CHAPTER 5
I am Attia of Thrace, a Maedi warrior. I am my father’s daughter.
Yet for the second time in her life, Attia found herself bound like an animal, waiting in a strange room to be given to a worthless pig of a man—the so-called Champion of Rome. But she kept her face calm and her eyes trained on the door that led out to the gladiators’ training yard.
It had taken nearly two weeks before she could walk normally again. Most of her wounds were healing well. The bruises had faded to broad patches of yellow and green, only partially covered by the cheap, sleeveless tunic she’d been ordered to wear. The cuts and gashes would soon add to the tapestry of scars stitched onto her bronze skin. Her head still ached, and she knew from experience that the cracks in her ribs would take at least another three weeks to heal. She’d been captured, beaten, bent. She’d been sold. She’d been branded. But she knew that the deepest cut of all was just beyond that door.
Attia hadn’t been surprised when the guards had come for her just after dusk, not after what Timeus had said. She’d been staring out one of the western windows, listening to the gentle roar of the waves beating against the rocks below. Back home, she’d loved to watch the sun sink over the western edge of the Aegean every night—the way its rays pierced through the heavy cloak of mist that sometimes blanketed their shores. Light reflected off of the waves, casting shadows against the mountains. It was a time when the edges of the world blurred, when sea and air and land were nearly indistinguishable, and one could almost believe that the veils between realities existed.
The wild beauty of this foreign sea was enough to keep her still as the guards tied her hands tightly in front of her with a smooth linen rope. She didn’t struggle as they pulled her along through the atrium, down the hallway to the main courtyard, and through a broad archway to the champion’s quarters. They whispered among themselves, never calling the champion by name, but speaking in low voices about his victories and kills. They called him a god of the arena.
But Attia was more concerned with what Timeus had called her. “You are a spoil of war … a gift to my champion,” the old man had said. His words, along with his mark, had been seared into her skin.
Now she waited, her eyes trained on the door. The room was surprisingly simple, almost bare. Nothing like what she would have expected for the so-called Champion of Rome. A hard bed was wedged against one corner and draped with a brown blanket. Across from the bed, two short candles burned on a wooden table. Attia saw what looked like a necklace made of feathers and hemp. The moon shone in through a small window in the outer wall.
She may not have struggled when the guards came, but even before they put the rope on her again, she was ready—ready to spit in the faces of Rome’s elite, to scratch and claw and fight. To kill. As for the champion, well. Soon enough, Attia would meet him face-to-face, and she would see for herself whether this god of the arena bled like a man.
The candles on the table had burned to nearly half their length by the time someone pushed the door open. The guards remained outside as Timeus entered, followed moments later by another man, and Attia finally looked into the face of Timeus’s monster.
The Champion of Rome towered over her. He was younger than she’d expected, with clear skin tanned by the sun and hard lines of muscle and sinew—tokens of his years spent in the arena. His dark hair was cut short in the Roman fashion and accentuated the strong lines of his face. His eyes were bright and green like new grass. He held himself like a warrior, and his mouth formed a grim line as he frowned at her.
That dark look of his had probably made countless men tremble. Attia nearly expected the walls themselves to move to escape his displeasure. But she held her ground. She had never been cowed by a man. She was not about to start now. Attia lifted her chin and glared back, hating both the gladiator and Timeus with every hot drop of blood in her veins.
Timeus grinned at his champion. “No one else has touched her,” he said. “She will be yours to do with as you will—your own little slave, all the way from Thrace.”
Attia wanted to spit in the old man’s smug, bruised face.
The gladiator didn’t seem at all happy with his master’s gift. He barely looked at Attia, and when he did, his expression shifted from shock to dismay to curiosity and then to something that almost looked like shame. He quickly looked away again.
“Unless, of course, you don’t want her,” Timeus continued. “I can’t say I’d be surprised. You’re too picky, honestly. I can never guess your tastes. But my men will enjoy her well enough, and—”
Only then did the gladiator speak. “No,” he said. “Your gift is well received, Dominus. You honor me, and I thank you.”
“As I thought.” Timeus clapped his back. “The gods and the Republic smile on my house because of your victories, my boy. Now I smile on you. Try and enjoy it.”
But the gladiator’s expression remained clouded. Despite his words of acceptance, it was obvious to Attia that the man neither celebrated Timeus’s offering nor seemed remotely grateful. No, he was … resigned. Then Timeus and the guards left, and Attia was alone with the gladiator.
They stood facing each other, both scowling deeply enough to darken the room as a heavy rain began to pelt against the outer walls. Attia clenched her jaw with such force that she felt a dull throbbing start in the base of her skull.
The gladiator looked away first. “I didn’t ask for this,” he said, speaking almost to himself. When he looked at Attia again, his eyes lowered to the rope binding her hands. “Let me untie you.” He reached for a small knife on the shelf behind him.
As the gladiator approached her, Attia had to remind herself again—she had to force the words into being. I am the war-queen of Thrace. I am my father’s daughter.
With every beat of her heart, she reached for the anger that simmered just below her skin, for the hate that threatened to consume her from the inside out. She forced herself to remember the screams of the women and children, the valiant war cries of her brave Maedi. The jolt of the cart that bore her to Rome. The rough hands of the merchant who sold her as a slave. The brand and the chains and the face of the legatus who murdered her father.
I am Attia. I am a Maedi. And I have killed before. This will be easy.