Chapter 24
Chapter Twenty-Four
Sophia
By the time we leave the training yard, my pulse has dialed back from full thunder to something like a strong, steady drumbeat.
Sand clings to the cuffs of my jeans. I don’t brush it off. It feels… honest. Proof I was really there, not just taking notes at a safe distance.
Flavius walks beside me along the packed-dirt path, a few inches away, close enough that our arms brush occasionally. Neither of us moves away.
The sun is higher now, turning the arena railings bright and throwing little shards of light off the metal buckles of his training gear.
He’s quiet.
If it were anyone else, I’d assume he didn’t know what to say. With him, I recognize the shape of it—deliberate silence. Space offered instead of words. Attention without pressure.
I replay what I just saw, frame by frame.
The precision of his body—efficient, lethal, graceful in a way that has nothing to do with performance and everything to do with survival.
The moment he stepped right up to the edge between sparring partner and living weapon…
and then stepped back because he chose to.
And the way Cassius trusted him to make that choice.
He’s not an abstraction, someone I used to study. He’s a man whose nervous system was carved by violence, who now spends his days teaching tourists not to hurt themselves and making sure I eat.
And I love him.
The thought sits in my chest with the quiet certainty of a solved equation. No fireworks. No cinematic swell. Just… there. Correct.
I don’t feel like I’m falling. I feel like something inside me has finally slotted into the right place.
“Your shoulders are doing the thing,” he says, voice low.
I blink. “The thing?”
He makes a small rolling motion with his hand. “Up, down. Up, down. Like waves on bad-weather sea. Too many thoughts in small space.”
I glance down and realize he’s right—my muscles are tightening and releasing in tiny pulses, the way they do when I’m looping something.
I exhale slowly through my nose. “Accurate,” I admit.
He studies my face. “Training was… too much?” he asks. “Too loud? Too… real?”
“It was a lot,” I say, because he deserves honesty. “But not in the wrong way.”
Something eases around his eyes. “Good,” he says. “You stood very steady.”
You have no idea, I think. You have no idea what that did to me.
We reach the main path that leads toward the dining hall. Voices drift from the open doors—the clatter of dishes, the smell of coffee, someone laughing too loud at something that probably isn’t that funny. My stomach notices, belatedly, that the last thing I ate was a protein bar before dawn.
“You should eat,” Flavius says, as if he heard my thought. “Your brain works better when you eat.”
I lift a brow. “You literally just finished fighting for two hours.”
He tips his head, mouth quirking. “Yes. But I need shower first. Very sweaty. Not fair to others.”
“Fair point.”
He laughs under his breath.
At the bottom of the dining hall steps, we pause. People come and go around us—staff in sanctuary polos, a couple of early tourists with maps in hand, a little kid dragging a plush tiger by the tail. The smell of bacon and toast wraps around us.
“You eat,” he says. “I will shower, change. Then make jokes for children.” The word jokes lands differently now. I know exactly what he’s putting on and how much he’s holding back. “I eat later. After demos.”
“Okay.” I pause to make sure he sees my face when I say, “Thank you for letting me watch.”
His gaze holds mine, steady. “Thank you for staying,” he says.
Heat pricks behind my eyes. I swallow it fast. “See you later,” I manage.
He nods once and peels away toward the cabins, the sun catching fire at the ends of his hair. People instinctively move out of his path without knowing why.
I turn toward the dining hall and nearly collide with a man-shaped wall.
Not metaphorical. Actual.
Sulla.
He’s coming out as I’m going in, a chipped ceramic mug in his hand.
Up close, he’s all angles and scars and gray at the temples, like someone took the idea of Taskmaster and carved it into a person.
Even in a sanctuary T-shirt and jeans, he radiates that specific kind of authority that makes people stand up straighter without thinking about it.
Laura warned me about him in my first week. Former ludus master—the trainer whose authority in the training ground was absolute and brutal. He’s been at the sanctuary since the beginning, but no one’s quite sure why Laura keeps him around. “Difficult” was the diplomatic word she used.
We both stop short.
“Watch your feet, scholar,” he says.
My brain scrambles for an appropriate response. “Sorry,” I say. “I was… thinking.”
One thick brow twitches. His gaze slips from my sand-dusted jeans to my face, then over my shoulder in the direction Flavius walked away. Whatever he reads there seems to satisfy him.
The nod he gives me is short and deliberate. Not the polite one he gives to tourists. Something else—a kind of acceptance I wouldn’t have expected from a man whose cruelty once kept gladiators in line. Maybe that’s why Laura keeps him around. Maybe redemption is possible even for ludus masters.
Then he steps aside and leaves the doorway clear.
The whole exchange takes fewer than five seconds, but my heart’s pounding like I just passed an oral exam.
Inside, breakfast is the usual sensory chaos—coffee, eggs, overlapping conversations, the clink of cutlery. I grab a tray and focus on the sequence so my brain doesn’t flip: plate, eggs, fruit, toast, tea.
I pick a small table by a window, away from the loudest clusters, and line my utensils parallel to the edge of my plate. The ritual helps. So does the first hot sip of tea.
I’m halfway through my eggs when my phone buzzes against the tabletop.
Notification banner: Office of Research Integrity – RE: Complaint Submission
Adrenaline snaps through me so fast my fork clatters against the plate.
For a few seconds, I just stare at the screen, heart racing. The rest of the dining hall blurs—voices going tinny, light too sharp. My brain offers me two options in rapid succession:
Open it right now.
Throw the phone into the nearest trash can and move to another country.
I breathe in for four, hold for four, out for six. My therapist’s voice: You don’t have to act at the speed of your fear.
This deserves more than a panicked skim in a crowded room.
I lock the screen, flip the phone face down, and make myself take three more bites of food. Eggs. Toast. Fruit. My body is an organism that needs fuel if it’s going to fight systems built by people who forget their bodies exist.
Only when my hands stop shaking do I clear my tray and step back outside.
The air is a little cooler than inside—less coffee, more trees, and a faint hint of horses. I walk the familiar path back toward my cabin, counting steps without meaning to. Gravel under boots. The scrape of a broom somewhere behind the main building. A distant child’s shout.
At my cabin, I lock the door, set my laptop on the table, and sit.
The email loads, black text on bland white.
Dear Dr. Vitale,
This message confirms receipt of your formal complaint regarding alleged research misconduct by Dr. Patricia Blackwell…
My eyes skim, latching onto key phrases: “…thank you for the comprehensive documentation provided…” “…preliminary review interviews will be scheduled within the next two weeks…” “…we may request additional clarifying materials as the investigation proceeds…” “…participation is voluntary but strongly encouraged…” “…you may have an advisor or support person present…”
My stomach drops in a clean, fast elevator-fall.
This is happening.
Submitting the complaint felt like throwing a stone into a dark lake. This email is the first ripple reaching shore—the machine waking up, gears starting to turn.
For one brief, treacherous moment, I imagine the alternative. Replying Never mind. Calling it all a misunderstanding. Apologizing for the trouble. Sliding back into the safe groove of “promising mentee” and “low-maintenance junior scholar” and “woman who doesn’t make trouble.”
The image makes my skin crawl.
I breathe. In. Hold. Out.
I filed because I meant it, I remind myself. And I still do.
The email goes into to my dedicated complaint folder. Then I open a blank reply.
Thank you for your message. I confirm receipt of this notice and am available for preliminary interviews at your convenience. I will provide any additional clarifying materials as requested during the review process.
Before I can second-guess myself, I hit send.
The auto-response comes back immediately: Your message has been received and logged to case file #2024-RMC-447.
I close the laptop softly and exhale. Done. The ball is back in their court now.
My brain throws up a need: movement. Tea. I can at least get more tea.
The covered breezeway between the main hall and the staff wing is cooler than outside, shaded, the air smelling faintly of dust and metal and whatever they mop these floors with. My footsteps echo off the stone. Somewhere, a soda machine hums.
Halfway through, I see him.
Flavius leans against one of the support pillars, arms folded loosely across his chest. Post-shower now—hair damp, gray T-shirt soft against his chest, jeans instead of training gear. Somehow he looks more dangerous like this, not less, with the rawness of the morning still close to the surface.
Light from the open side of the breezeway cuts across his face, catching the ridge of the scar near his temple, the line of his mouth. His gaze finds mine and stays there.
My heart does a little stutter, like my autonomic system didn’t get the memo that we’re supposed to be calm now.
“Hi,” I say, because my social skills are occasionally fourteen years old.
“Hello, Sophia,” he says. Slowly. Like he likes how my name feels in his mouth.
We stop a few feet apart. The space between us feels both very small and very large.