Dreda edged toward the warmth and the nearest guard shifted, allowing space for her. As she held out a hand, he sidestepped behind her, pinning her against the firepot and blocking her from view with his body. Her feet twisted as she tried to squirm away from him.
“Atticus,” Adel snapped. “Let her go.”
Atticus turned, one arm wrapped around Dreda’s shoulders, holding her against him. “Come now, Amazon, you know warmth isn’t free.” He let his other hand wander. Dreda rammed her elbows against his breastplate with little effect.
Adel balled her fists on her hips. Four against two wasn’t terrible odds. But the guards were armed and armored. “Neither is anything else. Are you willing to pay what Jovan will demand?”
“I doubt he’ll care with the games tomorrow.”
“I would not be so certain.”
Atticus laughed and rolled his eyes as if Adel was nothing but a nuisance.
Feet clapped up the walkway. Jolting as if stung by a bee, Atticus shoved Dreda toward the other gladiatrices. “She’s too bony for my taste anyway.”
Adel shot him a knowing scowl. Coward.
Dreda muttered a curse and straightened the pleated folds of her gown as she rejoined the others.
“Are you all right?”
“It will take more than his greedy hands to break me,” Dreda ground out.
Adel squeezed her arm and turned as a troop of ten gladiators rounded the corner into the hall. All were oiled until every curve of muscle shone. Nearly all of them were dressed alike in simple green loincloths that left little to the imagination.
Felix’s gaze found hers, discomfort etched in his features, in the way he knotted his arms across his bare chest. That he’d not trained like a gladiator was clear. No layer of fat rounded the lean lines of muscle. He was a fine thing to look at now, but in a ring, one cut would leave him severely wounded.
Jovan and a team of armed guards swept into the hall behind the men and set to work locking their wrists into shackles and stringing them together with chains in preparation for the march through the city. The men were chained together first with the four gladiatrices added on to the end. Adel found herself chained to Felix. He shifted in front of her, rolling his shoulders as a wave of gooseflesh traveled across his bare back.
“Do not let them see your discomfort,” she murmured. “They will sooner strip you naked for their own amusement than give you a cloak. Best lift your chin and walk with pride.”
The gates opened and the guards ordered them to march. Icy wind tore through the streets, pressing the group together. They were all shuddering with cold when they reached the game master’s elaborate villa. The sculpture gardens surrounding the domus were strung with hanging lanterns, flickering in the gathering dark. Inside, the feasting hall was just as bright, hung with swaths of white silk and garlands of greenery and papyrus flowers painted in a rainbow of colors. Tables sagged beneath the weight of whole roasted pigs, towers of fruit, and fried breads.
Adel’s stomach rumbled at the sights and scents, even if she’d race away in a moment, given the chance. The guards unchained them at the edge of the room, escorting them in sets of two to raised platforms scattered across the hall.
“Spread out my gladiatrices, one per platform,” Jovan ordered. “I want them all over the room, not confined to two spots.”
The guard unshackled Felix and then Adel. “You two with me,” he muttered.
Though glad she’d not be paired with Wulfula, Adel felt her heart sink slightly. They’d hoped to be separated to talk with the others. Go over the plan for tomorrow one last time. Chained together, away from the others, they could do nothing. But perhaps that was Jovan’s idea. Did he suspect them of plotting against him? Or did he have another motive?
The guard led them to an empty platform situated at the very heart of the room. Two ankle shackles lay waiting for them. Adel stepped onto the knee-high platform, feeling once more as if she was at the slave market. If she’d been cold before, the air in the feasting hall was stifling from the combined heat of the wall torches, lamps, and bodies. Dotting the vast room, head and shoulders above the crowd, other pairs of gladiators stood on similar platforms, dressed in the red, yellow, and blue of the other ludi. Some flexed and preened; others stood still and aloof.
Felix bumped her as he stepped up beside her. “Sorry.”
“Do not apologize,” she hissed. “Do not ever apologize. Lift your chin.”
She followed her own advice, raising her eyes above the gawking women and assessing men milling about. One of the costumers came by as soon as they were in place, readjusting Adel’s gown beneath the thin gold belt. He bunched the fabric panels in the front and back, leaving her legs and sides bare. She hated the redness she could feel burning across her chest and neck.
Feel nothing.Reveal nothing.
“Now this is the one I’ve been dying to see up close.” A man approached, swathed in a white silk tunic and red embroidered robe. Jewels winked from thin fingers and a woman in blue adorned his arm.
“The Amazon.” He breathed her name in a tone that set her skin crawling and disentangled himself from the woman’s grip so he could circle slowly, greedy eyes roving.
Across the room, a doorway beckoned Adel to leap from the platform. She imagined herself racing toward it, shoving the skinny man in canary yellow into the silver pool of wine he seemed so fond of, and leaping over the table towering with pastries. In two more steps she’d be outside, running, running until she was home. The longing hit her with the force of a cestus’s fist, and this time she didn’t push it away. If all went to plan tomorrow, this would be the last time she’d endure such—
A hand gripped the swell of her calf and slid upward, skimming the back of her knee.
