Chapter 24
Chapter Twenty-Four
Sulla
I wake before dawn. Reid breathes steadily across from me.
I know who you are now. That’s what matters to me.
Her words from yesterday. I’ve been turning them over for hours.
She doesn’t know. She thinks she does. But she doesn’t.
I have to understand it myself before I can explain it to her. How the boy who loved Livia became the man who held the whip for decades.
Not the ergastulum. I’ve examined that enough.
She needs to know what came after.
I close my eyes and let the memory come. As it washes over me, it’s hard to separate the physical from the emotional pain.
After the ergastulum, everything hurt.
My shoulders. My feet. The places where the rats had bitten me that festered and wouldn’t heal.
But the worst pain was the empty space inside where hope used to live.
I kept my head down. Did what I was told. Didn’t speak unless spoken to. Didn’t look anyone in the eye.
Especially not Livia.
She was still Domina’s lady’s maid. I’d see her sometimes in the courtyard, laughing with the other household slaves.
She never looked at me.
Good.
I didn’t want her to.
She’d taught me what love was worth.
Dominus reassigned me after the ergastulum. I was no longer a potential gladiator—my ruined feet and shoulders made me worthless for the arena. "You have an eye for equipment," he said. "Use it." I was assigned to the ludus to manage equipment. Organizing weapons. Maintaining armor. Invisible work.
The old head trainer—the one who’d shown me basic techniques, who’d been patient when I was clumsy—was gone.
“Dismissed for producing weak fighters,” the overseer said.
The new trainer was Brutus.
I watched him from my place at the equipment table.
He was massive. Scarred. Mean.
On his first day, a gladiator—a veteran named Rufus—questioned one of his orders. Asked why they were doing a drill a certain way.
Brutus didn’t answer.
Just took the whip from his belt and struck Rufus across the face. Once. Twice. Three times.
Blood poured from Rufus’s split cheek.
“Questions?” Brutus asked the others.
No one spoke.
“Good.”
I waited for the lanista to intervene. To say it was too much, too harsh. To remind Brutus that gladiators were valuable property.
Instead, the lanista smiled.
“Excellent control,” he said to Brutus. “Fear is the best motivator.”
If I hadn’t figured it out before, that was the day I learned that the world rewards monsters.
I watched Brutus for two years.
He beat the gladiators until they vomited from pain. Whipped them bloody for the smallest mistakes. Locked them in the barracks without food if they showed weakness.
He broke them.
And they won their matches. Fight after fight after fight. Brutus’s gladiators were victorious. Obedient. Terrified to fail.
The lanista praised him. Gave him better quarters. More authority. Respect.
Terror, apparently, was excellent for business.
Meanwhile, there was Gaius.
The assistant trainer. Mid-thirties, calm, patient. He tried to teach differently.
“You can be strong without being cruel,” I heard him tell a young gladiator once. “Strength comes from discipline, not fear.”
The gladiator, a boy named Titus, actually smiled.
I watched that and thought, He’s going to get them both killed.
I was right.
Gaius’s fighters won less often. They hesitated sometimes. Questioned orders. Maintained some shred of humanity.
The lanista called it weakness.
Gaius was dismissed within six months.
“Soft training produces soft fighters,” the lanista announced. “We have no use for mercy here.”
I learned: Kindness fails. Cruelty succeeds. The world is simple if you’re willing to see it clearly.
But there was one person who wouldn’t learn.
Aquila.
He was older—maybe thirty—a veteran gladiator who’d survived a decade in the arena through skill and luck. He’d been kind to me after the ergastulum.
Slipped me extra bread when the overseers weren’t looking. Helped me strengthen my ruined feet. Told me I was strong for surviving.
“Don’t let them break your spirit,” he’d say quietly. “You’re still human.”
I didn’t believe him.
But I didn’t tell him to stop reminding me, either.
One day, the lanista announced, “Old fighters are expensive. We need fresh blood. Younger, cheaper, more vicious.”
Aquila was expensive. Aquila was old. Aquila still had that shred of humanity that made him valuable as a person but worthless as spectacle.
They put him in the arena against three men.
Not a fair fight. Not even a real fight.
Slaughter for entertainment.
I found out the morning of the decision and ran to the lanista’s office.
“Please,” I said. “Aquila—he’s valuable, he could train the younger ones, he knows techniques—”
The lanista looked at me with flat eyes.
“Are you questioning my decision?”
My stomach went cold and I took a step back as I lowered my eyes. “No. No, Dominus, I just—”
“Because I remember a boy who questioned decisions. Who thought he knew better. Who spent six weeks learning his place.” He leaned forward. “Did you forget those lessons?”
“No, Dominus.”
“Then why are you in my office begging for a gladiator’s life?”
I couldn’t answer. My throat closed.
“Sentiment is weakness,” the lanista said. “Love is a lie. Mercy is death. I thought the ergastulum taught you that.”
“It did, Dominus.”
“Then get out.”
I left.
I never begged again.
I watched from behind the gates as Aquila died.
He fought well. Killed one of the three. Wounded another.
But he was old. And tired. And alone.
They brought him down.
The crowd cheered.
I stood there and felt nothing.
The ergastulum had carved out the part of me that could feel. I’d learned that lesson perfectly.
Caring gets you killed.
Kindness gets you killed.
Love gets you six weeks in the dark.
Aquila died because the lanista wanted cheaper fighters. My begging changed nothing; the decision was already made. But I learned the lesson anyway: sentiment is weakness. Caring is dangerous. The lanista was right—affection is a lie.
A year later, there was a new gladiator.
Seventeen, maybe. Small. Clumsy with his sword. He reminded me of myself before Livia. Before the dark.
Brutus was about to beat him for dropping his weapon.
The boy was crying. “Please, I’m trying, I just—”
Brutus raised the whip.
And I opened my mouth.
Almost said, “He’s new. Give him time. He’ll learn—”
But then I pictured Aquila’s face. The way his eyes had looked when the sword went through him. The way he’d fallen. The way the sand had drunk his blood.
I closed my mouth. Watched Brutus beat the boy. Watched the boy learn.
This is what the world is. Brutal. Simple. Clear.
You’re either the one with the whip or the one bleeding in the sand.
I knew which one I’d be.
When Brutus died—gored by a bull during a demonstration—the lanista called me to his office.
“You’ve been watching Brutus,” he said. “Learning from him.”
“Yes, Dominus.”
“He was effective. Kept the gladiators obedient through fear. Made them profitable.” He studied me. “You understand why that works.”
I did.
I understood perfectly.
Fear works because pain is the only truth. Kindness is a lie people tell themselves before the world breaks them.
I’d learned it in the ergastulum.
I’d confirmed it watching Aquila die.
I’d proven it by keeping my mouth shut when the boy was beaten.
“I’m promoting you,” the lanista said. “Ludus master. You’ll be in charge of all training. All discipline. Everything.”
He handed me Brutus’s whip.
Heavy leather. Stained dark with old blood.
I took it.
“What do you say?” the lanista asked.
I should have felt something. Horror, maybe. Shame. Anything.
But the ergastulum had stripped all that out.
“Thank you, Dominus,” I said. “I will make you proud. And richer.”
My voice was steady.
My hands didn’t shake.
The boy who’d loved Livia was dead.
The boy who’d begged for Aquila’s life was dead.
What stood in the lanista’s office was something simpler.
Something that understood the world.
Something that would never be weak again.
I became what the world taught me to be.
For decades, I held that whip.
I beat men. Broke them. Made them afraid.
I told myself I had no choice. Told myself this was survival. Told myself the ergastulum had left me no other option.
But that was a lie.
I’d had a choice the day the clumsy boy dropped his sword. I could have spoken. Could have shown mercy.
I chose silence.
I chose cruelty.
Not because I had to.
Because it was easier to be the monster than risk being the victim again.
Because hurting others meant I’d never be hurt myself.
Because as long as I held the whip, I’d never feel its lash.
I open my eyes.
The tent is getting lighter. Dawn approaching.
I chose this. Not the ergastulum—that was done to me. Not Aquila’s death—that was the lanista’s cruelty. But the boy crying in the sand while I stood there with my mouth closed.
That was me.
I don’t know what to do with that yet. Forgiveness feels too easy and punishment is all I’ve ever known. Neither of those is what this moment requires.
Reid stirs in her sleep. I watch her.
She said, I know who you are now. That’s what matters to me.
She doesn’t know everything. But she will. I promised her eventually, when this is over, when there are no cameras.
I meant it.
Maybe what this moment requires is just that, to keep choosing differently. Not because it erases what I was.
Because it doesn’t.
But because she’s worth trying for. And I’m worth trying for.
That has to be enough.
For now.