My head throbbed with the beat of my pulse, and the smell of smoke and incense and blood was overwhelming. Beneath their grotesque, black-feathered masks, the mouths and chins of the men gathered around the slab were stained crimson. One of them stood behind a set of golden scales, and I saw that in one dish lay a finely wrought feather made of gleaming silver. In the other . . . a raw, red lump of flesh quivered as the scales dipped and settled to rest on the marble slab with a thump.
The glamour of a celebrated gladiator’s life suddenly shattered like glass in my mind, exploding outward in jagged pieces, the picture reshaping itself into a grotesque mosaic of blood and dishonor. Monstrous. I spun dizzily on the heels of my sandals and ran as swiftly as I could, stumbling blindly back through the black stone tunnel and out into the cool, fragrant air, praying to the Morrigan that the monsters in their lair hadn’t seen me there. I scrambled clumsily up the stairwell and fell sprawling on the lawn. The grass whispered secrets and lies into my ears, and the earth beneath my shoulder blades was warm and breathing, expanding and contracting like the chest of the dead gladiator had before they’d torn out his heart.
I’d almost forgotten why I’d gone down into that tunnel in the first place.
Until Aeddan appeared out of the darkness.
I opened my mouth to scream but didn’t make a sound. At least I don’t think I did. I wasn’t really sure of anything at that point. Aeddan sank down onto his knees in front of me and held his hands out, reaching for me.
“Fallon!” he said in a low, urgent voice. “I’m not going to hurt you! You have to listen to me. If they find you, they’ll take you. I’m so sorry—this is all my fault.”
“Who?” I managed to gasp. “What are you saying?”
He looked so much like Mael in that moment that I wanted to cry.
“I used to think it was all for the money,” he continued, breathless, “but it’s more than that. They worship death. There is a man they call the Collector—”
“Pontius Aquila?” I shook my head, trying to clear my mind enough to make sense of what Aeddan was saying. “The Tribune? What does he have to do with any of this?”
“These are his revels. Not every gladiator in his collection is destined for the arena sands. Some of them wind up here instead. Fighting in the munera—private bouts—for men who call themselves the Sons of Dis. They think they draw mystical power from the death of strong fighters.”
“I saw them,” I said. “Men. In the catacombs—”
“If you were close enough to see them, then you should thank the Morrigan you got away from them.”
“It was horrible.”
“Their practices are outlawed. They only meet in secret, and they’re depraved. Cruel. The games aren’t just games to these men, Fallon. It’s a kind of madness.”
“The gladiator . . . Ajax . . .” I looked up into his pale face. “Tonight is the second time I’ve watched you kill a man.”
He squeezed his eyes shut. “Don’t. Please. He was a friend to me at the ludus. I know his fate, and I weep for it. I had no choice. The munera aren’t just entertainment. They’re ritual. And they’re always to the death—an offering to their underworld gods.” The pain in his voice was real. “Ajax would have killed me just the same if he’d had the chance. Once we were pulled from the ludus to fight in the munera, we both knew that only one of us was walking away from that bout.”
I gaped at him in disbelief. “What—why are you even fighting for a ludus?” I shook my head to try to clear the fog of confusion that wrapped around my brain. “You’re no gladiator, Aeddan. You’re a king!”
“I’m an exile, Fallon,” he said quietly. “Again. Because of what I did to Maelgwyn. The Trinovante decreed me a kin killer and banished me from the tribe.”
Right. Aeddan may have been a king, but he was also a murderer. In spite of the peril of my current situation, I felt a certain grim satisfaction that he hadn’t escaped his punishment. It might have been the mandragora, but I imagined I could see the shade of Mael hovering darkly over Aeddan, haunting him.
“How did you end up back here?” I asked.
“When my uncle and I were first forced to flee to Rome, it was Pontius Aquila who offered to take us in. And when I found myself once more an exile in Rome, I wound up fighting for him as a gladiator in order to pay off all the debts my uncle had incurred.”
I remembered Aeddan’s uncle, as treacherous a fool as his traitor father.
“Depending upon Aquila’s patronage was the only way I could survive here. And then I discovered that somehow, somewhere along the way, Aquila had found out about you.”
“Me?”
“The great Lady Achillea’s little warrior sister back home in Prydain. Better, stronger, and younger than the best gladiatrix they’d ever seen.”
My head spun at the notion. I remembered what Thalestris had said to me about the time Sorcha had drunkenly bragged about the fierceness of the women of the Cantii and how her little sister had been the fiercest of the lot. So much for keeping me a secret. My own sister had betrayed me without even knowing it. And Aeddan had betrayed me too.
“Why didn’t you tell me she was alive?” I demanded. “You knew Sorcha was in Rome, and you didn’t tell me.”