The Valiant (The Valiant #1)(81)

“Run, Fallon!” he urged. “Run!”

Blind, animal terror drove me as I leaped for the top of the wall. It was only as high as my shoulder, but my bleary clumsiness had me scrabbling and clawing to climb over, scraping the skin of my hands and knees. Once on the other side, I bolted down a road that led back into the shadow-bound streets of the city.

In my mind, there were black-feathered monsters chasing me as I ran.





XXVI



THE LIGHT ON MY FACE WAS WARM, and the blanket covering me, soft. Somewhere nearby, a fountain trickled water with a sound like bells chiming, and birds sang sweet melodies to each other. The room smelled faintly of lilacs.

And I felt like Death herself.

I struggled to roll over on my side as my stomach churned and my head swam dizzily. I gritted my teeth hard against the rising tide of bile creeping up the back of my throat, and when the feeling finally subsided, I forced my eyes open and squinted in the pale morning sunshine. The open, glass-paned window above my head was draped with a gauzy curtain that billowed in a gentle breeze. There was a vase of lilacs on the sill, and the walls of the room were washed in a pale green that was almost white. The effect was cool and soothing.

And utterly unfamiliar.

For a terrified few moments, I thought I might still be at Domus Corvinus, and the overwhelming urge to flee pushed the sensations of sickness far into the background. I clutched at the soft woven blanket covering me and almost flung it aside. But then I realized I was entirely naked beneath it. And I was not alone in the room.

“You’re safe,” Cai said quietly.

His voice had a quality to it that sounded like disappointment.

I squinted at where he sat on a low chair in a corner of the room. I was having trouble focusing, but he looked weary—as if he hadn’t slept well, or maybe not at all—and I wondered what he was doing here . . . wherever “here” was.

I struggled to sit up without letting the blanket fall away. My head was pounding like a blacksmith’s hammer on a sword blade. Cai stood and moved to a table beside the chair where he’d been sitting. It held a cup and a pitcher, and he poured me water, which I gulped at thirstily. Then he handed me a new, clean stola. It was plain but finely woven, with simple fastening brooches and a belt.

“Here,” he said. “Put this on.”

I glanced at the clothing and then at him. And then down at the blanket that covered me. Cai rolled his eyes and turned his back.

“I won’t look,” he said. “But I’m also not leaving. I’d like to get you out of here and back to Achillea’s town house without anyone noticing.”

I slipped out from under the covers and into the simple linen shift as quickly as my muddled state allowed. The room tilted perilously with every move I made. As I was fastening the second shoulder brooch, my fingers fumbled, and it fell to the floor. Cai stooped to pick it up. He stood and brushed my hair from my shoulder, fastening the brooch for me. Then he fetched my sandals—the only things I’d worn the night before that seemed to have survived the adventure—and knelt before me, slipping my feet into the straps. As he did so, I heard the sound of gentle female laughter coming from outside the room.

“Where are we?” I asked. “What is this place?”

Cai stood up, an expression that I could only describe as embarrassment crossing his face. “This is, um, well—”

“We call it a House of Venus.”

I turned at the sound of the familiar voice and saw Kassandra, the girl from my days in Charon’s slave caravan—the one who’d given me her shoes—standing in the doorway. With the door to the hallway open, the subtle perfume of the lilacs on the windowsill was displaced by a heavier, cloying haze of incense. “Thank you,” I mumbled.

“For what?” she asked.

“For the shoes,” I said, struggling in my foggy state to find the right Latin words. “Back when we were in Gaul.”

Cai snorted. “You have more than shoes to thank her for.”

I looked at him blankly.

He nodded at my former cage-mate. “She’s the one who found you and brought you here.”

“I didn’t have much choice,” Kassandra said. “You were in no condition to travel on your own. As it was, we were barely able to carry you this far.”

I looked back and forth between them, hopelessly muddled. “Where am I? The House of Venus? What is that?”

“Most people call it a house of whores,” Kassandra said with a dry smile. “That is why Caius Varro hurries to spirit you away from this place. Before your bright rising star is tarnished by association.”

The two of them might as well have been speaking in Greek. “I don’t understand,” I said.

“You attended a party last night at a house on the Caelian Hill, didn’t you?” Kassandra asked.

I nodded and put a hand to my forehead, which throbbed mercilessly.

“I was there too.” When I looked at her, she shrugged. “They hired some of the girls from this house to serve as hostesses for the revels. We left with our escort when things began to get out of hand—as they often do at those sorts of affairs—and that’s when we found you, lying on the side of the road at the bottom of the hill. You were insensible. Babbling.” She offered a sympathetic smile. “But I recognized you, and we brought you here. I sent word to Caius so that he might come and take you back to the place where you belong.”