I frowned and nodded. “I guess I just didn’t expect that I would like him.”
Cai paused in lifting his cup to his lips. Sunlight and green shadow dappled his face, and I wanted to run my fingers through his tousled hair.
“He’s very likable,” Cai said eventually, leaning back on one elbow in the grass. “Unless you’re at war with him. A lot of people are.”
“I know that well enough,” I said.
“I don’t just mean tribes and nations. I mean right here in Rome. And after the Triumphs, you’ll be seen as Caesar’s creature, you know.”
I laughed. “Assuming I survive long enough!”
I’d meant it as a joke. Cai didn’t take it for one. He put his cup down on the grass and rolled back up to kneel in front of me, his expression deadly serious. For a moment I thought he was angry with me.
“You still don’t want me in the arena,” I said. “Do you?”
“No.” He shook his head. “I was wrong about that—about you. I should have given you more credit, Fallon. I’ve watched you in every single fight in the circuit. After your first one with that madwoman—”
“She wasn’t a madwoman.”
“Well, she fought like one.” Cai smiled before growing serious again. “But that’s not my point. Or maybe it is. The thing that the Fury was . . . was the Fury. And I didn’t think you could be like her. I didn’t think you should be.”
I looked away. “Maybe you were right.”
“No.” He shook his head emphatically, and there was a strange, feverish intensity burning in his eyes. “I wasn’t. Fallon, I have watched you get yourself in and out of scraps for months now. I’ve watched you fall down, get pushed down, and even throw yourself at the ground at times! And every time—every single time—you’ve hauled yourself back up to your feet, and you’ve stood straighter, stronger, and as more of the thing that you are. And that is a gladiatrix. A fighter. A warrior. And a damned good one.”
He reached for me, his long fingers closing gently on my bare shoulders and sending a shiver through me.
“If I’d taken you away from that,” he said, “if you’d let me take you away from that, I don’t know what you would have become. But this is what you are—who you are. Who I love.”
His mouth was nectar-sweet as he kissed me, and we fell back together into the soft, cool grass beside the stream. Even though Cai had just told me he loved me for the gladiatrix I’d become, I thought to myself in that moment that it was a very near thing. Caesar could have easily chosen Nyx to carry his honor into the Circus Maximus for his Triumph. He could have cast me in disgrace from his marble halls that day as unworthy. He could have ordered me sold or turned out into the streets. He hadn’t. Instead, I had bargained successfully with Julius Caesar. He’d bestowed the highest honor ever to grace a gladiatrix upon me.
And that hadn’t even been the best part of my day.
Cai loved me.
My journey from Durovernum to Rome had seen me plummet to the depths of despair. But then I’d found my sister. I’d found Cai. I had become a part of a family that I truly cared about. And I knew what I had to do to keep all of those bright, beautiful things from vanishing like smoke on a breeze. I had to win the Triumph, woo the crowd, and send Nyx crashing down in defeat.
XXIX
“IF YOU’RE NOT a worthy adversary, Fallon, you’re target practice.”
My sister’s words echoed in my mind as I stood swaying, drenched in sweat, soaking in the sounds of braying war horns and the howling crowd. Bloodlust, thick and tangible, rolled like a heat wave over the arena sands.
Target practice.
The words she’d said to me so long ago Sorcha had repeated that morning as I’d readied myself for the arena. “Remember,” she’d said, “keep moving. You’re either a weapon or a target. Don’t be someone else’s target practice. Make them yours.”
I had grinned and told her that she was going to have to come up with a few new sayings. That I’d known that one by heart for many years. I’d half expected her to tell me not to be such a brat, but she just hugged me and helped me with my weapons.
And then she’d said, “Win the crowd, little sister.”
“I will.”
I hated the fact that Caesar had decreed I should wear special armor that he’d had made for the occasion. I would have much rather worn the armor Charon and Cai had commissioned for me—it fit far better. This new armor was too loose, made evident by the fact that the point of a sword had already found its way between the side buckles under my arm. The wound wasn’t deep, but I could feel the blood running down my rib cage, past my hip. But Caesar’s shining armor was all part of the show. I was no ordinary gladiatrix on that day. I was Victory.
And Victory, in the eyes of Romans, had to look like Rome, like her legions.