Slowly, man by man, the battle slowed. Christus and the two gladiators slowed, but remained on guard, though each looked so fierce that I could not imagine challenging a single one, let alone all three.
Assuming the role of leader, the taller of the two golden-haired men with the unmistakable bearing of gladiators stepped forward, assessing the room.
“We have no quarrel with you, soldiers.” Though his voice showed disgust at the actions of the Romans, he held still, standing tall. “If you leave, we will forget you were ever here. The man who took Lilia is dead. We will take her and leave, and we care not about anything else.”
The soldiers cast uneasy stares at one another. I thought of Gaius’ words about making me the mistress of the emperor.
Understanding washed over me. He had planned to overthrow his brother, the emperor. He had intended to take the throne himself. This was why he had needed to garner favor from the public with the massive games, which had served the dual purpose of delivering me right into his hands.
Right into his hands, where I would be the mistress of Gaius, the new emperor of Rome.
These soldiers had known, had helped. They were all traitors. They would leave.
Leave they did. Soon the room was empty of them, excepting those who had fallen to the swords of the gladiators.
Still shielding the trembling Viola from the sight of Gaius’s body, I looked up across the room. There stood my Christus, bloody and beaten from the wounds that he had received in the arena.
But he was alive. I was alive.
We were alive, and Gaius was dead.
“It is my fault.” I curled into Christus’ side, the fabric of the couch soft beneath my legs. I was naked but for the blanket that had been wrapped around me, having stripped the bloody, offensive blue toga from my skin the moment that I was able to.
“How is any of this your fault, my love?” I could not get close enough to him, kept running my hands over his arms to make certain that I was not in the throes of a dream.
He was real. He was exhausted, and injured, but he was real.
“I . . . the games. Gaius planned them all around me, so that he could capture me.” I shuddered, burrowing my face into Christus’ chest. “All of those men in the games, they all died because of his sick, twisted obsession with me.”
Christus could have died for the very same reason. This was something that I could not force from my mind.
The very notion made me ill.
“That was a lie.” From the couch where Viola sat, her hands planted firmly on her pregnant belly, came the words.
Though she still spoke softly, since Gaius had fallen, she did not tremble. The satisfaction that I had seen written on her face when she pulled the knife from his back had told me all that I needed to know about the parentage of her child.
“Is it?” I was certain that the girl was simply trying to ease my burden, much as I had done with her earlier. “He told me so.”
“It is perhaps not a lie, but it is certainly not the entire truth.” In the haggard girl from hours earlier, I saw the first vestiges of strength.
Strength came from necessity, this I knew. Perhaps this young woman could be strong enough to live with what the gods had given her, after all.
“Gaius initially decided to host these munera to garner public favor.” This I knew; it was a common enough political tactic. “He did not plan to run for an office, though it was something that he only spoke of among those he held closest.”
Those he held closest, and slaves. I shook my head at the idiocy of the man. There were no secrets in a house with slaves. Every Roman should know this.
“He planned to kill the emperor. His brother.” Her voice broke, and I wondered what it had cost this sweet soul to keep the knowledge inside, knowing that a life might be lost because of her enforced loyalty to her dominus. “He needed favor to be accepted as the new emperor. But as he was planning the games, he became aware of you. His grandiosity grew, and of a sudden he was, in his own head at least, the emperor of Rome, with that woman Hilaria as his wife, or someone like her, he did not much care. More important to him was to have you as his mistress.”
I waited for Christus to stiffen at the sound of Hilaria’s name. He did not, and when I looked at him with a question in my eyes, he reached out and brushed a tangled strand of gold behind my ear.
“I am no longer so raw. Not since I shared my burden with you.”
The two golden gladiators chose that moment to reenter the great room of Gaius’ palace. I eyed them somewhat blankly, not sure where they had gone, or even why they were there. I knew that they had helped to save my life, to save Viola’s, but I still did not know who they were.