“Felix?Felix!” The sound of her voice, her thudding feet, and then a light spray of sand as Adel dropped to her knees beside him.
When he opened his eyes, she shut hers in relief. “You’re not dead.” The words emerged as tender as any declaration of devotion.
“Not yet.”
Adel shook her head, gaze snapping over him, face streaked in sand-crusted blood. “No. You will not die.” Her tone dared to be challenged as much as it was determined not to be. She fumbled with the hem of her tunic and tore a swath of green fabric free. “Can I remove the blade?”
His lips tightened. “Gently.” He squeezed his eyes shut and gritted his teeth as her fingers wrapped around the grip of the pugio. And then—was she trying to gut him or save him?
A moan emerged through his teeth.“Gently!”
Stars and darkness whirled behind his eyelids. And then nothing.
Gates swung open around the perimeter of the arena. Adel stiffened, fully expecting a rush of angered animals. Lions, tigers, leopards, bulls. Instead, slaves tugging stretchers and body carts emerged, trotting forward across the sand. Four magistri followed on their heels, each waving a flag in a different color. The gladiators left standing shifted into motion, slowly sorting themselves into schools and following their trainers.
Adel didn’t move. She wasn’t leaving Felix to the body collectors to be carted off to the bowels of the amphitheatre. Especially not when she couldn’t tell if the liberators had been successful in infiltrating the medical bay. Each of the ludi would collect their fighters and bury them. The rest would be flushed through the sewers and into the Tiber, carried out to sea, never thought of again. How many countless souls had been lost in this oval of sand? Sent through the sewers like rubbish and waste? Had their lives meant nothing? Perhaps not to Rome. But to God? Telemachus? Precious souls, worth the greatest sacrifice.
A slave parked a cart with a chipped wheel next to Felix.
“Touch him and it’ll be the last thing you do,” she growled.
The man’s eyes flashed wide and he took a stumbling step back. “I—I’m only doing my j-job.”
She glared at him. “He belongs to the Ludus Gallicus, and he can be saved.”
The slave gave a nod, the nob in his throat bobbing nervously. “I’ll take him to the Gallic magister over there then.” He tipped his forehead toward the trainer with the green pennant, a small collection of fighters gathering around him.
“I will personally see that you do.”
Together they lifted Felix into the low bed of the cart.
“You there!” She waved over another slave with a cart and gestured toward Telemachus’s body. “This one is with us.”
“But the dead ones go to—” At her thunderous look, he fell silent and nodded. “Of course, with you.”
She knelt once more by Telemachus’s side, emotion swelling the back of her throat like hot coals. He’d been a good friend. One who had never looked at her as ruined, fallen, worthless. He’d shown the love of God in his life, and his death. A tear slipped from her eye, catching in the grit on her face. Her fingers went once more to the place in his neck where his pulse no longer throbbed. Not even a flicker. She closed his eyes and pushed to her feet, her whole body trembling as she grasped the shaft of the spear and braced a bare foot against his chest to pull it free. A sob caught in her throat as she drew it out and threw it down.
Telemachus had done it. Ended the games. Not with schemes and manipulations, as they had tried, but by speaking truth with love. And it was done not in word only, but in action. He’d given his life to end the violence. To save their lives.
Tears swelled in her eyes, blurring her vision as the slaves rolled Telemachus into the cart. She’d never felt worthy, never thought she’d earn back the right to look her atta in the eye. And yet, in this moment, she’d never felt such an overwhelming flood of love. It wrapped around her, warm, secure, as if nothing could remove it. Had God always feltthat way about her? And she had just shrugged it off time and again because she’d not felt worthy of wearing it?
Her feet scuffed the sand, wounds throbbing with each step as she followed the two carts across the arena to the gathering of the Gallic School. She winced every time the flattened edge of the chipped wheel thumped against the ground. If Felix didn’t die from his wounds, he’d surely die of the jolting. “Be careful with him,” she admonished, eye catching on another cart bearing Wulfula’s body, a gladius protruding from his back. The sight brought sadness rather than satisfaction. He’d been intoxicated by the “love” of the crowd, same as she had once been. And it had destroyed him in the end.
She lifted her gaze to the stands, for once not roaring her name, or cheering for blood, but standing silent, and sober, shifting with the movement of spectators who glanced at the arena floor and then turned their backs to the aftermath of violence as they left.
“Let it be so,” she murmured and closed her eyes. Her mind filled with images of this place of blood standing empty, shining marble chipping away to reveal the concrete beneath, niches empty of the gilded gods and goddesses, proud arches slipping, tumbling to ruin. A place of death, but no longer. A place that stood for centuries as a warning to those who came after. Offering silence and stories that sobered them, made them value the lives that would not be sacrificed thanks to the love and courage of the giant being wheeled away in front of her.
Let it be so.
XLIV
FELIX WOKE TO BARS OF GOLDEN LIGHTstreaming into a rocking room that was warm and smelled of fish.Fish?He blinked, trying to focus on something other than the blinding light. Was he dead now? Was this heaven?
“He’s not dead!” a voice beside him shrieked. Feet slapped against the floor, followed by the crashing of a stool. “Mater! Come quick! He’s awake!”
He felt his lips sliding upward. “Hello to you too, Oppia.”
The impish face appeared above his, smile tremulous and wide. “I’m so glad you’re not dead.” Her braid swung down over her shoulder and smacked him in the mouth.
