The Triumphant (The Valiant #3)(22)

The guards moved on. Sparring was one thing, I supposed, but if I’d been expecting anything else from one of their fighters—like one of those other rich Roman ladies—I suspect I would have likely had to pay for it. Or for the privilege of passing the time unobserved, at least.

“I’ve had a lot of time to do a lot of thinking in this place, Fallon,” Cai said, and made a thrust toward my right shoulder with his left blade that I blocked easily and responded to with a diagonal slash. “I’ve thought about how I came to be here . . .” he continued, evading my slash and returning to a guarded stance, “and why.”

I lowered my weapons. “Cai, I’m so sorry—”

“No!” He shook his head adamantly. “Oh, gods, Fallon. No. You have nothing to be sorry for.”

I was at a loss for words in that moment, not really understanding what he was talking about. Cai lifted his blades again, gesturing me to lead with an attack. I shrugged the tension out of my shoulders and, without bothering to ready my stance, launched into an overhead double-strike. Cai narrowly evaded, misreading my strike point, but compensated neatly and ducked past the blow, twisting to come back at me with a slash to my left flank. His reach was longer than mine, and I had to jump a few awkward steps to the side before sinking back into a defensive crouch. I spun my right blade in my hand.

“Are you going to tell me what, exactly, you mean by that?” I asked, getting back to our conversation as he took a horizontal swipe at me.

He nodded and, while we cycled through a series of side-to-side blows and parries that struck splinters from the edges of our wooden blades, he did his best to explain. “What I mean is . . . all my life, I’ve never really questioned anything,” he said. “Not my father, not Caesar, not the Republic or what it means to conquer other lands . . . not enough.”

We disengaged for a moment, circling each other.

“Do you remember the first time we talked?” he continued. “On the ship?”

I nodded. Of course I remembered. We’d been attacked by pirates sailing the Mare Nostrum and almost died, and then Cai had, among other things, criticized my fighting technique and then compared me first to a weed and then a wildflower. Not exactly words of wooing . . .

Cai shook his head ruefully at the memory of the conversation.

“I said you didn’t act like a slave,” he said. “How arrogant of me. How presumptuous. The lordly son of a senator, a decurion who’d never not been free—not for an instant—and there you were, the daughter of a king with an iron collar around your neck. You should have thrown me over the side.”

“It’s not as if you knew I was the daughter of a king,” I said.

“I should have. You stood there cloaked in dignity like an empress. I’d already seen you fight like an Amazon. I should have known you were destined to be a queen one day.”

I didn’t quite remember it that way. Especially not the dignity part, and truthfully, I’d grown leaps as a fighter since that day. Nor was it very likely that I’d ever amount to any kind of queen . . .

We fought on, and I saw a sliver of an opening as Cai dragged a step. I thrust my swords at his right shoulder, and his came up to block them with bone-jarring force. Our weapons locked up, and we strained against each other, our faces almost close enough for us to kiss over the crossed blades.

“Why are you punishing yourself for the way you were raised, Cai?” I asked, panting with the exertion. “It’s not your fault—”

“It is,” he said through gritted teeth. “I have a mind, Fallon, and a heart . . . and I’ve already lived two decades of my life without actually bothering much to use either. Not until I met you.” His clear hazel eyes flashed at me, sparking with a kindled fierceness. “If I’d ever stopped to think about who my father really was, about what I was really doing in the service of the Republic . . . I might have been able to—”

“What?”

“Do something. Something to help. Not hurt.”

“The way you’ve helped me?” I asked as I shifted my stance and tried to break the lockup. “Helped the girls at the ludus?”

“I’m glad of that,” he said, pushing back. “It’s a start. But it’s only a start. And I had to take the life of my father to do it.”

“Cai—”

With a heave of his shoulders, he thrust me back and disengaged.

“He deserved it.” He shook his head. “I know. No argument there. But there are always consequences, even with the noblest of intentions. This place?” He waved a sword at the high, bleak walls surrounding us. “This is my consequence. I accept it as my fate, Fallon. At least . . . well, at least until I can find—or fight—my way to a better one.”

“Or die trying?” I asked.

He nodded. “Although I’d rather not. I’d rather just be with you.”

He grinned at me and held out his hand for my practice blades. We were both sweating and breathing a little heavy, but it had felt good to spar with him again. I handed over my blades, nodding at the bandage on his arm where spots of blood had appeared.

“You might’ve pulled a stitch or two,” I said.

He shrugged. “I’ll live.”

I reached up to touch his cheek. Carefully, though, because there were deep bruises on the side of Cai’s face that were fading to yellow at the edges.