My instinct was to argue, but I was bone-weary. So I lay on my side, facing the wall, tucking my hands beneath my cheek since there was no pillow. There was a light caress on my head, fingers trailing through my hair. Trajan’s gentle hands pushed me toward sleep.
He and his grandfather whispered together.
“He dissolved the senate. I cannot believe he would go so far.”
“No matter, Grandfather. When he is dead, we will bring back the republic.”
“You’re a lovely dreamer, my son. That seems impossible.”
“Nothing is impossible.”
While Trajan dreamed on and his grandfather listened, my mindwandered back to the Dacian dancer, the bloodsinger in Lucretia’s story.
She had to have been an ancestor of mine. Bunica never told us who in our immediate family held the gifts we had. Only that the magic was passed on through our blood. I could still hear her voice.
“It has always been so. Always through the females of our family,” said Bunica, chopping radishes at the small square table beside the fire.
“But how do you know it will come to me and my sisters? I’ve felt nothing at all,” I said while wiping the radishes and onions clean from the garden. “Nor has Kostanya or Kizzy. Only Malina has the slightest touch of magic. Though sometimes I think her abilities as an empath are nothing more than female intuition.”
“Do not disregard the importance of female intuition,” said Bunica, her gnarled fingers moving swiftly with the knife. “It is its own kind of sight. And as for how I know”—she paused and narrowed her gaze at me, her wrinkled brow pinching tight—“I have my own magic, dear one. I’ve seen it. The three mystical gifts of Minerva already live in you and your sisters’ blood.”
She scooped the radishes up with her hands and dropped them in the empty pot on the table. I rolled the cleaned onions to her, opening my mind to the idea that my grandmother could be right. One day, the magic would awaken inside me.
“You said three gifts of magic. Will Kizzy and Kostanya have the same one because they’re twins?”
She’d paused in dicing the onion and sniffed, the fumes watering her eyes. She wiped a sleeve across her nose.
“The power can only go to one,” she said then snapped her finger toward the door. “Now you best fetch the water for the stew or we’ll have no dinner at all.”
That memory came from nowhere, from so many years ago. And yet I could hear the sharp chop of her knife through crisp radishes.I could hear the sadness in her voice when she’d sent me outside. I’d never thought anything of it then. I wondered what Bunica had seen and refused to tell me.
Were my sisters still out there alive somewhere? Had they been held captive like me? Or had they all died trying to survive all alone without someone to care for and protect them?
My mind drifted as Trajan’s fingers continued to gently caress me toward sleep. I finally gave in, the smell of onions, the sound of Bunica’s voice whispering me into dreams.
XXVTRAJAN
It wasn’t yet dawn when the smuggler I’d paid for passage led us to the top deck. We’d been held in the bottom of the hull where the cargo was kept and passed the deck where the oarsmen steadily rowed. They all looked to be free plebs, built hard and strong for life at sea.
I ushered Lela ahead of me up the narrow stairs out into the open air, anxious to get off the ship in case Igniculus sent deathriders out to find us.
“Is that Vulsinii?” I asked, noting the darkness of the wide ocean was on the port side of the ship and distant pinpoints of light glittered from the shore on the starboard side.
“As you requested,” the smuggler said, then added, “Though your payment will take you farther, if you like. We are going to Pisae to deliver our goods.”
Scanning the cliffs, I found the familiar outcropping of cliffs, knowing my grandfather’s palatial home of white stone was not far beyond on a vast lake.
“No. We’ll get off here.”
He nodded and called out to the men manning the sails. One of them called down an opening in the deck for the oarsmen to halt rowing. The ship slowed as one of the sails dropped.
When Lela woke, I’d told her about the ghastly scene that had transpired at Caesar’s palace. I’d not yet had the chance to explain to her where we were going when the door to our hideaway had opened.
She’d left her veil down, her dark, wavy hair lifting in the ocean breeze. My gut clenched at the thought of leaving her behind and returning to Rome, knowing the chances of making it out alive a second time were slim. At least I knew she’d be in good hands this time.
We waited in silence as the ship coasted into the harbor, the docks quiet in the middle of the night. The salty sea called to me, my dragon wanting to swim deep into the ocean. Now wasn’t the time.
The ship didn’t dock since I’d already told them there was no need. The smuggler returned.
