Vorya shouted a warning, and I spun on my heel as a woman with long gray hair in braids swung an oak staff at my head. I still bore my shield—flames guttering, wooden slats charred and crumbling at the edges—and I caught the blow at an angle. The staff scraped across the surface of my shield, flame and tar sluicing off and clinging to the Amazon’s weapon, effectively turning my fiery advantage back on me.
The Amazon matriarch was all lean muscle and sun-dark skin, with eyes like polished black river stones, hard and cold. She fought with precision, determination, and an utter lack of visible emotion. And she was winning . . . up until I saw a fraction of an opening and ducked beneath a wide swing, lunging up from my crouch to head-butt her in the face. I felt her nose break. Blood gushed and she reeled backward, pain-blind, and I sprinted toward where Arviragus was still sawing at the bonds that held my sister captive.
“These . . . women . . .” he grunted at me, hacking desperately at a multitude of intricate knots that held Sorcha bound “. . . have too much time . . . and too much damned rope . . . at their disposal!”
“Sorcha!” I skittered to a stop in front of her and grasped her by the shoulders. “Sorcha—look at me . . .”
“You shouldn’t have come for me,” she said in a parched rasp. “Any of you.”
“Staying back at the ludus wasn’t exactly an option for us, Sorcha,” I said. “And you didn’t think I’d let you leave me behind again, did you?”
I expected a dry retort. A raised eyebrow at the least.
But there was nothing. I looked my sister in the face, and it was almost as if a flame had been snuffed out inside of her. She squeezed her eyes shut to avoid my gaze and turned her head away from me. The side of her face, beneath the curtain of her hair, was livid with bruises.
My breath hissed between my teeth when I saw the injuries. “What have they done to you? Are you all right? I saw blood in your room at the ludus—”
“Hers,” Sorcha ground out through clenched teeth. “Not mine. In a fair fight, Thalestris never would have gotten the drop on me.”
“She had Nyx’s help, I’m guessing?”
She nodded, anger and crushing disappointment stark in her face. “I’m a fool, little sister. I misjudged everything so terribly and now all is lost. All of it . . .” Bitter tears escaped through her lashes to spill down her cheeks. “I’m so sorry . . .”
“Sorcha?”
“Everything is gone . . . everything . . .”
Her head lolled to one side, and I felt a swell of fear for her. This . . . this was not my warrior sister. She wouldn’t just give up like that. What had Thalestris done to her? What had she said?
That was easy to guess. She’d told her about the ludus. And Pontius Aquila. And shattered Sorcha’s dream.
A shrill cry of agony split the chaotic discord of battle noise, and I looked up to see another one of the Amazons crumple to the ground. Fallen girls—theirs mostly, it seemed—lay sprawled all over the clearing. Dead or wounded, I had no way of knowing, but it seemed as if years of living in isolation had dulled the edge of the legendary Amazonian prowess. The tide of battle was definitely turning in our favor. The Amazons were holding their own—for the moment—but in spite of facing superior numbers, the Achillea girls were pressing their attacks. If the Amazons dug in and fought to the bitter end . . . they would lose. And it would be a slaughter.
“Fallon . . .” I turned back to see Sorcha surveying the gathering carnage through horrified eyes. “Stop this madness.”
“I’m not leaving you—”
“Go!” Sorcha snapped with a hint of her usual spark. “Just . . . stop this fighting!”
I glanced over at Arviragus, who managed to shrug as he continued to saw through a knot the size of my fist. “Do as she says,” he grunted. “I’ll manage this. Eventually . . .”
I hesitated for another moment. Sorcha lifted her face to me, eyes pleading.
“Please, Fallon,” she said, her voice raw like a wound. “I want no more dead girls on my conscience. No more blood on my hands. No more ruin . . . Make this end.”
How? How could I do that? I didn’t even know that I wanted to. I wanted revenge on Thalestris just as much as she’d wanted it on my sister and . . .
That’s it.
The thought brought me up short. I realized then that, in a way, I was locked in the same cycle Thalestris was. And I had been, ever since Sorcha had first disappeared from my life when I was a girl. All I’d wanted was revenge until the moment I’d found her again, alive and whole and mine. But when she’d been taken from me a second time . . . that thirst for vengeance had reawakened. Spilled over into my quest for retribution from Thalestris and her tribe, and I’d dragged my ludus sisters straight into the bloody heart of it.
They were getting hurt. They were hurting others. And it wasn’t even their fight, any more than it was the Amazons’. The only problem was that, as much as it might have been mine, I was one girl with two swords, and I couldn’t stop the fighting with my blades. But maybe . . .
Maybe I could stop it with my words.
XII
I STEPPED AWAY from Sorcha and shouted “Stop!” as loudly as I could.
I had to shout it three more times—twice in mangled Greek—before anyone even started to take notice. Cai and Quint, oddly enough, were the first to put up their swords. Used to taking orders, I supposed.
“Stop!” I shouted one more time, my throat raw. “Gratia, damn it!—put that girl down!”
Gratia looked at me like I was mad but, eventually, she lowered the Amazon girl she had lifted off the ground in a rib-crushing bear hug back down to her feet. The girl collapsed to her knees, gulping for breath, her face flushed purple. One by one, the other duels subsided. All except the one raging between Elka and Thalestris. The two of them were locked in a vicious struggle to disarm each other of their spears. With Elka distracted for the barest instant by my shouting, Thalestris managed to thrust her away, and they both backed off into defensive postures.
Like a pair of hungry tigers, they circled each other, waiting for an opening.
“Achilleans!” I shouted one last time. “Drop your weapons!”
Well, then they really did think I was mad. I could see it in their faces. Disarm? We’d been winning. But then I threw my own swords—both of them—to the ground to show them just how serious I was.
“Elka!” I strode through crowd of combatants. “Do it.”
To her credit, my dear friend trusted me enough to do as I said. Elka dropped her spear at her feet. Thalestris went statue-still, her spear still held at the ready. But for the moment, she didn’t move. In her mind, I’m sure, my command to disarm was most likely a ruse.
One eye still on her opponent, Elka turned to the two gladiatrices nearest her—Hestia and Kore—and barked, “You heard her. Do it. Blades on the ground!” She turned to the girl on her other side—Antonia—and glanced down at the weapon strapped to her arm. Antonia raised an eyebrow at her.
“You can just put your arm up, maybe,” Elka said.