The Defiant (The Valiant #2)(24)

Under other circumstances, I might have felt sorry for Nyx. Because I’d grown up thinking exactly the same thing about Sorcha, and it had hollowed me out inside. Made me lose sight of the things that had been truly important to me. In that moment, however, the thing that was most important to me was that I was on my hands and knees, bleeding from a knife wound.

The pain had yet to fully register, and I clamped a hand to my side beneath the dark stuff of my cloak, hoping desperately that Pontius Aquila wouldn’t notice that I was hurt. The voice of the Morrigan hissed inside my head, whispering a warning against showing weakness. I silently, fervently agreed. If he thought I was badly injured, the noble Tribune might just relent and let Nyx finish the job.

And I wouldn’t be able to stop her.

Lydia still writhed on the ground, whimpering in agony, ignored by Aquila and his people, and I feared for what would happen to her once he remembered she was there.

I could feel the sweat breaking out across the back of my neck as I struggled to rise to my feet. The black-clad guards stood with weapons drawn in front of the clustered Achillea girls. Cai was pinned on the ground by one of the guards, his arm behind his back. There was blood at the corner of Cai’s mouth, and his teeth were bared in a snarl.

I stood there, swaying, defiant, as Aquila gestured one of his men forward. Even with the feature-obscuring helmet he wore, I recognized him as one of the Ludus Achillea’s former trainers—a thick-necked brute with bare arms that bore the scars of many fights, he was an ex-legion soldier named Ixion. Sorcha had dismissed him shortly after I’d arrived at the ludus because of his penchant for excessive violence. I’d thought at the time that, in a school where we were being trained to kill, that was saying something.

“This . . . gladiatrix needs some time alone, I think,” Aquila said. “Take her somewhere quiet where she can clear her mind and ponder her future.”

Ixion grunted and grabbed me by the arm. I shot a glance over my shoulder at Elka, whose face was rigid with fury, and shook my head. Cai had been right to warn me against action earlier. The only thing for me—for any of us—to do in that moment was cooperate. Defiance would come later. But only if we survived long enough. Dead or disabled, we were no good to each other. After a moment, Elka seemed to realize it too, and took a half step back.

I walked ahead of Ixion, one hand clamped to my wounded side, as he prodded me in the back with the butt of his sword. He steered me away from the barracks buildings and in the direction of the angry orange glow that still licked upward in the farthest corner of the ludus compound, where the stables still burned. He stopped when we reached a squat stone building that I’d never really given much thought to before that moment. I’d always assumed it was a storage shed for livestock fodder. There were steps dug down into the earth in front of the heavy ironbound door, and Ixion preceded me, producing a ring of keys from the worn leather pouch hanging at his belt.

My mouth went dry when I saw it. It had belonged to Thalestris.

So she really has left us, I thought.

Anguish for my sister surged through me again. And helplessness.

Ixion shuffled through Thalestris’s keys until he found the one he wanted—a heavy black thing that looked like a claw—and inserted it in the lock. It uttered a groaning screech as he turned it, and the door swung ponderously open. He reached over, grabbed me by the shoulder, and wordlessly shoved me inside. I stumbled down another few shallow steps, gritting my teeth at the pain in my side, which had gone from dull throbbing to a searing burn. In the darkness, all I could see was a brief black corridor ahead, like a yawning maw waiting to swallow me. It terminated in a tiny cell, with a cage of bars for a door. My heart in my throat, I glanced over my shoulder at Ixion.

“I always wanted to lock one of you upstart bitches away to rot here in Tartarus,” Ixion said, grinning. “Bloody shame this place was never made proper use of while Achillea was in charge.”

Tartarus. Named after the mythical underworld dungeon.

I’d almost thought it was just a rumor. A thing to frighten the less tractable girls at the ludus into better behavior. Sorcha had never found the need to use Tartarus on anyone—not even Nyx—as a punitive measure. Not even me. Ixion reached for another key hanging on the wall outside the cell and opened the barred door. Wordlessly, he gestured me inside.

It was cold and dank, the air stale and heavy. The walls were rough-hewn stone, the floor dirt, and there was a single, tiny barred window smaller than my head set near the low ceiling that looked out onto a forgotten, weedy enclosure behind the stables. What used to be the stables.

Ixion pulled the cage door shut with a clang and hung the key back up, turning on his heel to disappear without a word. When he closed the outer door, I felt the tiny, tearing claws of panic begin to climb upward from the pit of my stomach, savaging the back of my throat. I swallowed hard to force the bile back down and shook my head to clear it.

First things first, Fallon, I thought.

Light from the guttering flames of the dying stable fire filtered through the tiny window, and in the dim orange glow, I pulled back my cloak and peered at the blood-soaked fabric of my sleeping tunic with a kind of shocked detachment. The tear in the material was small and neat—just the size of Nyx’s knife blade—and I had to tear it and make it larger so I could get a good look at the wound she’d made.

Another small, neat hole. In my flesh.