The Defiant (The Valiant #2)(90)

“Open the doors,” I said in a low whisper. “Set them free.”

One by one we slid the bars aside to open the cell doors, and the Achillea girls and Charon’s smuggled Amazons stepped out into the hall. Kallista, my headstrong young fishergirl, did a quick head count of her friends and breathed a sigh of relief. I did a quick count of mine and discovered girls were missing, Lydia and Tanis among them. But when the last door opened, and Damya lumbered through into the hallway, I almost cheered at the sight of her. She looked gaunt and pale—as if they’d been starving her—but her eyes were clear, and her gaze sharpened like honed iron when she saw me.

She was down the length of the corridor and mauling me in a crushing bear hug before I had the chance to say anything. “I knew!” she said in a fierce whisper. “I knew you’d come back.”

“Damya—”

“That stupid goose Tanis. She was wrong, and I knew it!”

“Where is she?” I asked, squirming loose of the dire embrace. “Tanis?”

I was afraid she was about to tell me Tanis was dead.

“She’s with them.” Damya’s mouth twisted and she spat on the floor. “With her—Nyx. Sold herself cheap as surely as if she’d still been a slave.”

“What about Lydia?”

Damya’s plain, open face turned stony. “Lydia is still in the infirmary. Heron calls her ‘unresponsive,’ but I don’t think even he knows what’s really wrong with her. She just lies there.”

I winced, remembering how Nyx’s whip had opened up the side of the poor girl’s face. Maybe it had flayed her spirit too. I looked around at the other girls from the ludus.

“Two others—Persis and Marcella—are dead,” Damya said.

I felt my heart clench. “What happened?”

“Nyx got bored waiting for Aquila to start killing us. So she threw those two into the ring one night with one of the Dis gladiators.” Damya shook her head, wincing. “He was near on three times their size, and you could tell he didn’t want to fight any more than they did. But he also didn’t want to die.”

I closed my eyes against the anger and sadness I felt.

“The girls did the Lady Achillea proud,” she continued. “That gladiator will have to learn how to hold a sword without a thumb. And he won’t be called on to entertain rich Roman matrons in their bedchambers anymore.”

“Good for them,” I said, choking on a laugh that was half sob.

“Aye.” She nodded. “That was the last thrust of Marcella’s blade, but one worthy of an Achillea gladiatrix. He cut her down before her next breath. They dragged away their bodies for burial, and that was the last I saw of them.”

For burial. I prayed to the Morrigan that their ends had been so. As wicked as Nyx was, I could hardly imagine her participating in the kind of grotesque sacrificial rites the Sons of Dis perpetrated. I shuddered. And then I ignited.

A coal of anger suddenly burst to life in my heart. This. This was the fate Aquila would consign my sisters to, I thought. This was why we were going to stop him. End him. And men like him . . .

Men like Cai’s father.

I glanced away from Damya to see that Cai’s gaze was locked on my face, his bright hazel eyes full of storm clouds. I could tell that he’d read my thoughts, and my heart ached for him. I wondered if he would ever be able to forgive me for what we were about to do. But as he looked at me, I saw his mouth harden into an implacable line. He nodded curtly, once, and then gestured me to lead on.

I only wished his father hadn’t been able to read my thoughts as well as his son did. But the moment we stepped out into the lesser courtyard, that’s exactly what it seemed had happened. For all our stealth and subterfuge . . . for all the distraction of the spectacle going on outside the ludus walls, it seemed that Senator Varro had been expecting us, regardless. Because there he stood, dressed in black leather armor with a sword in his hand. And a detachment of Dis gladiators at his back.





XVIII




“I KNEW SOMETHING was amiss.” A self-satisfied grin stretched across Senator Varro’s face. “You see, you, Fallon . . . you never fought like you were playing for time.”

He’d known. His soldier’s keen eye had told him that it wasn’t me out there fighting in the armor of Victrix.

“Keep them here,” he said to his guards. “Or kill them.” His glance flicked over to Cai and then away again.

He turned and strode off, and his men wasted no time in idle parley but went straight to the attack. Cai parried and threw the first man aside and snapped a quick “Go!” over his shoulder. Then he and the others moved to clear a path for me.

I swore, stomping the Dis fighter I’d knocked to the ground in the face with my heel. He went limp, and I leaped over him, running after the senator. If he managed to make it to Aquila, then all was lost. Everything.

I sprinted headlong through the causeway, out into the small stable yard—and took the length of a pitchfork shaft in the stomach. I dropped to the ground, wheezing, and my swords fell from my hands. He’d ambushed me, lured me there away from the others, and hidden behind the wall, waiting.

He bent down and picked me up. By my neck.

Varro’s fingers tightened around my throat, squeezing. Scorching-hot tears splashed down my cheeks as I struggled, clawing at his muscle-corded wrists, my feet kicking helplessly as he lifted me off the ground. The blood roared in my ears as I tried to breathe, to no avail.