“Thank you.” She passed a hand over her face with a long sigh. “Maybe it would be better if I kept busy, but I’m just…so tired.”
He often felt that way after a fight, a bone-deep weariness that seemed to exceed any level of physical exertion. “Come here.” He drew her over to her bed and sat down, pulling her into his lap. His arms wrapped around her, and she pressed her face to his shoulder.
She sniffled, and he realized she was crying again. These tears seemed different from the angry, frustrated tears of earlier. These seemed more like a release.
He had no idea how to comfort a crying woman—or a crying anyone, for that matter—but he settled for running his hand up and down her spine in what he hoped was a soothing motion. Maybe he should say something, but he doubted there was anything he could say that would make her feel better.
The shoulder of his tunic grew damp, but eventually she stilled and her breathing calmed. He pressed a kiss to the top of her head.
She slid off his lap and came to lie down, head pillowed on his thigh. He stroked her hair, fingers running through the wayward curls.
“Why Hispania?” she murmured after a while.
The question took him aback. As much as he didn’t wish to discuss the future, he recognized that some distraction might benefit her. “I grew up there.”
“Really?” She rolled onto her back, her head still atop his leg, and cast him a surprised glance. “That’swhere your accent is from.”
“I don’t have an accent.” He’d grown up speaking both Latin and his native Cantabrian.
“Yes, you do. Just a little.”
He let out a dissatisfied grunt, but decided to let her think she’d won.
“What name were you born with?” she asked.
It took him a moment to summon the long-disused word. “Larus.” It felt strange on his tongue, like it belonged to someone he’d once known but hadn’t thought of in years.
“How did you become…” She cleared her throat. “I mean, how did you end up in Rome?”
How did you become enslaved,he knew she meant. “I’m from the far north of the province. There was instability.” The area he hailed from, Cantabria, had been the last region of Hispania to come under Roman control, and plenty still resented Roman rule. “A rebellion broke out. Those who weren’t killed were enslaved.”
“Oh.” She stretched a hand up to brush his shoulder. “I’m sorry. Your family?”
“Dead.” He alone had been the lucky one, young enough to be spared and sold into slavery. He’d been bought first by a gladiator trainer in the south of the province, in search of strong young men to train up. He’d changed hands a few times in the following years until ending up in Lucullus’s service in Rome.
The wound of his parents’ deaths, the loss of his home and childhood, had long since scabbed over, but he’d always carry it with him. As his body bore the scars of his fighting career, so the hidden parts of him would always be marked with his past loss.
Velia made a sound of sympathy. “I can understand why you want to go back. But…” She hesitated, rolling onto her side. “You never told me why you left my uncle. You stayed in Rome then, didn’t you?”
“I spent nearly every coin I had on securing my freedom. I thought I could earn the rest of the money I’d need. I didn’t realize…how hard it would be.” There was a certain naïveté in living as a gladiator. Everything was paid for—food, housing, clothing, medical care, even female company if one desired it. After leaving the ludus, he’d quickly realized that the money he earned from winning fights was vastly more than freedmen with few skills and little education could make.
“But why did you leave?” she asked. “If you didn’t have enough money, why not stay and earn more?”
He focused on gently untangling a small knot that had arisen in her curly hair. He’d guessed this question was coming, but this was a vastly more unpleasant subject than his plan to return to Hispania. “There was…another gladiator. A friend. His name was Hector.” A slight shiver ran through him when he spoke the name. Names had power, and he’d been avoiding all mention of Hector’s, hoping that would lessen the pull of his ghost. “He was killed in the arena.”
If the loss of his home and parents was a long-healed scar, then Hector’s slaying was a wound that festered, refusing to mend.
“I’m sorry,” Velia whispered. Her hand slid over his knee in a soothing motion.
Ferox closed his eyes, but that only made the memories rise brighter in his mind, so he fixed his gaze instead on the strands of Velia’s hair threading through his fingers, picking out all the various colors. Gold, wheat, sand, even a touch of ashy silver.
He knew he should end the conversation here, find a way to speak of something lighter. But words flew from his mouth likearrows from a bow, unable to be stopped. “It was my fault. He died because of me.” The confession was ragged.
She half-sat up, turning to face him. “What?” Her eyes gleamed in the dim room. “Were you his opponent?”
He shook his head. “But I was supposed to be fighting that day. I was recovering from a minor injury, so he substituted for me. I could have still fought. The injury wasn’t serious. If I’d just done what I was supposed to, he’d still be alive.”
“But you might have died.” She climbed back into his lap, her arms hooking around his shoulders. This time, he sensed it was for his comfort, not hers.
