The Valiant (The Valiant #1)(55)

I shook my head. “You just heard me swear an oath, and with my next breath, you would have me break it. I am a daughter of the house of Cantii.”

“And what does that mean?”

“It means I don’t break promises—even ones I wouldn’t have made, given a choice—and I will not break this one. Not even for you, Caius Varro.”

Cai’s eyes flashed.

“Not even for me?” he asked, tilting his head. “Does that mean I’m something to be taken into consideration in your decision making, Fallon?”

I wished I could take the words back. I wasn’t even sure what I had meant.

“Do not flatter yourself, Decurion,” I muttered, turning away from his gaze and shrugging free of his grasp.

Silence stretched out between us, and it became increasingly difficult to hang on to my indignation. Especially when I heard him let out a low, throaty chuckle. I looked back to see him grinning at me.

“You think about me,” he said.

He took me again by the shoulders, drawing me toward him. I could feel the heat coming off his skin. In the cool night, I wanted to take that warmth and wrap it around me like a blanket. I wanted him wrapped around me. I knew I shouldn’t. If anyone caught us together, I would most likely be flogged, and Cai would be shamed. But he didn’t seem to care in that moment. He moved closer to me, and the cloak I wore fell back away from my shoulders, as Cai’s hands lightly moved up my arms, over my shoulders and down my back to my waist, tracing my body through the thin material of my tunic. I shivered, and he looked down at me.

“You’re freezing,” he said, stepping back to tug the edges of the heavy wool cloak back over my shoulders.

But I wasn’t freezing. I burned. Everywhere his hands had touched me, the skin was seared as surely as if I had been branded there.

He lifted a hand to my cheek, and I felt the rough calluses there, left behind by the countless hours his fingers had spent wrapped around the hilt of a sword. But when he bent his head beside mine, his breath teasing my neck just below my ear, and he murmured my name . . . I froze. I couldn’t see Cai’s face. Instead, all I could hear in my mind was another whispering voice.

Mael’s.

“What’s wrong?” Cai whispered, sensing my sudden reluctance.

I shook my head and squeezed my eyes shut.

“You’re a senator’s son, and I . . .”

“What?”

“I am infamia.” I opened my eyes and looked up into his face. I might as well embrace the cold truth of the night. “Even if the ludus wouldn’t punish me for being here, with you, if they found us together . . . the oath I swore tonight marks me as sure as a brand on my skin.”

His gaze darkened. “You think I care about that?”

“You should.”

“Fallon—”

“I should return to my quarters now, Decurion. You’ll excuse me.”

I turned and walked—ran, really—away from him before I betrayed myself any further. My heart pounded in my chest, and my throat ached with unshed tears. Even though I’d heard Mael’s voice, plain as day, in my head, I’d also realized, for the first time, that I could no longer picture his face.

I couldn’t remember what he looked like.

The image of him had been slowly fading over time, and I’d let it slip away. To be replaced by the face of another—of our enemy. What kind of a monster was I? Tears seeped through my lashes and ran down my cheeks, burning with shame.

? ? ?

As I made my way back to the barracks, taking a shortcut between the baths and the cooks’ quarters, I heard sounds—voices coming from around the corner of the grain shed. It seemed that Cai and I weren’t the only ones indulging in midnight strolls. I stopped and held my breath, wiping the wetness from my cheeks. The ludus guards may not have caught me in an embrace with a legion officer, but I still didn’t exactly want to have to explain any weepy midnight wanderings to them. All I wanted was to get back to my cell and collapse on my pallet.

But the voices continued.

“Does he know she’s here?” asked a female voice. “Within barely a half-day’s ride of him?”

A man laughed in reply, an ugly sound.

“You mean Mandobracius?” he said. I recognized the voice and froze—it was Pontius Aquila. The Collector.

“Is that what he’s calling himself now?” the woman asked.

“One of his fellow barbarians coined that gem after he won his last bout—they all speak Latin like they’re chewing on shoe leather—and it seems to have stuck.”

Mandobracius? I puzzled through the mangled Latin to arrive at something like “Devouring Arms.” A gladiator, I gathered, from the mention of a bout. I wondered if those gathered elites ever talked of anything else.

“No,” Aquila continued. “No, I haven’t told him yet. That sort of information could prove priceless when it comes time to bending that wretched barbarian to my will. He’s damned lucky things turned out the way they did—no thanks to his incompetence.”

“It’s uncanny,” the woman said.

“It’s fate. That girl will be mine. The gods have willed it so.” His voice turned suddenly low and threatening. “In the meantime, you’ll not breathe a word of it to Mandobracius—or to anyone else. Do I make myself clear?”