And now, peering at the village through oak branches, the feeling she always got before a fight slid into her knees, shook the breath in her lungs. And the thread she’d felt tethering her to Rome yanked at her heart so painfully, she felt it might jerk free as easily as a child’s tooth on a string. Had Felix survived the prison ship to Gaul? The question ate at her. Every time she closed her eyes, nightmares assailed her. The pugio lodging in his gut, the spear flying toward Telemachus, Berit collapsing. In every dream she was there with them, so close, and yet her sword arm was weighted beyond lifting, and she was forced to watch their bodies jerk with the impact and fall.
She would awaken drenched in sweat, heart pounding, chest aching as if the blades had lodged within her instead. Over and over, night after night. Would they ever end, or would she suffer forever? Why were some spared and not others? It was a question she might never know the answer to.
“Ready?” The short monk called Gaius edged up beside her, dark eyes crinkled in concern. He’d been a good friend in Telemachus’s absence.
She fiddled with her atta’s ring, running her thumb over the twisted knotwork and the smoothness of the amber. The most valued possession of her family. “Yes.”
Two of the monks who had been sent into the village ahead of the group emerged at the edge of the collection of huts, drawing a group of fair-haired warriors behind them. Adel’s knees wobbled as she took one step forward and then another. Now or never. The others followed, tentative steps quickening, turning eager, thumping into a trot, then a run. The two sides crashed together in a melding reunion of sharp cries and welcoming arms. Adel pushed past faces familiar and strange, but none dear. Her heart swelled into her throat, hope and dread nearly choking her. And then the emptied village was before her, the hugs and cries of reunited families at her back. And she was alone.
The weight of her hope nearly crushed the breath out of her chest. She turned around, watching the wild embracing, the clutching of faces, and the pounding of backs. And then, between the shoulders of a father and son, the face of her own atta appeared, his brow creased with an age she did not remember.
She held her breath, half expecting to see him turn away, pretend he hadn’t seen her. He faltered, and then his face crumbled into trembling lines held together with firmed lips. He shouted over his shoulder while he shoved through the crowd, pushing into the open with arms wide and voice breaking.
“My daughter.”
And his arms were around her, holding her close with a love she’d longed for and never imagined possible. Especially not now. When he pushed her to arm’s length, to look at her, his eyes and cheeks were wet. “I thought I’d lost you.”
Adel swallowed back the tremors in her throat and held out the ring. “I brought this back to you.”
His large hand covered hers, closing her fingers over the ring. “You are more valuable to me than any shiny stones dug from the earth. You... It is you...” He crushed her to his chest again, words tumbling fast as a spring stream, frozen and held back for far too long. “I... I confess I did not know how to act at the news of you and Eadric. I reacted poorly. Forgive me, daughter.”
His confession washed over Adel with a welcome shock that made her suck in a breath. “Of course, Atta.” She rolled her lips between her teeth, tasting the tremble of salt. “But I was wrong to do what I did—”
“Shhh, all is forgiven. All is past.” Atta’s eyes crinkled as he smiled, pushing the hair from her face with calloused fingers. “You are home, and that is what matters now. We must celebrate.”
A yelp and bark from the camp made Atta’s eyes shut with a sigh that attempted annoyance. Adel whirled as a gray-and-white blur leaped at her, giant paws on her shoulders, warm nose pressing against her cheeks and neck. She laughed.
“Hello to you too, Linde.” Adel buried her face in the warm fur of the wolfhound’s neck, breathing in her familiar scent that, oddly enough, made her think of Felix. Not that he’d ever smelled like a wolfhound, but he too had been loyal, barely tolerable. An odd sense of homesickness swelled in her throat. Gaius had said he’d been bound for a stone quarry to pay for the slaves he’d stolen from the emperor. An unfair punishment when the emperor had released the Visigoths anyway—albeit secretly.
“That hound has been nothing but trouble with you away,” Atta grumbled.
“I’m sure,” Adel murmured. Linde dropped her paws and circled Adel, prancing and pausing only long enough to lick Adel’s hands and press her face against her legs before circling again.
A shout pierced through the noisy reunion. Adel turned at the sound of her name and was thrown backward into her father as her mother flung arms around her, enveloping her in the scents of bread and spring earth.
“Aipei.” The tears could not be held back now. “I’ve missed you.”
“And I, you,” Aipei murmured against her hair. “We prayed every day for God to—and you’re here. You’re home.”
Her sisters were there next with glimmering eyes and tight squeezes.
“Come, rest now.” Atta gestured toward the village. “Tonight we feast to celebrate and honor the men who have brought you back to us.”
Images battered her mind. Telemachus with a spear lodged in his chest. Felix crumpling with a dagger in his stomach. Both sacrificing greatly for this moment.
“Not all the men worthy of honor are here tonight, Atta.” A lump formed in her throat around the words.
He nodded. “Many of our men fell in the arenas to appease those Roman dogs.”
“If you speak of dogs as loyal and kind, then yes, some Romans are dogs.”
Aipei shook her head, annoyance and amusement in her huff. “You and your dogs.”
“He is being punished for my sake,” Adel whispered, imploring, though what she was begging for, she hardly knew. “For Ilona, for Berit. For everyone else he tried to save.”
“Then we will honor him too.”
“Honor is not enough, Atta.” She placed a hand on his arm, resolution growing firm. “We must save him.”
