The Defiant (The Valiant #2)(80)

“My father was the same,” I said.

“We men think we rule the world.” Cai laughed a little. “We’re wrong. You deserve the Ludus Achillea, Fallon. You and the rest of those mad, marvelous—occasionally quite terrifying—girls. And I’ll do anything I can to help you get it back. Even if I am one of those wretched males of the species.”

I reached out and brushed the water droplets from his lips, one by one.

“You are anything but wretched, Caius Antonius Varro,” I said.

His smile bloomed deeper beneath my fingertips. I put my arms around his neck and he cradled me in his, swimming out to the middle of the pool where the water was deep enough that my toes couldn’t touch the pool bottom. And then he kissed me, and I lost myself to the sensation of his skin sliding against mine as he stopped swimming and, together, we sank beneath the surface of the water, breathing only each other’s air.





XVI




IN THE DAYS since we’d arrived at Domus Varro, I’d slept less than half of each night, waking each morning well before sunrise with my heart pounding from half-remembered dreams and the near-constant fear that there was some aspect of our grand plan I hadn’t yet taken into account. Something I’d failed to consider that would trip us up and shatter to pieces our painstakingly constructed scheme.

The crux of which amounted to this: Pontius Aquila wanted us to fight? Then we’d fight. We would issue a challenge to the Tribune of the Plebs, false master of the Ludus Achillea, and the leader of the Sons of Dis. We would call him out from behind the walls of our—our—academy, and we would engage his warriors in the biggest battle since Caesar’s Quadruple Triumphs.

Right there in the field beyond the ludus walls.

When I’d initially presented my spark of an idea, Charon was the first to embrace it. Indeed, most of the details that went into how it would come to pass had come from him. Without his multitude of connections to the Roman merchants’ and builders’ guilds, I don’t know that it would have been even remotely feasible.

I was on my way to the scriptorium, a central room in the house we’d commandeered as a kind of hub of operations, where Cai was waiting for me. I’d just rid myself of the scrolls announcing the tournament challenge, an advertisement that would appear in the public spaces all around the city, and the purse full of denarii to pay for them. Cai had written out the details on sheets of vellum as I watched, still mostly baffled by the meaning of the lines and shapes he scribbled across the pages in neat rows, but trusting he knew what he was doing. After, I’d gone in search of Quint, so he could carry the scrolls to the guild head of the city notice-painters and the Forum crier.

I was thinking about Charon’s blessedly useful connections—and about what Aeddan had said, warning me not to trust my fate to the kind of man who’d been responsible for my slavery in the first place—as I rounded the corner of a corridor leading through the domus atrium. I wasn’t expecting anyone else to be there.

Let alone the master of the house.

I froze.

But Senator Varro had heard my footsteps approaching across the marble floor and turned. He wasn’t supposed to be there, I thought frantically. Not for another month at least . . . But he was there. Then. And when his dark eyes locked on me, I felt like a deer in a clearing that lifts its head to find itself surrounded by hounds.

“Fallon?”

The breath stifled in my lungs at the sound of his voice.

I couldn’t move, couldn’t turn and run . . .

I heard Aeddan’s voice in my head: “He will betray you . . .”

Suddenly, all I could do was remember his admonition about my blind trust in the boy I loved. And his father. I wondered if one of the faces behind those hideous masks on that horrid night at the Domus Corvinus had been Cai’s father’s—

“Fallon!”

The senator strode across the light-filled room, eyes flashing, hands outstretched to grasp me by the shoulders . . .

“My dear girl!” he exclaimed and wrapped me in a fierce, unexpected hug. “You’re safe! Thank Jupiter, I was so worried.”

I remained stiff and teetering, shocked immobile for a moment, before I could return the embrace. But when I did, all my remaining fears and foreboding washed away like rain running from leaves to disappear into the earth. This was Caius Antonius Varro’s father. And I had nothing to fear.

When, finally, the senator pushed me to arm’s length and peered intently into my face, I could see the genuine concern in his gaze. “I heard rumors, Fallon,” he said. “Terrible stories of things that happened at the Ludus Achillea . . .”

Everyone had, it seemed.

“Stories of rebellion,” he continued, “and bloodshed. I heard the Lanista had been murdered by her charges and that legion soldiers had encouraged and even aided in the uprising. I heard one of them was Cai.”

“It’s not—”

“But if you’re here, then that means that the rumors were wrong. Of course they were wrong! Where is Caius?” His gaze swept the room. “Is my son all right?”

“He’s fine, sir. He’s in the scriptorium—”

Before I could get another word out—about what had really happened, about my still very much alive sister, or about Pontius Aquila—Senator Varro had turned and was hurrying down the marble hall toward his scriptorium. If the swathes of material that made up his toga would have allowed it, I think he would have broken into a run. I followed close on his heels.