The gladiators were staring wide-eyed, completely still. And Xanthus had had enough.
He positioned himself in the doorway, blocking their view and pushing them out the door.
Albinus lost his balance and grabbed Iduma’s tunic. Iduma fell back onto Lebuin, who stepped on Gallus’s foot. Then they all tumbled to the ground. Only Castor remained standing, and he took a deliberate step back to separate himself from the heap.
“What the hell are you doing?” Xanthus demanded in a harsh whisper, holding the door partially closed behind him. He didn’t want to wake Attia just yet.
Albinus grunted and struggled to his feet. He pushed off Iduma’s face before standing and rubbing awkwardly at the back of his neck. “Time for training,” he grumbled.
Gallus stood next but didn’t say anything.
Iduma took his time getting up and thoughtfully scratched his cheek. “I didn’t realize the Thracian was so pretty. Fair as a princess,” he said, raising his eyebrows and giving an appreciative chuckle.
Xanthus extended one arm and shoved Iduma back to the ground. He landed with a thud and a puff of dust while Xanthus turned back into the room and closed the door behind him.
Iduma looked up at the others. “What did I say?”
Inside, Attia opened one eye and glanced around. “What’s going on?” she mumbled.
“Just some pests,” Xanthus told her. “Go back to sleep.”
“Is it morning?” she asked.
“Not yet.”
But within minutes the training yard rang with the sounds of sparring gladiators, iron meeting wood, and blows striking their targets. Soft sunlight streamed in through the open window.
Attia opened her eyes. “It’s morning.”
They didn’t speak as she rose from his bed. Even after the previous night, the air between them still felt strange and new.
Then Xanthus remembered something he’d meant to give her. He touched her arm as she passed, and she looked up with surprise but no fear. That was something, he figured.
He reached onto the nearby shelf for the little knife she’d once threatened him with and laid it gently in her open palm. “Keep it hidden,” he said.
She nodded once, turned, and left the room.
CHAPTER 8
Two days later, a small party arrived at the villa—Timeus’s sister Valeria and her children, apparently returning from an extended holiday in Naples. A holiday from what, Attia couldn’t imagine. But they carted along enough baggage to fill half of the main courtyard.
Attia was sitting again on a window ledge on the upper floor, her bucket and rags at her feet. She had the little knife in her hand and was absently spinning it around and around, her fingers already familiar with the blade’s shape and weight.
Even from this distance, the family resemblance was clear. Like her brother, the domina had vivid blue eyes that stared out from a pale face. She was nearly as tall as Timeus and thin as a sapling, with narrow fingers that reminded Attia of twigs. Only when the siblings stood together did the differences between them become apparent. Valeria was probably more than ten years her brother’s junior, and while Timeus’s hair had turned white and silver with age, Valeria’s was still as curly and blond as a young girl’s. Her face was warmer, too. She looked like she was quick to laugh, with all the little lines around her eyes and mouth.
A young man who was undoubtedly Valeria’s son dismounted from his horse. Attia’s immediate impression of him was of a boy playing at being a soldier. His light brown hair shone in the sun, and his face was soft in ways that were unlike either Valeria or Timeus. He was taller than his mother and uncle, slender but not thin. He wore a jeweled dagger at his belt that looked more like an ornament than a weapon. He quickly greeted his uncle before hurrying to a closed cart.
Attia watched as he entered it, only to emerge a few minutes later with a large bundle of linen in his arms. She frowned. What the hell? Then she remembered what Sabina had said—that Valeria had children. Was that bundle of cloth one of them? Valeria’s son disappeared into the villa before Attia could get a better look.
Bored again, she grabbed her bucket and went to another room and another window, one from which she could watch the gladiators in the training yard.
Since her arrival, she’d focused all of her energy on surviving, on healing, on reclaiming her old self just enough to kill Timeus and, if need be, follow her family into the underworld. But now that she knew of Crassus, everything seemed to shift. She had so little left to live for except revenge. She hated Timeus, yes, and she consoled herself with the thought of killing him before she made her escape. Still, if anyone deserved to taste her blade, it was the bastard who’d murdered her father. She’d just have to find him first.
She spun the knife around once more before hiding it in the folds of her tunic.
In the training yard below, the blond, scarred gladiator was fighting. Attia knew that violence and ruthlessness simmered just below the surface of most men, but it was particularly plain in that one. She could see the anger etched into his soul as permanently as the scars on his skin. She didn’t fault him for it. She had been raised by violent, ruthless men. She had been trained to be one of them, to lead them. If anything, she was more like the gladiators than the rest of the slaves.
When her mother died, Attia had felt like the world had broken in half, like she was straddling the abyss. She was the last of her mother, with a face so similar that it broke her father’s heart, and yet she was also her father’s daughter and heir. It fell on her to fulfill the destiny of the brother she would never have, and while her people gave their love without question, some still had reservations about following a woman into battle someday. Attia had relieved them of that doubt on her eleventh birthday.
By then, she had been training for almost five straight years, memorizing the curves of blades and the weight of a full quiver. Calluses covered her hands, and her knees were constantly skinned from tumbling around in the sparring yard. For a while, even her hair was cut short for convenience and uniformity. She’d always been smaller, shorter than most. But her training made her strong enough, and a stranger might easily have mistaken her for just another Thracian boy if it weren’t for the names.
They’d started out mildly—silly transformations like A-tik-tok or the Girl Prince—and eventually became completely new renditions, the favorite being Spattia, Spawn of Sparro. Attia still remembered the high tenor of their taunts, the sounds of growing boys learning to be men.
And then, one day, she snapped.
One of the older boys had shoved her from behind, and she fell forward onto rough ground.
“Spattia! Spattia!” he chanted. “Spattia! Spa—”