The Triumphant (The Valiant #3)(45)

Charon shook his head. “You’re wrong about that.”

“Am I?” I looked at him, wondering if that was what he really thought. “Everyone still calls me Victrix. They tell me I’m some kind of hero or leader or something. And yet it feels to me like all I’ve done is somehow master the art of triumphantly snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.”

“This isn’t over yet, Fallon,” he said. “For any of you.”

I laughed a little. “Not over? Isn’t the world ending?”

“For Rome, for a while . . . maybe.” He ran a hand over his beard, seriously considering the question. “Not for long. Never that. The wheel turns. And for you and your sisters? I think it’s just beginning. I can’t say whether that’s a thing to be hoped for or feared. But I know you. And you don’t let a little thing like ended worlds stop you.” He turned and walked away from me, over toward the stone bench. “Because of that, I wanted to give you something,” Charon said, reaching for a box that lay on the ground beside the bench. “Before we leave this place.”

It was the same garden where he’d gifted me my first real set of armor. The one I’d worn on the circuit, when I’d first started out on my journey to become Caesar’s Victrix. And now Caesar was dead. And what was I? I wasn’t being dramatic with the former slave master. I really didn’t know. But Charon seemed to think he might. And so, just like on the day that he’d presented me with my gladiatrix armor, he had a gift for me. This time, the box was made of wood, not wicker, and it was long and slender.

Just the right size to hold a sword.

I found myself frowning in wonder as he lifted the lid . . . and then everything went a bit blurry. I blinked, wiping at my eyes. I couldn’t even lie anymore and tell myself it was just the smoke as two fat tears spilled down my cheeks. Charon gestured to the sword belt I wore and the single blade hanging from my left hip.

“It was starting to look a little lonely without its fellow,” he said.

“Charon, I . . .” I didn’t know what to say as I reached for the leather-wrapped hilt. The thing was glorious. Perfectly balanced, expertly crafted and honed, polished to a gleaming sheen. And an identical match to my other dimachaerus blade. Well, almost identical. As my fingers tightened around the grip and I brought it close to my face, devouring the lines and shape of it with my eyes, I saw that the blade was marked with a symbol just like my old sword—no. Not just like my old sword . . . I lifted my other hand and traced the inscribed shape on the iron. Similar to the triple-raven marking of the Morrigan, but different. Not three ravens . . . but a single eagle. The symbol of Caesar’s legions—of Rome’s finest warriors—only it was rendered in the twisting, fantastical style of the Celtic tribes.

“I hope you don’t think that presumptuous,” Charon said as I ran my fingertip over the design. “Or distasteful. I simply wanted to pay homage to your . . . dual nature, shall we say.”

“No,” I murmured, feeling the shape of the thing beneath my fingertip. “No, it’s . . . it feels right. Somehow.”

It did. In the same way that it had felt right for me to keep the key to my Tartarus prison cell. Something hated and hurtful but endured. Overcome. Rome—and Caesar—had shaped me. Become part of me. I found it strange how Charon always seemed so eerily insightful where my character was concerned. I told him so, but he shook his head.

“It’s a by-product of the trade, Fallon,” he said ruefully. “That’s all. I’m not so much insightful as I am—I was—simply awash in a sea of human experience, generally in its rawest, most wretched expression. I have seen far too much of the inner workings of the soul laid bare to be able to ignore it now. Especially from someone with a pure one. Like you.”

I looked at him, tilting my head, as if that would help me make more sense of this man who was—at the very heart of it—the chief architect of so much of the last two years of my life. Perhaps one day, I thought, but not today. I handed Charon back the box and spun the eagle blade in my palm, sheathing it in the empty scabbard at my right hip. The eagle and the raven. Rome . . . and home.

I nodded and said, “Thank you.”

Then together we hurried to join the others, so we could leave the Ludus Achillea before the fires burned it to the ground around our ears. Back in the main courtyard, the gates stood wide open and there were only two sentries left up on the walls to watch for dust clouds. Once we were on the road to Cosa, they would go their own ways with fat, coin-filled purses.

Cai was helping harness and load the wagons with the few things we would take from the place. Mostly weapons. He came over to stand with me for a moment, taking my hands in his and squeezing them as if he sensed my uncertainty and could pour all of the strength and surety I needed into me through that touch.

“Are we dismantling our home for nothing?” I asked. “What happens if Aquila doesn’t come here?”

“Rome is at war with itself, Fallon,” he said. “And you are warriors. Do not think that this place will remain untouched by the strife of powerful men.”

I thought back to the mutilated practice dummies in the arena in Rome and knew he was right. To try to convince myself otherwise was nothing more than dangerous folly.

“Even if Aquila doesn’t?” Cai continued. “Someone else will. Maybe someone worse than Aquila.”