Sorcha was right, Virico was better off never knowing. If he ever found out the truth of that night—how, in trying to protect me from a life of danger, he’d instead set me on a path headed straight to the arenas of Rome—he would never forgive himself. I still wasn’t even sure I’d forgiven him. But there was also a part of me that wondered if my father’s decision hadn’t been a part of the goddess Morrigan’s plan for me all along. It had set my feet on the path that had led, ultimately, to the Ludus Achillea. To Sorcha. To the one place where I truly seemed to belong.
I thought about that as I chose the blades I would practice with that afternoon. I was what I was. A gladiatrix. More than that—I was Victrix.
And that was the way I wanted it.
? ? ?
Life at the Ludus Achillea carried on, and almost a week after the senator’s visit we were still hosting an utterly joyless pack of Amazona gladiatrices. My patience with them was wearing extremely thin. They were a sullen and humorless lot and cast a pall over the practice pitch—made worse by the gloomy presence of their black-garbed “escorts”—and, on top of that, I was beginning to give up hope I’d ever get another letter from Cai.
Even Elka had begun to take pity on me.
“I’m sure everything is fine,” she said that morning, putting a hand on my shoulder after I’d let loose with a particularly exuberant stream of cursing, having absentmindedly bashed my shin in practice right in front of a contingent of smirking Amazona girls. Elka must have noticed—as had I—that there’d been no mail courier at the gates that morning. Again. “He’s probably just too busy hacking Caesar’s enemies to bits to pick up a quill.”
I stood there, unwilling to be mollified, glaring bleakly at Elka as her gaze slid away and drifted over my head.
“On the other hand,” she continued after a moment, “I suppose it’s possible that he’s forgotten about you entirely.”
My glare, I’m sure, went from bleak to baleful.
“I mean . . . probably not.” She rolled an eye at me. “But you never know. Soldiering is a lonely life. Tedious. All that marching through foreign towns filled with strange women. Those Hispanian girls . . . I’ve heard they can beguile a man with a dance.”
“A dance . . . ?”
She nodded. “They do it barefoot and—”
“The only dancer I’m interested in wears sandals and carries two swords.”
I spun around at the sound of a familiar voice just beside my ear.
“Cai!”
Decurion Caius Antonius Varro—real as life and standing not two paces away—grinned down at me, his clear hazel eyes sparkling with light. I felt a huge smile split my face, ear to ear. A laughing Elka slapped me on the shoulder and wandered off. It took every last infinitesimal amount of self-control I could muster not to throw myself into Cai’s arms and devour him with kisses, right there in front of the whole academy and those of the Ludus Amazona who cared to watch.
“Would you honor me with a dance, Victrix?” he asked.
I stood there, speechless, drinking in the unexpected sight of him. Every line and angle, the planes of his face beneath the brim of his helmet, and the contours of his body beneath his armor. He was sun-browned and leaner than I remembered, with a week’s worth of stubble on his jaw and dust on his arms and legs. He was glorious.
Cai handed his horse’s reins to a fellow legionnaire, who nodded sharply and led his horse, and that of another soldier who accompanied him, toward the stables. The other soldier walked up beside Cai and stood, fists on his hips, gazing after Elka as she walked away, tossing her long pale braids over her shoulder. For a moment, I thought the young man’s head might actually twist off its stalk as he craned his neck to keep her in view.
“This is Quintus,” Cai said. “My second.”
When Quintus the second didn’t seem to have heard his introduction, Cai rapped on the young man’s helmet with his knuckles.
“Hm?” Quintus turned around, his expression a bit dazzled.
“Quint?” Cai regarded him from under a raised eyebrow.
“I am. Yes.” He turned and offered me a perfunctory nod. “But more to the point . . . who was that divine nymph?”
I almost choked on the laugh that burst out of my mouth. Quintus the second was lucky Elka was far enough away not to have heard him, I thought. Nymph? If there was any mythological creature Elka saw herself as, I was fairly certain that “nymph” was as far away from it as one could get and not fall off the edge of the world.
Cai cleared his throat, and Quintus seemed to realize he was slack-jawed and gawking. He straightened up and snapped to semi-attention. “Sir,” he appended belatedly.
Cai shook his head and grinned. “Quint, this is Fallon.”
“Oh, I knew that.” He nodded at me. “I could have picked you out of a crowd at fifty paces, what with the way Cai here’s gone on about y—” Cai elbowed him in the ribs, sharply enough that Quintus must have felt it through the shirt of ring mail he wore, and his jaw snapped shut. “What I mean is,” he continued after a moment, “I’m pleased to make your acquaintance. Your reputation in the arena precedes you, Victrix.”
I would have responded, but his attention had drifted right back after Elka, so I turned to Cai instead. “Your father was here visiting only a week ago,” I said. “He never mentioned you were coming home.”
Cai shook his head. “He didn’t know at the time. It’s not exactly a scheduled return.” I frowned at him in confusion, but he handily shifted the subject, saying, “How about that dance? I’m saddle-weary and could use the exercise to loosen up my muscles.”
He gestured me over to the practice pitch and reached up to unfasten the crimson cloak that hung from his shoulders. It was then that I noticed Cai wore not one gladius but two. His sword belt bore a sheath on both hips. Dimachaerus—fighting with two swords at the same time, one in each hand—was definitely not standard fighting procedure in the legions. But it was the way I had chosen to fight in the arena.
I raised an eyebrow at Cai, but he just grinned.
The very first time he and I had sparred it had been with single blades—wooden ones—and he’d offered me the use of a shield. I’d foolishly declined, given him the advantage, and he’d trounced my sorry carcass soundly all over the pitch . . . right up until the moment when a last, lucky blow had given me the win. And him, a broken rib. This time, I would be the one starting out with the advantage—double swords were, after all, my chosen weapons—but I had no illusions that would necessarily mean I’d win again.
Just as Cai—with his advantage—hadn’t, that first time.
At the first moment of engagement, I could tell Cai wasn’t about to pull any of his blows or go easy on me.
Good.
Because neither would I.
He was a seasoned soldier, trained and hardened in actual battle. And he was very skilled. As the sun climbed higher into the sky, the sweat was running into my eyes, blurring my vision as we chased each other back and forth across the practice pitch. The scarlet plume of Cai’s helmet crest tossed like the mane of a stallion as he came toward me, aiming alternating blows at my head and hips, side to side in a familiar sequence that I suspected he must have learned from watching me practice. Which meant I could counter his moves almost without thinking . . .