The Defiant (The Valiant #2)(79)

The other girls had retired after washing off the day’s winey residue, but I’d stayed behind, reveling in the peace and stillness after the ordeal of the last few days. When I heard the barest ripple and splash from the corner of the pool, I opened my eyes to see the torches had burned low in their sconces, and the swirling steam rising from the surface of the water veiled the room in a sparkling, misty haze.

But even in the dim light, I could still see Cai—head and shoulders of him, anyway—where he rested against the blue-tiled edge of the other side of the pool, staring at me. The flickering torchlight glinted off the water droplets on his shoulders and chest, and sparked fire in the depths of his hazel eyes. I felt a fluttering, like birds startled to flight, in my chest and could hear my pulse surge in my ears as he pushed himself away from the edge and floated toward the center of the pool.

That rare, secret smile played about the corners of his lips, but there was a flicker of uncertainty in his eyes as Cai swam near. I felt it too. My mind flashed back to the day when Cai had told me he loved me—the same day Caesar had declared me his Spirit of Victory. But how well did we really know each other, I wondered in that moment. He’d been gone on campaign for most of the time since. And before that . . . when we’d first met, my life had seemed like being caught in the middle of a whirlwind. I’d been stripped of my self and my soul—a princess-turned-slave, taken from my world and thrust into another—and nothing about that time had seemed safe or certain. Nothing except Cai.

Nothing except the soldier who’d worn the armor of my enemy.

“I remember the first time I ever laid eyes on you,” I said as Cai drifted close, wreathed in the steam rising from the rippling bath water.

“On the wharf. In Massilia.” He nodded ruefully. “I seem to recall . . .”

“All that metal and leather. I could barely see the person beneath.”

“There’s none of that now,” he said, grinning. “You may feast your eyes.”

I laughed. But I didn’t look away.

“I remember how you looked at me that day,” he said. “I can still feel the flames on my face.”

“Ha.” I splashed a handful of water at him. “And I remember how you looked at me that day.”

“To be fair,” he said, “there wasn’t very much of you that I could see, either. You were more caked-on road dirt and rags than girl.”

“True.” I had to agree with him there. “Although I remember Charon telling you we’d all clean up well enough. You didn’t believe him.”

“I should have.”

“I didn’t believe him either!” I reached for a bathing sponge in a basket on the side of the pool and handed it to him, turning around and lifting my hair away from my shoulders. “I didn’t know at the time that you Romans had such baths. At home, I had a river. And a cramped copper tub for special occasions . . .”

Cai was silent, scrubbing the sponge in slow, gentle circles across my shoulders and back, squeezing the water out over my neck.

“Sometimes I wonder if you—if all the Romans I’ve met—still think of me as a barbarian,” I mused. “If you, even with what you said to Aeddan, don’t still sometimes wonder if I wouldn’t be happier sleeping under furs beneath the thatched roof of my hut . . .”

His hand on my back went still, the water from the sponge trickling down my spine. “Would you?”

I let my hair fall and spun in a slow circle in the water until I faced him again. “Would you be there, under those furs, beneath that roof, beside me?”

“Under thatch . . . under marble and glass . . . under stars in the middle of a desert, Fallon,” he said, his voice catching in his throat. “I would lie beside you in a cave on a mountaintop if you wanted me to. And if I ever thought of you as anything other than my equal—and more—then that is to my deep shame.”

“As much as it’s to mine that you were right—what you said on the beach at Corsica. That I haven’t let myself fully trust you. I haven’t treated you as an equal.”

He shook his head. “It’s all right. I understand—”

“No.” I huffed a little. “It’s not all right, and you really need to stop being so understanding, Cai. I don’t always do the right thing, and as much as, yes, I need you to trust me, I also need you to question me. Challenge me. Keep me from trying to prove myself too strong to need anyone else. Because I do need you.”

Desperately . . .

He reached up and cupped my face in his hands. There were water droplets on his lips and on his eyelashes. “You have me,” he said, holding my gaze with the strength of his.

“Is it madness?” I asked. “Going up against Aquila and his monsters . . . My friends could die if we go through with this, Cai. My sister. Me . . . You.”

“You’re doing it because you think it’s the right thing to do.”

“But is it?”

He gazed at me then, with those far-sighted eyes that always seemed to look right through me to see my secrets and sorrows and strange, nebulous fears.

“All right.” He sighed. “I’d be lying if I said there weren’t times I’ve seriously thought about talking you out of it. Spiriting you away to Cyprus or Bithynia. Or back to your thatched-roof hut in Durovernum.” His brow creased in a frown. “But I also listened to what you said to those girls back on Corsica—what you’ve been saying all along to your sisters at the ludus—and you’re right. Together, you are stronger than any legion of men, and you deserve—they deserve—a place where you’re allowed to flourish in that strength. When I was a boy, my father nearly lost his mind when my mother died. She was the true strength in their union. It took a lot for him to build himself back up, and I think there is still a part of him that is weak. Wounded.”