The Defiant

  “Where is my sister, damn you, Nyx?” I panted, grasping at the front of her tunic.

  She grinned at me through red-painted teeth. “On her way to meet the Goddess.”

  “What happened to her?” I demanded, hauling her closer.

  A mistake.

  “Did you know I never actually killed anyone in my time as a gladiatrix?” Nyx hissed, ignoring my question. “I’m starting to think that was an oversight . . .”

  I’d been so focused on her whip, I’d failed to notice the short, sharp dagger she carried in her other hand. I don’t think anyone else saw it either, but the shock of the knife blade piercing my side was like a sudden, heavy numbness. The icy-hot sensation that followed told me I was in trouble as I sank backward onto the ground. I expected Nyx would finish me off there and then. But, suddenly, I heard more shouting and looked up to see one of the black-clad Amazona guards hauling Nyx away—kicking and struggling, snarling through bared teeth like a rabid animal.

  Pontius Aquila strode forward and backhanded her across the face, knocking some of the battle fury out of her. She glared up at him, panting.

  “Control yourself, you wretched girl,” he snapped. “Or you’ll never see the inside of the arena again, and I’ll assign that one’s prodigious fate”—he jerked his chin at me—“to someone who deserves it.”

  That was enough to snap Nyx out of her rage completely. What was left behind in the expression on her face told me everything about her in that moment. When I’d first arrived at the ludus and Nyx had discovered the secret of who I was—that I was the long-lost sister of the Lady Achillea, the woman Nyx had devoted her mind and heart and considerable martial skills to since the day she’d been chosen to swear the oath—she’d been bent on my destruction. Not my humiliation, not my dishonor—my death. Achillea had been her hero. Her surrogate mother. Someone to aspire to emulate and make proud. And I had taken that away from her, just by showing up.

  Under other circumstances, I might have felt sorry for Nyx. Because I’d grown up thinking exactly the same thing about Sorcha, and it had hollowed me out inside. Made me lose sight of the things that had been truly important to me. In that moment, however, the thing that was most important to me was that I was on my hands and knees, bleeding from a knife wound.

  The pain had yet to fully register, and I clamped a hand to my side beneath the dark stuff of my cloak, hoping desperately that Pontius Aquila wouldn’t notice that I was hurt. The voice of the Morrigan hissed inside my head, whispering a warning against showing weakness. I silently, fervently agreed. If he thought I was badly injured, the noble Tribune might just relent and let Nyx finish the job.

  And I wouldn’t be able to stop her.

  Lydia still writhed on the ground, whimpering in agony, ignored by Aquila and his people, and I feared for what would happen to her once he remembered she was there.

  I could feel the sweat breaking out across the back of my neck as I struggled to rise to my feet. The black-clad guards stood with weapons drawn in front of the clustered Achillea girls. Cai was pinned on the ground by one of the guards, his arm behind his back. There was blood at the corner of Cai’s mouth, and his teeth were bared in a snarl.

  I stood there, swaying, defiant, as Aquila gestured one of his men forward. Even with the feature-obscuring helmet he wore, I recognized him as one of the Ludus Achillea’s former trainers—a thick-necked brute with bare arms that bore the scars of many fights, he was an ex-legion soldier named Ixion. Sorcha had dismissed him shortly after I’d arrived at the ludus because of his penchant for excessive violence. I’d thought at the time that, in a school where we were being trained to kill, that was saying something.

  “This . . . gladiatrix needs some time alone, I think,” Aquila said. “Take her somewhere quiet where she can clear her mind and ponder her future.”

  Ixion grunted and grabbed me by the arm. I shot a glance over my shoulder at Elka, whose face was rigid with fury, and shook my head. Cai had been right to warn me against action earlier. The only thing for me—for any of us—to do in that moment was cooperate. Defiance would come later. But only if we survived long enough. Dead or disabled, we were no good to each other. After a moment, Elka seemed to realize it too, and took a half step back.

  I walked ahead of Ixion, one hand clamped to my wounded side, as he prodded me in the back with the butt of his sword. He steered me away from the barracks buildings and in the direction of the angry orange glow that still licked upward in the farthest corner of the ludus compound, where the stables still burned. He stopped when we reached a squat stone building that I’d never really given much thought to before that moment. I’d always assumed it was a storage shed for livestock fodder. There were steps dug down into the earth in front of the heavy ironbound door, and Ixion preceded me, producing a ring of keys from the worn leather pouch hanging at his belt.

  My mouth went dry when I saw it. It had belonged to Thalestris.

  So she really has left us, I thought.

  Anguish for my sister surged through me again. And helplessness.

  Ixion shuffled through Thalestris’s keys until he found the one he wanted—a heavy black thing that looked like a claw—and inserted it in the lock. It uttered a groaning screech as he turned it, and the door swung ponderously open. He reached over, grabbed me by the shoulder, and wordlessly shoved me inside. I stumbled down another few shallow steps, gritting my teeth at the pain in my side, which had gone from dull throbbing to a searing burn. In the darkness, all I could see was a brief black corridor ahead, like a yawning maw waiting to swallow me. It terminated in a tiny cell, with a cage of bars for a door. My heart in my throat, I glanced over my shoulder at Ixion.

  “I always wanted to lock one of you upstart bitches away to rot here in Tartarus,” Ixion said, grinning. “Bloody shame this place was never made proper use of while Achillea was in charge.”

  Tartarus. Named after the mythical underworld dungeon.

  I’d almost thought it was just a rumor. A thing to frighten the less tractable girls at the ludus into better behavior. Sorcha had never found the need to use Tartarus on anyone—not even Nyx—as a punitive measure. Not even me. Ixion reached for another key hanging on the wall outside the cell and opened the barred door. Wordlessly, he gestured me inside.

  It was cold and dank, the air stale and heavy. The walls were rough-hewn stone, the floor dirt, and there was a single, tiny barred window smaller than my head set near the low ceiling that looked out onto a forgotten, weedy enclosure behind the stables. What used to be the stables.

  Ixion pulled the cage door shut with a clang and hung the key back up, turning on his heel to disappear without a word. When he closed the outer door, I felt the tiny, tearing claws of panic begin to climb upward from the pit of my stomach, savaging the back of my throat. I swallowed hard to force the bile back down and shook my head to clear it.

  First things first, Fallon, I thought.

  Light from the guttering flames of the dying stable fire filtered through the tiny window, and in the dim orange glow, I pulled back my cloak and peered at the blood-soaked fabric of my sleeping tunic with a kind of shocked detachment. The tear in the material was small and neat—just the size of Nyx’s knife blade—and I had to tear it and make it larger so I could get a good look at the wound she’d made.

  Another small, neat hole. In my flesh.

  I’d been wounded before—cuts, bruises, all manner of hurts that had healed and left the marks on my skin that Cai had so deliciously mapped earlier that night—and I knew that the immediate order of business was to stanch the flow of blood that still oozed. I didn’t know how deep Nyx’s blade had pierced or whether she had damaged anything vital. If that was the case—if there was organ damage—I was probably already dead and just didn’t know it. But I wasn’t coughing blood, and that was a good sign. I lifted the hem of my cloak and, with fumbling cold finger
s, tore off a wide strip. Then I carefully bound that as tightly as I could about my torso, wrapping it as many times as it would go and securely tucking in the loose end. I was sweating and panting by the time I was finished.

  But I wasn’t dead. And I wasn’t giving up.

  Brave thoughts, as I wavered and leaned against the wall, sliding down to sit on the dirt floor, my knees tucked up for warmth. My eyelids drifted shut, and I don’t know how long I stayed like that, a knotted lump of misery crouched in the darkness, before I heard a noise.

  I looked up to see Pontius Aquila standing on the other side of the cage door. A single torch burned in a sconce on the wall, reflected in his dark gaze that was fixed upon me, unblinking. I don’t know how long he’d been standing there, but when my gaze met his, he smiled—a reptilian stretching of his thin lips, devoid of warmth.

  “There she is,” he said. “My genius of the arena sands. My goddess muse of the blade and shield . . .”

  I remembered back to the day I’d been sold in the Forum of Rome. When Sorcha had offered an exorbitant sum in order to wrest me from Aquila’s clutches. I hadn’t even known who—what—he was that day. I’d only known that I’d been instinctively, profoundly grateful that his bid had not won. I’d given thanks to the Morrigan and thought that she’d accepted it. That she’d shown me favor. Why then did the goddess see fit to punish me with this fate now?

  Why take Sorcha from me and give me back to him?

  “You’re my Victrix now.” Aquila took a step toward the bars, his eyes fever-bright.

  Victrix. The name I’d borne so proudly since the Triumphs.

  Was that it? I wondered. Had the Morrigan forsaken me because I’d pledged my warrior’s gifts in service to Caesar? To the enemy? I’d sought only to bring honor on the ludus. On my sister and myself. To help fulfill Sorcha’s dream of creating a place where the girls I’d fought and bled with could choose for themselves the lives they wanted to lead. That I’d had to make a deal with Caesar to do it shouldn’t have mattered, should it? I refused to believe that the goddess would consider him somehow more abhorrent than the man who stood before me . . . holding something in his hand. I squinted against the darkness to see what it was, and my blood ran cold in my veins. Between his manicured fingertips, Aquila held a single, slender feather wrought in silver. It gleamed red in the torchlight.

  “What did you see?” Pontius Aquila’s voice was soft and breathless with genuine curiosity. “That night, at my domus. What did you see, little raven?”

  What had I seen? The memory of that night, even twisted and distorted by a swirling fog of mandrake wine, was burned into my soul. Ajax, the gladiator, lying on the stone table in the underground cavern. Men in feathered masks crowding around his split-open carcass, greedily devouring the heart that had beat so strongly within his chest only a handful of moments earlier. It must have still been warm as they put it on the scales dish to weigh it against a silver feather.

  The same silver feather that Pontius Aquila held up for me to see. I shrank back from it, pressing myself into the farthest corner of the cell as he ran the feather back and forth across the bars of my cage. The metallic edge made a sound like strumming the strings of an out-of-tune lyre.

  “Caesar doesn’t know what he has in you,” Aquila said. “If he did, he never would have given you the chance to win your freedom. Not even the glimmer of that hope. No. He is a fool. I am no fool. I see you. I see your spirit. The power you have . . .” His voice stretched tight and thin as he spoke, skirling higher with a kind of feverish intensity. “The touch of your blood goddess on your soul . . . I can see her mark on you. You were born to kill, Fallon ferch Virico . . .”

  The shock of hearing my full royal name on Aquila’s tongue filled me with a revulsion that must have shown on my face. Aquila took a step back from the cage bars, a sheen of sweat on his brow. He took a slow breath in through flaring nostrils, and his mouth quirked upward in an ugly smile.

  “You’re surprised that I know your name,” he said. “I know all about you. More, perhaps, than you even know about yourself. I know how powerful you are . . .” He ran the feather back and forth across the bars of my cage again, drawing discordant music from the delicate silver thing. “And when you die,” he continued, “I will take that power and I will make it my own.”

  “You’ll have nothing of me that I do not give you willingly,” I said through a tight-clenched jaw. “And that will never happen.”

  “Huh.” The feather paused and Aquila turned his full, baleful gaze on me. “Even when that same generosity of spirit was once bestowed upon you in the arena? Tell me . . .what did it feel like when you ended the Fury’s life?”

  I swallowed hard against the flood of that memory, trying to will it away.

  Aquila’s gaze burned into me. “Did you feel the strength of her rage,” he hissed, “the surge of her divine madness, flow from her body into yours?”

  I looked away.

  “It was a great gift she gave you. You felt that, I know. You had to have.”

  What I’d felt, in that moment, was sorrow. Regret.

  And nothing else?

  I fought silently to deny the memory and lost. My first kill—my only kill—was the woman who’d called herself Uathach. The “Terrible One.” Everyone else had called her the Fury, and she had, in her dying moments after my swords had pierced her heart, pressed her hand to my breast—to my heart—and whispered words meant for my ears alone.

  “It’s yours now,” she had murmured. “Thank you . . .”

  She’d smiled. And then she was gone.

  I’d tried to convince myself that I never truly understood what she’d meant. But I did. I knew exactly what she’d had given me. Death. Her death. My life, fueled by that victory, had hurtled forward from that moment on with all of the Fury’s mad will to live free or die wrapped around me like invisible armor. She had given me a terrible gift even as I had relieved her of a terrible burden. Or was it the other way around?

  “You understand,” Aquila said. “I knew you would. You and I were meant to find each other, Fallon. I’ve known it ever since your sister first spoke of you. It was as if I felt the brush of feathers against my cheek.” He lifted the silver feather and ran it down the side of his face as he spoke, and I shuddered, repulsed by the wolfish hunger, the bloodlust I could see lurking in his gaze. “I know you were responsible for the death of a young warrior of your tribe. Maelgwyn Ironhand? His brother, my gladiator Mandobracius—I believe you knew him by the name of Aeddan—told me the story of what happened that night.”

  The night my life had collapsed into a bottomless black pit.

  “You’re wrong about me,” I said. “Didn’t Aeddan tell you that it was his blade that ended his brother’s life?”

  “Because of you, yes.” He nodded, smiling. “You are a harbinger.”

  No. I wasn’t. I couldn’t be. Aquila was lying . . .

  “And your sister now dead too. It seems that anyone who loves you, Fallon, is fated to die. I’d have a care for that decurion who seems so fond of you—”

  “Shut up!” I snarled, lunging for the bars, my hands reaching to claw at his face. “Shut your evil mouth—”

  He caught me by the wrist and held me there, his grip surprisingly strong.

  “That auspicious night,” he hissed, “that spilled a brother’s blood drove you to this place. To this moment. To me. Don’t you see, Fallon? Your goddess has laid out your fate’s path to lead right to the doorstep of my god. Dis and the Morrigan are kindred. As are we.”

  His smile turned poisonous and he drew the edge of the feather across the soft, white underside of my forearm. It was razor-sharp, and blood welled up, seeping from the curved lines he traced, lines that formed the symbol of a feather on my skin. I gritted my teeth and clamped down on a hiss of pain. When he was done marking me, Aquila let go of me, and
I snatched my arm back, cradling it to my chest.

  “You’re mad . . .” There was a tremor in my voice.

  “Am I?” He laughed, tucking the feather away in the folds of his cloak. “What fate, then, drove Aeddan to my ludus? You were there the night he ended Ajax’s life. You bore witness. He is my strongest gladiator.” Aquila tilted his head. “And what about the Fury? I’d watched her fight for years. Undefeated, undefeatable . . . until you, Fallon. Victrix. Achillea didn’t have your strength. She never did. That is why your goddess cursed her to fall under the wheels of a chariot whereas, in the same arena, performing the very same act, she gave you wings.”

  Would that she had, I thought. I would use them now to fly away from this whole horrid nightmare.

  “Fight for me, Fallon!” Aquila suddenly gripped the bars and thrust his face close, as if he would squeeze between them into my cell. “Win for me.”

  A chill crept over my skin. Aquila’s words were a dark mirror to the conversation I’d had with Caesar in his villa, the day he’d chosen me as his Victory.

  “I will never fight for you,” I whispered, my mouth gone dry as dust.

  “Then you will never leave this cell. And that would be a great pity. Think long on your decision, my dear. And when I come to ask you again, have a better answer. For both our sakes.”

  VI

  THE LIGHT CREEPING in through the tiny cell window shifted and changed as I huddled against the wall, drifting in and out of awareness. Beneath the torn strip of cloak I’d wrapped around my torso, I could feel that the skin surrounding my wound had grown tight and hot. But the rest of me was cold, clammy, shivering . . .

  “Bright thing . . .”

  I struggled to open my eyes. The voice was quiet.

  Faraway sounding . . . familiar. I squinted, but everything was blurry.