The Defiant (The Valiant #2)(65)

She ignored the Achillea crowd and addressed her Amazon sisters.

“May the goddess forgive you,” she said in her harsh, unmusical voice. “I won’t.” Then she walked past them all, head high, eyes flashing eternal defiance, and disappeared into the deep shadows beneath the ancient olive trees that cloaked the hillside beyond the oppidum.

Once she was gone, it was like the air itself shivered in relief.

“You will rest here,” Areto said. “And then you will leave with the sun’s first light.”

There was no room for argument in her tone.

“And Thalestris?” I asked.

“She has made her choice, and she will not return. If she does, she knows that she will die for it. It is our way.”

? ? ?

It wasn’t that I expected my sister to throw sheaves of flowers at my feet and crown me with laurels. But a simple thank-you would have been nice. Instead, I was treated to a bitter remonstration for my reckless endangerment of myself and my Achillea sisterhood.

“You know you shouldn’t have come for me,” she said—again—as Neferet silently tended her wounds in the house that Areto had made available for us.

I blinked at Sorcha when I realized she was still scolding me and sighed.

“You should have left me to my fate, Fallon,” she continued. “You should have run far and fast the minute you gained your freedom. You’re the daughter of a king. Without the ludus to keep you safe, you should have gone home, where you could have claimed your place in front of the hearth in the great hall in Durovernum and left Rome and Caesar and me to our own devices.”

I sat there, silently fuming at people trying to ship me back home without so much as asking my opinion on the matter, but I held my peace. There was something inside Sorcha that had been damaged by her capture. Some core belief had been shaken and cracked almost to the point of no repair, and I had to be careful, or it would shatter her from the inside out. I knew my sister. I knew that she didn’t give her trust or her friendship lightly, and she’d given Thalestris both. For years.

Now she was more angry at herself than she was at her former primus pilus, because she blamed herself for having been so blind. Of course, she wouldn’t readily admit that, and so she was taking that anger out on the next most convenient target. Me.

“You should have thought about your own survival,” she continued. “Not mine. Did I teach you nothing, little sister?”

“You taught me that what we do is more important than who we are or what fire we sit in front of,” I said with a shrug, doing my best to keep a leash on my own temper. “You taught me that my fellow gladiatrices—every single one of them, even you, Sorcha—deserves the chance to choose their destiny.”

“Fallon—”

“Those of us who escaped are infamia and rebels in the eyes of Rome and have no hope of that without the Ludus Achillea,” I argued. “The ones who are still Aquila’s prisoners? Even less so. I don’t want that on my conscience. Do you?”

She frowned, and I knew I’d struck a nerve. “Of course not. But you still didn’t need to put yourself at risk for me—”

“And just how, exactly,” I interrupted, “would you expect me to retake the ludus without my legendary warrior sister at my side?”

“How many times do I have to tell you?” she snapped angrily. “I’m not what you think I am, Fallon! Not anymore . . .”

I sighed in exasperation. “Morrigan’s bloody teeth! You don’t seriously think that we could leave our friends, our fellow gladiatrices—our home, damn it all—in the hands of that mad bastard Pontius Aquila, do you?”

I could see the spark of that impulse kindle behind her eyes. But I could also see the cold fear, the hurt of Thalestris’s betrayal, and the disappointment in herself, threatening to snuff it out. I wasn’t about to let that happen.

“He wants to pit his god against our goddess?” I said emphatically, driving home my point. “His carrion crows against the Great Raven? He’ll lose.”

Sorcha’s eyes narrowed as she gazed at me. Her old warrior self was still there, still a faint, flickering ember. It hadn’t yet been completely extinguished.

“You have a clever plan, little sister?” she asked.

“I’m working on it,” I said, and left it at that. For the time being.

But Sorcha didn’t stand a chance against me if she thought she could shy away from this fight. I would fan that warrior spark into a flame. And I would feed that flame until it was a bonfire.

? ? ?

We made camp, our backs to the hill that rose above the oppidum. I tried to curb my impatience at having to stay. But even without bowing to the offered hospitality, such as it was, there was no way we could have made it back down that path to the ship in the darkness. By the time I was done building up a small fire and laying out my bedroll, Antonia had come by to tell me that Neferet and Leander were helping tend to the Amazon injured—after seeing to our own, and administering a sleeping draught to Sorcha, who’d already succumbed to a deep slumber.

“In the morning, she should be well enough to travel, Neferet says,” Antonia assured me. “Maybe just a little slowly.”

“Good,” I said. “All I want is to take my sister home.”