“Well . . . you have yet to leave a visible mark on me.” He moved closer. So close our noses were almost touching. “But I’ve a rib that aches in wet weather, thanks to you. And a deeper ache”—he grasped my hand and pressed it to the center of his chest—“here.”
I could feel his heart pounding beneath my palm, strong and steady.
“Have you asked your army physicians about it?” I whispered. “It might be something serious . . .”
“I think it’s definitely serious. Probably fatal if left untreated.”
If by treatment he meant kissing, then I suspected he’d more than survive the next few moments at least . . .
Or maybe not.
Thanks to Quintus the second.
Cai and I were far too occupied to hear him right away, but eventually his throat-clearing and gravel-crunching caught at the edge of Cai’s attention, and I suddenly found myself kissing air.
“Quint!” Cai rose to his feet and stalked toward his friend. “What in Hades are you doing here?”
I stood too, tugging my tunic straight and smoothing my hair, trying unsuccessfully not to blush furiously. Quint tossed me a wave over Cai’s shoulder.
“Game ended earlier than expected,” he said.
“What happened?” Cai asked.
“I’m a good gambler.” Quint shrugged apologetically. “I won all their money. Faster’n I expected. I offered to keep playing for fun, but by that time they were rather drunk and cranky and declined the generosity.”
“Drunk?” I raised an eyebrow at him. “Sorcha’s men?”
“That’s why I’m such a good gambler,” he explained. “I kept pouring them wine and me water—just enough to get them a bit wooly in the head—and it makes for much better odds.”
“A little too good in this case.” Cai frowned at him.
“Sorry.” Quint offered him a rueful grin. “At any rate, they’re all back out on patrol and probably looking for someone else’s night to ruin. So if I were you, I’d escort the lovely gladiatrix to her quarters and get yourself back to ours. Me, I’m going to make myself scarce until morning.”
Cai sighed heavily and picked up the jug of wine we hadn’t even gotten around to opening. “For your troubles,” he said and tossed it to Quint. “Such as they were.”
Quint caught it deftly and tucked it under his arm, chuckling. Then he threw us a salute as he loped off into the darkness. Cai packed away the goblets and platter into a linen sack and slung it over his good shoulder. He held out his hands to me, and I stepped into the circle of his embrace.
“I wish your father didn’t want you back so soon, even if I understand now why he does.” I shook my head at him and ran my fingers over his tunic where it covered the claw scars on his shoulder.
Cai rolled his eyes. “He worries too much.”
“He’s right to do so.”
“I’m just hoping he didn’t go and sacrifice a white bull to the healer god Aesculapius or anything so ridiculous . . .”
He made light of it, but I knew that in his heart, Cai revered his father. Decimus Varro was like a Roman version of my father, Virico. Both big, strong, handsome men, devoted to their families and used to being in command. The senator had been a hero in the legions in his youth, and his son aspired to be just like him in much the same way that, growing up, I had aspired to be like my mother and my sister. I thought of my own father then, and how he had done all the wrong things to try to keep me safe. I’d come to accept that my father’s actions had come from a place of love, but at the time they had wounded me deeply. I was glad for Cai that his father seemed to be rather less destructive in his overprotective tendencies.
“He just wants to see for himself that I’m still in one piece.” Cai reached for both my hands, clutching them tight to his chest. “And then he’ll be off to Brundisium and away on his trade mission, and I’ll be back here at the ludus before you know it.”
“Of course you will.” I leaned in to him. “You need my help with your technique.”
His eyes flashed and he bent his head to kiss me. A long, slow, teasing kiss that made my lips tingle and turned my skin to fireflies and feathers.
“I look forward to our practice bouts,” he murmured.
I was virtually breathless but managed a raspy “So do I . . .” in response before he stepped back and, glancing around to make sure there were no guards to see us, led me back toward the main buildings of the compound. He kissed me one last time at the fork in the path that led one way to the gladiatrix barracks, the other to the stables.
My bed one way, and his the other.
In that moment, I was suddenly, painfully aware that there was still a sharp divide between someone like Cai and someone like me—like the person I’d become. Somewhere deep inside, the Cantii princess stirred to life and protested that she should, by all rights, be sleeping where—and with whom—she damned well pleased. The gladiatrix told her to shush and be proud of her place as an equal among her sister warriors, with the freedom to stay or go and the obligation to abide by the same rules if she stayed. Even in Sorcha’s new order, that was the way things would remain. I’d have to learn to accept that, as long as I remained an Achillea gladiatrix. Which, because of my deal with Caesar, was for the foreseeable future. I sighed, and Cai seemed to sense what I was thinking.
He wrapped his arms around me and kissed the top of my head. “One day,” he murmured. “One day, I will have you all to myself for as long as you’ll let me, Fallon. No rules, no ranks, no campaigns or competitions or other people’s ideas of what should or shouldn’t be to come between us. No decurion and gladiatrix, no slave and soldier—or even princess and patrician—just us.”
“Just Cai and Fallon.” I sighed. “I like the sound of that.”
“And we’ll each leave our weapons behind.”
“Now you’re just being silly.”
He looked down at me and grinned. “You’re right. But that day will come. I know it in the core of my heart. For now? Sleep.” A last lingering kiss. “Dream of your fierce goddess, dream of me, and keep a blade tucked under your pillow just in case you get into a fight with either one of us.”
V
WRAPPED IN THE memory of Cai’s embrace, I fell back on my bed and drifted off to sleep. In hindsight, maybe I should have put a blade under my pillow that night, like he said. Maybe such a talisman would have warded away the disaster that was to come, heralded—as Cai had unwittingly predicted—by a dream.
In my dream, I wandered through a hazy portal and found myself standing in the fragrant and manicured courtyard garden of the Ludus Achillea. The statue of Minerva, Roman goddess of battle, stood motionless in the moonlight, pale and perfect. But that night as I approached her in my dream, something was different. When I stepped closer, my bare feet making no sound on the pebbled path, I saw that it wasn’t Minerva at all who stood there. It was my sister, Sorcha. And she wasn’t dressed in the helmet and stola of the Roman goddess but, instead, she appeared in the guise of the Morrigan, dressed in a long cloak of feathers that swept the ground. No, I thought. Not feathers . . .