He blew dark hairs free. “Me too.”
“Felicia was sure you wouldn’t survive but I knew you would!” She grinned, the triumph of being right over her older sister nearly rivaling the joy that he was alive.
“Oh, Felix.” Mater’s voice burst from the doorway and then she was there, resting a palm against his forehead, Cassia and Felicia flankingher, voices all tumbling at once with their thankfulness that he was alive, their sureties that he wouldn’t make it.
“Where am I?”
Mater chewed her lip. “On a ship bound for Gaul.”
“Gaul?” That explained the smell of fish. Felix felt his brow pinch. “Why Gaul? Where’s Pater? Adel—the others...” He shifted, a faint clink of chains drowned by the dull pain throbbing through his stomach.
Mater gently pressed his shoulders down. “Emperor Honorius ordered that all volunteer gladiators be sent home, and that the remaining prisoners be sent to the mines in Gaul.”
He let his eyes drift shut, dread curling in his gut at the thought of Adel in the mines. He had no doubt she’d put up a good fight if any tried to harm her, but for how long? He tried to recall if she’d been wounded in the arena and couldn’t. His mind held only a vague image of her with a bloody knife. “What of the Visigoths?”
“We rescued a dozen or so, the day of the games.” Pater’s voice rumbled from the doorway. Floorboards creaked as he made his way to the bedside. “It might have been more, but we had so many intercepted by their own trainers and guards on the way. The monks had no choice but to pretend to be lost or mistaken so they would not endanger the mission. The ones who made it through the battle were shuffled out of the city under cover of night. Honorius sent them back to Alaric with a delegation optioning for peace, though no one is to know.”
The knowledge that Adel was gone forever cut through his chest like a rusted scalpel, leaving a jagged gash. Was she with her family? Had they welcomed her home? Was she happy? At peace?Lord, let it be so.
“Will Alaric agree to peace?”
Pater shrugged. “Perhaps for now. But I do not see the peace lasting.”
Felix closed his eyes, the rocking reminding him that all was not answered. He looked up. “Why are we on a ship to Gaul?”
Pater’s gaze flicked to Mater’s and resettled. “You were convicted of stealing two imperial slaves from the ludus, and the attempt to steal others. You’re sentenced to a year in the mines for each unrecovered slave.”
“Two years...,” Felix murmured. “And you?”
Pater smiled, “We were discovered—not with any gladiators, thankfully—but no one was interested in questioning a poor plumber in the sewers—nor out of them. But we decided to leave Rome. My prospects were not promising to begin with and now my name is tarnished for good.”
“Sorry.”
“We couldn’t be more proud of you.” Mater smiled and wrapped her hand around Felix’s.
“Not everyone has a brother convicted of saving people,” Oppia added, wedging herself between Felix and Mater. “I told everyone.”
Felix couldn’t hold back a smile. “Perhaps we should keep that part to ourselves, once we reach Gaul. It might be a bigger detriment to your marriage offers than telling everyone Felicia is bald.”
“Ilias told me what you said.”
Felix winced as Felicia pushed her way into the circle.
“But I’ll have you know, I accepted his marriage proposal anyway.” She sniffed and lifted her chin, slanting a smile over her shoulder to where Ilias leaned against the doorframe.
Had everyone abandoned Rome after the games?
“Telemachus?” he spoke the man’s name knowing the answer, but needing to hear it again, to confirm what he thought he remembered.
“He is with God,” Mater said gently. “Some say the emperor was shouting for the games to cease when he leaped into the arena. Others say as soon as he fell, they could not utter a word. That shame and revulsion washed over them all like a flood. They could not leave the amphitheatre soon enough. Something tells me these games will be the last.”
The smell of damp woodsmoke and earth nearly brought Adel to her knees. Emotion surged to her throat. The place of her dreams, her longings and unspoken hopes, lay spread across the valley below them in an array of huts and cooking fires.
Home.
She’d not seen Felix since Jovan ordered Sergius out of the infirmary and found another medicus on the street. Or wherever one found medici. After food, bandages, and a trip through the bathhouse, Adel and the others were confined to their rooms for nigh on a week. If ever she’d felt like a prisoner in the ludus, it was then.
The church in Rome had taken up Telemachus’s fight—in his stead or alongside him, she’d not been certain. She knew only that when word came that Emperor Honorius would release the Visigoth captives into Alaric’s custody, it was a troop of monks who appeared after dark to usher them out of the city and escort them on their way. They had been trundled out of the city of Rome under cover of darkness, wrapped in dark cloaks, dressed in the tunics andstolasof ordinary men and women. No one who happened to see them would have assumed they were the fighters of the ludi. The last gladiators in Rome.
