I looked up to see Elka’s gaze fastened on me. “How do you know this?”
They all stared at me, wide-eyed and skeptical, waiting for some kind of an explanation that would make sense of what Aeddan was saying. I took a breath and told them all what I’d experienced after Elka and I had been lured by Nyx to the Domus Corvinus with the promise of an evening of harmless—if forbidden—fun. It had turned out to be quite the opposite. “Forbidden” in reality was more like “outlawed,” and “fun” translated horribly as “nightmare.”
I told them what I’d witnessed in the catacombs of the palatial house that night while the rest of the party guests carried on, reveling in the thrill of a gladiatorial duel that had proved salaciously lethal. The guests didn’t know that the loser of the bout was taken away and laid out on a marble slab, like a sacrificial altar to a dark god. They didn’t know that his chest was split open like a roasting carcass, his still-warm heart torn from the cavity and weighed on a golden scale. And they most certainly did not know that, after that, it was consumed by masked men who called themselves the Sons of Dis. Devoured in a bloody, horrifying ritual. But I knew. I’d seen it happen with my own eyes.
Dis, I’d later learned, was the dark incarnation of the Roman god Saturn—ruler of the Underworld, a pitiless deity who could grant his worshippers strength and power but would only be placated with blood. As I told my friends the tale, Aeddan stood at my side, his face pale and his jaw tight, nodding confirmation of everything I’d said.
“They . . . ate the heart of the man you killed?” Tanis asked, one hand creeping up to cover her own breastbone.
Aeddan nodded.
Heron ran his fingers over his beard, regarding Aeddan with scholarly detachment. “And yet, you still fought for Aquila,” he said.
Aeddan met the physician’s gaze with an unblinking one of his own. “At the Ludus Saturnus. I did. Until he made me a member of his elite guard.”
Heron nodded, and said nothing more. The girls stared at Aeddan with varying expressions of wariness, curiosity, and revulsion. I had my own ideas as to why Aeddan had stayed in close proximity to Aquila. He wasn’t a slave. Even if he wasn’t welcome in our own land, he still could have left at any time. But if he had, he wouldn’t have been at the Ludus Achillea now. And I’d still be locked up in Tartarus.
I turned away from him to find Elka staring at me.
“I had no idea,” she said. “That night . . . after I lost track of you. That’s . . .” She trailed off, unable to put into words what she was thinking.
“Evil,” Neferet finished her sentence for her. “What they did was evil. In Aegypt, when we die, Anubis, the god of the dead, carves out our heart and weighs it against Ma’at, the feather of truth.”
My hand went to the wound on my wrist—the one Aquila had carved with his feather—and a shiver of dread ran through me, scalp to sole.
“But Anubis is a god,” Neferet continued. “And only a god has that prerogative.”
“Aquila thinks of himself like that,” Aeddan said. “He thinks the heart of a warrior gives him strength. Power.”
Ajani stepped forward. “The hearts of these warriors”—she gestured to the girls gathered around—“will not give him power. We will give him nothing but pain.”
? ? ?
When I’d told Aeddan that I wasn’t leaving without the others, I think I knew that the likelihood of all of us escaping was a remote possibility. The Amazona girls and their guards outnumbered us, and unless all the luck and every benevolent god who chose to turn an eye on our plight was with us, some of us simply weren’t leaving the ludus that night.
“I wish you good fortune, Fallon,” Heron said, pulling me aside after we’d come to a mutual decision to take our chances outside the ludus walls. “But I can’t come with you.”
“What?” I asked. “Why not?”
He led me over to the figure lying on the cot and lifted the sheet. Lydia lay beneath it on her left side, her shoulders seeping blood through the bandages Heron had applied. She moaned quietly and her eyelids fluttered, but that was her only response. The skin on the right side of her face, where the lash of Nyx’s whip had scored, was split to the bone. Heron had done an admirable job of sewing her up with neat, tiny stitches, but Lydia would carry a livid scar for the rest of her life. The cot beneath her was stained with the blood from her wounds.
In spite of myself, I felt a twinge of pity. I quashed it as best I could.
“As you see, Lydia isn’t going anywhere,” Heron said. “Not anytime soon.”
“Leave her behind then,” I said.
“Fallon,” he chided me gently. “You know I can’t do that. I swore an oath to care for the girls of this ludus. Even the ones who might not entirely deserve it. Aside from the soft-tissue wounds, her cheekbone is broken. Without the poppy draughts I’ve administered, the pain would be overwhelming. If I don’t keep her in a stupor for the next few days at least, she’ll howl herself mad.”
“What if I . . . what if we need you?” I asked.
My own wound—the one from Nyx’s blade—had begun to throb again beneath my cloak, and I clenched my fists to keep from putting a hand to my side. If Heron realized I was hurt, he would have done whatever he thought he needed to—for my own good—to keep me in his infirmary. Even if it meant alerting Aquila’s guards.
“I can take care of it,” Neferet said. “Of us.”
I looked back and forth between them. Heron frowned, clearly torn. But then he nodded and walked swiftly over to a long cupboard. He took a bulging leather satchel down from a shelf and handed it to Neferet. “I pray you won’t need it,” he said. “But if you do, this should see you through most injuries or illness.”
Neferet took the bag solemnly, as if it was filled with precious treasure. She looped the strap across her shoulder and gave Heron a swift, spontaneous hug. The physician’s usual dour expression crumpled slightly as he squeezed his eyes shut and returned the embrace.
“Go,” he said, pushing his apprentice to arm’s length. “Remember what I’ve taught you: that in medicine, sometimes this”—he tapped her chest, just above her heart—“is a wiser physician than this.” He tapped her forehead.
She nodded, her dark eyes wide and unblinking in her small, serious face. “I will strive to honor your teaching.”
He snorted. “I’d be happy if you just strove not to let any of your comrades turn septic when they get hurt. Because as sure as the sun climbs the morning sky, they will get hurt.” He raised an eyebrow at me.
I ducked my head and turned away. Of course, he didn’t know that I was already in need of Neferet’s ministrations—once we got somewhere safe—but he knew that I was endangering the others. And when it happened to one of them, it would be my fault. And my responsibility.