A flicker of movement caught his attention, a flutter of fabric from around the other side of the building, where it formed a narrow alley next to the outer wall of the ludus.
Ferox went that way, then stumbled to a halt as he rounded the corner. Shock seized him.
The stranger had Velia pressed up against the wall, his hands fumbling to raise her skirt. Velia was frozen, her eyes shut tight.
Cold rage pulsed through Ferox. He took a step forward.
The next thing he knew, the man was on the ground before him, clutching at a bloodied nose. Ferox kicked him in the stomach. The impact shoved the man a few feet across the dirt.
With the stranger no longer an immediate threat, Ferox turned to Velia. She’d opened her eyes, and her gaze passed uncomprehendingly from her vanquished attacker to Ferox.
“Velia?” He moved toward her. Dimly, he sensed fury coursing through him, but everything felt distant, unreal, as it sometimes did during a fight in the arena. “Are you all right?” He extended a hand, meaning to touch her shoulder, but snatched it back as he realized his hand was covered in the other man’s blood.
“I—” She broke off as footsteps sounded behind Ferox.
He whirled around, but it was just Achilles.
The novice’s gaze swept over the scene, from Velia to the man on the ground. The stranger was just beginning to struggle to his feet, but Achilles marched over and dealt him a vicious kick to the head that made the man collapse to the dirt, unmoving. “Piece of pig shit,” Achilles snarled.
Ferox turned back to Velia, but she slipped past him, hastening away. “Velia?” he called.
She didn’t look back.
He needed to go after her, but he would deal with this first. “Get him out of here,” he said to Achilles, nodding at the limp body before them. Ferox would have done it himself, but he didn’t trust himself not to snap the man’s neck if he laid hands on him.
Achilles nodded and bent down, taking hold of the man under his armpits. He dragged the body toward the outer gate of the ludus.
“And have a word with the guard,” Ferox called after him. “See that he understands he’s not to let anyone else in who doesn’t belong here, or he’ll have me to answer to.”
Achilles gave another nod, then disappeared around the corner.
Ferox set off after Velia—she must have gone to her room—but paused when he remembered the state of his hands, now grown sticky with the man’s blood. He took a brief detour to the fountain in the corner of the ludus, piped with water from the aqueducts, and scrubbed his hands.
The activity gave him a moment to come back to himself, to feel the rage and horror that had been hovering at the edges of his awareness since he went looking for Velia. It had all happened so fast. One moment he’d been contemplating his guilt over how rudely he’d spoken to her, crafting a plan to apologize.
Next he’d been bludgeoning the man who attacked her.
His hands shook beneath the trickle of water. Despite his years of fighting, he’d rarely done violence out of rage. Being a gladiator was not about fury or hatred, but about training and skill, not to mention a hefty dose of luck.
But the wrath that flooded him at the sight of that man’s hands on Velia, her frozen expression—it threatened to overpower him.
He drew in a deep breath as he rubbed the last of the blood from his fingers. If he was going to speak to Velia, he needed to be in a more temperate state of mind.
He wiped his damp hands on his tunic, then headed toward the barracks.
18
Velia’sdoorwasclosedwhen he reached it. Ferox knocked gently. “Velia? Are you all right?”
He could hear her within, footsteps moving as if she was pacing.
Something smashed, the sound of pottery breaking. He jerked his head away from the door in surprise.
“Go away!” she yelled.
“No.” He laid his palm flat on the surface of the door. It would be the work of a moment to remove it from his path. The thorny emotions still surging through him urged him to break, to smash, to rip the door from its hinges—anything to get to her.
But a brute breaking her door down was not what Velia needed right now, so he forced himself to adopt a more measured approach. Maybehewasn’t even what she needed right now. This situation required delicacy, and delicacy was not exactly his strong suit. “Would you like me to find Penthesilea?” he asked. “Perhaps…a woman…”
