers her voice. “But why did the Phaedrans do it? What purpose does it serve?”
Cato watches Blaise pace as he speaks. “As Venatus Magister Blaise explained to me when I got here, the gamemasters chose a select few who have proven themselves to be the greatest threat throughout the trials to be chained here. To put us at a disadvantage.”
“I’m trying to be flattered by that,” she mutters.
“Well, if that were true, Marcus would be down here with us.”
“But we’re underneath the arena,” Dru argues. “That’s not a disadvantage—that’s taking us out of the trial completely.”
Cato shakes his head. “When my ancestors used to involve more corporeal punishment in their rulings, they would chain up prisoners here, raise this pillar above the arena floor, and whip them in front of a crowd.”
She squints into the darkness to the edges of the room but sees nothing out of the ordinary except a cache of shields and spears. “This is a moving platform?”
“It hasn’t been used in some time, but yes.”
“How do the Phaedrans know about it?”
Cato closes his eyes for a moment. “I was stupid enough to agree to give them access to the arena. I didn’t think they’d use this room for anything. Truly, I forgot about its existence.”
Dru glances up at the low ceiling, trying not to take her anger out on Cato. I knew I should’ve read the draft rules.
“Well, you were wrong.” Dru glances around. “This is the second time I’ve been in this room. The lion who attacked me was chained to this pillar instead of us. There’s only one way out of here and we can’t get there.”
She nearly screams in frustration .
“This is my fault.” Cato flexes his arms “Gods, I thought I could get over my father’s death and handle my ascension to the throne with little trouble. But I overestimated myself and underestimated the Imperium.”
“My father was supposed to pass his knowledge on to me,” he continues, “but he’d already done that with Vittoria.
And when she died, that part of him—the part that made him a good and noble king, and my father—died with her.
My mother refused to see it until the very end.
It’s no excuse on my part—I should’ve done better. ”
She looks at him, his head hung low in defeat, his long dark curls blocking his face. Remorse pricks at her heart. Though she wishes he would’ve consulted her, there’s nothing to be done about it now. He has to release himself from that guilt.
The two of them stand in silence in each other’s presence, awaiting whatever Blaise has in store for them.
Despite her ire, Dru wants to forgive Cato.
By his own account, he got her, Marcus, and his entire country into this situation.
Yet his confession stems from self-deprecation not truth, leaving out some of the most important axioms.
“Drusilla,” Cato begins, and she knows she’s not going to like whatever he has to say. “Marcus and I have a plan should I die?—”
“You might have doomed us all, but you’re not going to die while I draw breath,” Dru argues.
“Be that as it may, if I leave this realm, which seems likely given the circumstances, we’ve put something in place that involves you.” Blaise walks by, forcing Cato to drop his voice to a whisper. “I can’t say more than that now, but I don’t want you to be taken by surprise when the time comes.”
Before she can respond, the sound of Ambitus’s muffled voice trickles in through the floor above them.
A moment later, the ceiling over their heads begins to crank open.