He smiled shyly then looked at the ground, nodding as if to accept my gratefulness.
Stefanos stepped to stand beside us and put a hand on Ivo’s shoulder. “Yes, Ivo is the best protector ever. I was so happy when Julian brought him into our home.”
I let go of Ivo’s hand. “I am happy that he did as well.”
“Let’s get to the house quickly,” Trajan urged us, stepping to myside, examining me keenly. “We landed not far away, but it has been a long walk in this cold.”
“Kara is making lamb stew tonight. That will warm you up. Follow me!” he shouted, sprinting ahead toward the ridge, Amica barking and running alongside him, and Ivo following behind them.
“Are you all right?” he asked gently, taking my hand. “I did not realize you knew Ivo.”
“I am actually overjoyed.” I laughed. “I’d always thought Valerius killed him when he tried to protect me in that hell.”
“I never knew how Ivo had come to Julian’s household. He always seemed to be finding people who needed saving and adding them to his family.”
“Julian considers his servants family?” I asked, surprised.
“He does.”
I’d misjudged Julian just as I had Trajan. Yes, they were both Romans, but I couldn’t count all Romans as evil, knowing what I did now.
“Hurry up!” yelled Stefanos, waving us on as he reached the top of the hill.
Trajan and I both smiled, for I believed it had been a long while since either of us had seen the sweet innocence of a child.
“He seems so young,” I noted, trying to find the words to ask what I was thinking without offending. “Is he, uh, simpleminded?”
Chuckling, Trajan answered, “No. He’s only six years old.”
I gasped and stared, wide-eyed, as Stefanos breached the hill and disappeared over the other side. “He can’t be. He looks to be twelve or thirteen at least.”
“He’s dragon-born,” he explained soberly.
I frowned up the hill, taking that in. “Who is he?”
“He was thrown in the gutter and left for dead, but Julian’s housekeeper Kara found him. Julian took him into his household.”
“But it’s illegal. He could be killed if discovered. Why didn’t he simply send him away, hide him outside of the city somewhere?”
“I asked Julian the same thing once.”
“And what did he say?”
We trudged up the incline, almost at the top of the hill.
“He said that no one else would care for him the way he would. That he saw slaves as humans, not commodities to be bought and sold and used.” Clearing his throat, Trajan explained, “His mother had been a slave. Before his father freed her.”
I stared, genuinely shocked to hear this. “And you feel the same way, don’t you?” I asked him, my pulse speeding. “Now, I mean?”
He stopped right below the crest of the hill and faced me. I stopped with him, noting the grave expression tightening his face that told me he wanted my full attention. So I gave it.
“Julian’s mother was a freed slave by his father, and so he’d been raised with a much different outlook than that of most nobility. People like me. It wasn’t until he’d opened my eyes that I saw the injustice in it. But I don’t believe I’d truly felt it in my heart until that one night I sat on Valerius’s silken cushions while he and his cronies joked and laughed at the beautiful slave woman wearing a golden bridle over her mouth.”
My chest rose and fell more quickly, my heart hammering faster.
He took both of my hands from beneath my cloak and pressed them between his large ones, engulfing them with warmth. And while my pulse fluttered with some frail vulnerability weaving between us, it was Trajan who looked more terrified when he said, “One doesn’t truly understand injustice until it touches someone you love.”
Unable to respond or even process what he was confessing, I turned back to the path. He fell in beside me, both of us taking in the scene in the glen below. The house was made of white stone and plaster witha thick thatched roof. There was also a long barn made of wood and thatching for the animals.
