The Valiant (The Valiant #1)(83)

Cai didn’t seem convinced. “Aquila is a hard man,” he said. “Even cruel at times, if his reputation is to be believed. But he’s also the Tribune of the Plebs. A respected citizen. He’s not a . . . a barbarian.”

“Are you going to tell Caesar?” Kassandra asked quietly.

“Tell him what?” Cai rounded on her. “That a runaway gladiatrix—a runaway from his ludus—out of her head on mandrake-spiked wine was witness to a munera? At what, from the sound of it, might as well have been a Bacchanale?”

My heart sank with the truth of his words,.

“Those kinds of revels—not to mention the ritual Fallon speaks of—have been outlawed in Rome for decades,” he continued. “I’m sorry. No one would believe you, Fallon.”

“I believe her,” Kassandra said quietly.

I looked at her. “You do?”

“I believe a lot of things most people don’t,” she said. “Because I hear the secrets most people keep hidden. When people have so much money that they can do anything, buy anything, be anything, then they start to look around for the things money can’t buy. Strength, courage, nobility . . . they see it in others. And they want it.”

Cai nodded in reluctant agreement. “The men”—he looked at me—“and women who fight . . . they become like gods. Like Hercules or Aneas or the Amazon warrior queens of legend. They’re worshipped and coveted—and, eventually, destroyed. The mob will build you up only to tear you down. But the ones like Aquila who see themselves as masters of the arena? They will ultimately seek to devour you.”

“I wish you didn’t mean that quite so literally,” I said in a choked whisper.

Cai put a hand on my shoulder. “I’m not going to let that happen.”

For the first time, I truly believed him. Kassandra went to fetch me a cloak to stave off the early morning chill so that Cai could take me back to the Achillea town house. As we left, she gave me one last warning.

“Please, Fallon,” she said. “Be careful. Your world, I think, could prove far more dangerous outside of the arena than within it.”

Out in the street, Cai paced silently at my side.

“I grew up with him,” I said.

Cai stopped and looked at me.

“Aeddan. The gladiator—Mandobracius—the one I spoke of. He was the brother of a boy I loved back home.” My voice was quiet, muted by the stone walls of the houses that lined the narrow street. “His name was Mael, and I was going to marry him. Aeddan and Mael fought over me and . . . and Mael died. Aeddan killed him.”

Cai’s arms were around me suddenly, and I felt my tears soaking into the fabric of his tunic. I hadn’t realized I was crying.

“I tried to stop him. . . .” I took a breath to steady my voice. “I ran after Aeddan, and that was how the slavers found me.”

“Fallon, I’m sorry.”

“I meant to tell you . . . I did.” I looked up at Cai. “But I never thought I’d see him again. Only he’s here now, in Rome, and I—”

“Fallon.” Cai smiled down at me, tightening his grasp. “You’re the Fury Killer. He can’t hurt you now. No one can.”

I tried to smile back, but I knew that it wasn’t Aeddan I was afraid of hurting me. When the time came, I would face him again and I would fight.

No. I was afraid of Cai hurting me . . . of him walking away.

But he didn’t. For a long time, we stood in the laneway with Cai’s arms around me. He didn’t question me; he didn’t judge me. He didn’t leave me. He just brushed the tears away until they stopped running down my cheeks.





XXVII



I RETURNED TO THE DOMUS ACHILLEA with my head and heart bruised from the horrors of my night at the Domus Corvinus only to find that Elka had been flogged.

Caius had distracted Kronos at the gate while I slipped into the town house courtyard. Once inside, I made my way up to the room I shared with Elka, passing through corridors that were deserted and silent. I found Elka lying facedown on her cot, the bare skin of her shoulders and back crisscrossed with lash marks still seeping blood. Ajani was with her, carefully applying salve to the wounds.

I was horrified. And furious. “She had no right!”

“She had every right.” Elka’s voice was muffled by the thin pillow she lay on. “She owns us. We broke the rules.”

“I broke the rules!” I almost shouted. “I made you go with me—and where’s Nyx? I’ll kill her!”

“Nyx is down in the laundry this morning,” Ajani said in a flat voice, “serving out her own punishment.”

“In the laundry?”

She raised an eyebrow at me. “For pilfering food from the kitchens last night, of course. Her only crime, it seems.”

When the girls of the Ludus Achillea had been roused from their beds, Ajani explained, my absence did not go unnoticed. Neither did the fact that Elka—who didn’t even remember how she’d gotten home—was still intoxicated from Nyx’s evil brew. The domus staff were rounded up and questioned, the ludus guards were turned out into the city to hunt for the fugitive—me—and the gladiatrices were banished to their rooms and, in Elka’s case, punished.