Did you really? a voice in my head asked, muted by red fog. Or did you just want the satisfaction of seeing Nyx driven out of the one world she’d ever known? The only life she’d ever thrived in?
Nyx didn’t give me time to answer my own silent question.
A kick from her hobnailed boot lifted me off the ground and drove the breath from my lungs. I heard Cai shout and then the dull thud of a landed punch. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw two of Aquila’s men dragging him back, semiconscious and struggling. My pulse roared in my ears. Nyx’s boot made contact again, this time with my shoulder. I think she’d been aiming for my head, but the kick went wide—a glancing blow, but still another burst of blooming pain. I clenched my hands into fists full of sand and threw it in her face, reaping curses—and a momentary reprieve—as my reward. It was enough so that I could scramble up to my knees and ready myself for her next attack.
But my only weapons were my fists. I made what use of them I could, and felt her nose crumple beneath my knuckles as we brawled. I’m not even sure she noticed. The blood flowed, painting the lower half of her face in a red mask.
“Where is my sister, damn you, Nyx?” I panted, grasping at the front of her tunic.
She grinned at me through red-painted teeth. “On her way to meet the Goddess.”
“What happened to her?” I demanded, hauling her closer.
A mistake.
“Did you know I never actually killed anyone in my time as a gladiatrix?” Nyx hissed, ignoring my question. “I’m starting to think that was an oversight . . .”
I’d been so focused on her whip, I’d failed to notice the short, sharp dagger she carried in her other hand. I don’t think anyone else saw it either, but the shock of the knife blade piercing my side was like a sudden, heavy numbness. The icy-hot sensation that followed told me I was in trouble as I sank backward onto the ground. I expected Nyx would finish me off there and then. But, suddenly, I heard more shouting and looked up to see one of the black-clad Amazona guards hauling Nyx away—kicking and struggling, snarling through bared teeth like a rabid animal.
Pontius Aquila strode forward and backhanded her across the face, knocking some of the battle fury out of her. She glared up at him, panting.
“Control yourself, you wretched girl,” he snapped. “Or you’ll never see the inside of the arena again, and I’ll assign that one’s prodigious fate”—he jerked his chin at me—“to someone who deserves it.”
That was enough to snap Nyx out of her rage completely. What was left behind in the expression on her face told me everything about her in that moment. When I’d first arrived at the ludus and Nyx had discovered the secret of who I was—that I was the long-lost sister of the Lady Achillea, the woman Nyx had devoted her mind and heart and considerable martial skills to since the day she’d been chosen to swear the oath—she’d been bent on my destruction. Not my humiliation, not my dishonor—my death. Achillea had been her hero. Her surrogate mother. Someone to aspire to emulate and make proud. And I had taken that away from her, just by showing up.
Under other circumstances, I might have felt sorry for Nyx. Because I’d grown up thinking exactly the same thing about Sorcha, and it had hollowed me out inside. Made me lose sight of the things that had been truly important to me. In that moment, however, the thing that was most important to me was that I was on my hands and knees, bleeding from a knife wound.
The pain had yet to fully register, and I clamped a hand to my side beneath the dark stuff of my cloak, hoping desperately that Pontius Aquila wouldn’t notice that I was hurt. The voice of the Morrigan hissed inside my head, whispering a warning against showing weakness. I silently, fervently agreed. If he thought I was badly injured, the noble Tribune might just relent and let Nyx finish the job.
And I wouldn’t be able to stop her.
Lydia still writhed on the ground, whimpering in agony, ignored by Aquila and his people, and I feared for what would happen to her once he remembered she was there.
I could feel the sweat breaking out across the back of my neck as I struggled to rise to my feet. The black-clad guards stood with weapons drawn in front of the clustered Achillea girls. Cai was pinned on the ground by one of the guards, his arm behind his back. There was blood at the corner of Cai’s mouth, and his teeth were bared in a snarl.
I stood there, swaying, defiant, as Aquila gestured one of his men forward. Even with the feature-obscuring helmet he wore, I recognized him as one of the Ludus Achillea’s former trainers—a thick-necked brute with bare arms that bore the scars of many fights, he was an ex-legion soldier named Ixion. Sorcha had dismissed him shortly after I’d arrived at the ludus because of his penchant for excessive violence. I’d thought at the time that, in a school where we were being trained to kill, that was saying something.
“This . . . gladiatrix needs some time alone, I think,” Aquila said. “Take her somewhere quiet where she can clear her mind and ponder her future.”
Ixion grunted and grabbed me by the arm. I shot a glance over my shoulder at Elka, whose face was rigid with fury, and shook my head. Cai had been right to warn me against action earlier. The only thing for me—for any of us—to do in that moment was cooperate. Defiance would come later. But only if we survived long enough. Dead or disabled, we were no good to each other. After a moment, Elka seemed to realize it too, and took a half step back.
I walked ahead of Ixion, one hand clamped to my wounded side, as he prodded me in the back with the butt of his sword. He steered me away from the barracks buildings and in the direction of the angry orange glow that still licked upward in the farthest corner of the ludus compound, where the stables still burned. He stopped when we reached a squat stone building that I’d never really given much thought to before that moment. I’d always assumed it was a storage shed for livestock fodder. There were steps dug down into the earth in front of the heavy ironbound door, and Ixion preceded me, producing a ring of keys from the worn leather pouch hanging at his belt.
My mouth went dry when I saw it. It had belonged to Thalestris.
So she really has left us, I thought.
Anguish for my sister surged through me again. And helplessness.