Desire of the Gladiator (Affairs of the Arena Book 3) (6 page)

“Walls do not need to fall, Conall, in order for a clever soldier to toss a good shot out.”

But her hands lingered on the muscles of his forearm—so terribly dense and strong—and she could not find it in herself to pull away easily.

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H
alfway through the third week of bed rest, Conall was moving again. Despite the time he enjoyed with Leda—and Gods, did he ever enjoy it—his body was made for action. Staying in bed for weeks at a time, restful though it was for his soul, was not how he intended to live forever.

Though his body certainly looked otherwise, he felt soft and fat. Perhaps that was just the natural consequence of training nonstop for years at a time.

He stretched inside of his cell, on his feet for the first time in ages. His legs were weak from so much inactivity, but remembered their duties soon. They could carry his weight so long as he leaned from one ankle to another. He felt in a day—perhaps two or three—he would be back to his old self.

Conall had long learned to overestimate his abilities to compensate for a lifetime of underestimation from others.

The rest had been good for his body, and he could feel that many old aches had faded under the watchful eye of Leda. Perhaps he merely attributed all his healing to her because of his fondness for her. Or, perhaps she was so lovely and so able to keep him in one spot that those old injuries had time to heal along with the new ones.

But no matter the manner, he felt better than he had in ages. As such, he was already ready mentally to return to the sands. Ready to affirm himself as the warrior supreme in this ludus.

The Champion of Puteoli was Felix—an old rival of Caius. After his loss to the now-retired gladiator, Felix had risen through the ranks again, going so far as to travel to Gaul and Lusitania to display his skills.

Conall was sure he could beat the man in one-on-one competition. He was sure, also, that he was the best fighter left in this ludus. Flamma had retired after a hard break in his leg bone many months past. He took his many collected winnings and retired to Memphis in Egypt, where he had been born.

With Flamma gone, Conall was clearly the best gladiator the ludus had left—but Publius would not position him as such, and it drove Conall mad.

No one in the ludus had a better winning record than he did. No one riled the crowds like he did. No one displayed as much skill and ferocity as he did. And yet, he was short-changed every day of the games, kept below the main event simply because he did not have the look of a champion that the stolid Publius wanted.

It was pride to think of himself this way, but it was also a necessity. If he had learned nothing else from life, it was that no one was going to stand up for Conall but Conall. He had to have the case for his talent and ability ready to unload whenever the chance presented itself—for it would not come twice.

“You’re looking well.”

Leda's voice calmed his thoughts, as it often did. She had left the cell to retrieve him water.

He was on his hands and knees now, stretching out his back and rotating hips from one side to another. She stood over him, wearing a white stola with a plain wool belt cinched tight around her waist. It didn’t matter that she had left mere minutes ago—the sight of her always took his breath away. It was a miracle he still lived under her care at all, given how much he had to look at her and how much he had to breathe.

“Thank you. I think I’ll be ready soon. Maybe tomorrow.”

She made a face. “Perhaps a week. I’ll let Nyx know.”

“She doesn’t know my body half as well as you do. I’ll be ready inside of a week, and you know it.’

“You are stubborn enough for it.”

Leda set the small amphora of water down at his desk. It smelled of citrus; in the water were pieces of lime and lemon, torn and tossed in the trough the gladiators used. The citrus kept the water smelling sweet.

Something about the sight of her then—the way her head turned as she set the water, the curve of her jaw, the flexing of the muscles in her back—awakened something inside of him. Something unstoppable, something that had to be heard.

He took her by the hand and sat her down on the stool next to him, putting himself on his cot. Her hair, dark and long, slid briefly over his arm and he felt his breath catch.

“What is it?” she asked. “Are you hurt? Shall I call for Nyx? I knew you shouldn’t have—”

“No. It’s not that. I have something to tell you.”

“Oh.” Her eyes widened. She could tell. “Oh, Conall. Maybe we had better—”

“I love you, Leda. I do. I know it in my bones that I do. I want to be with you. I don’t want to dance around it any longer. You’ve seen how I look at you and you must know how I feel. I don’t want there to be any mistake. This life is too short. Even were I not a gladiator, it’s too short, and every day is too long when I don’t get to tell you I love you.”

She gulped softly and turned away from the intensity of his gaze.

“That’s...nicely said, Conall.”

Not exactly the response he was hoping for. A slow grip began to form around his chest.

“And you? What are your feelings for me?”

She stood. He could see some conflict on her face, though which direction it headed on, it was impossible to say.

“I am...not to be a slave for much longer, I do not expect. Not much longer at all. You know my family is...” she made a clicking noise in her mouth, “...of a certain status. Far above yours. Even were you a free man, and I still a slave, I would be above you in this way. Do you understand?”

“No. I want you and I can see that you want me. I’ve seen it. I know what desire looks like.”

“Desire?” Her voice became distant. “No. You are mistaken.”

In his urgency, his hands slid up her arm, clasping her tight.

“You do not need to lie to me, Leda. We are the same, here, in this place. No matter where you are from, this is where you are.”

She withdrew from him as if touched by a snake. Conall knew with dread certainty that he had gone too far. She stood up and walked to the other side of the cell, anger flaring.

“What you have taken for desire in your simple, beast brain has been little more than fascination at seeing someone clearly so stupid display so much intelligence.”

Conall did his best not to be convinced. “And my body is both intelligent and stupid, to make you touch it how you do?”

“I administer medical attention. You read too much into such things. You constructed a fantasy for yourself.” Her tone softened, her face composing itself almost immediately. She really was a princess, to mold her mood like that. “I do not blame you. Were I in your situation, I would have done the same.”

“You
are
in my situation, Leda. And you constructed a fantasy yourself, that you will be freed soon. Do you think you're the first slave I've known to believe in their incumbent freedom?”

This was a step too far again—after he'd already ventured far deeper than he should have. Freedom was a subject little talked about among slaves. An unspoken rule in any conversation about the topic was to never suggest—through word or implication—that freedom was improbable. A slave lived on hope.

Regret filled him. He'd
had
her. She had been coming to him every day, talking with him, touching him. It had been near Heaven.

And just like always, Conall had wanted more. Waves of self-loathing filled him. Why did he have to open his idiot mouth?

Her face had turned cold. “Clearly, you are feeling much better. On your feet. Recovering well. I expect you will do something characteristically stupid soon, like returning to training before you should. I’ll let Nyx know your senses, such as they are, have returned. And I’ll be out of your way. I shall let you sort out this fantasy of yours on your own.” She stopped at the cell doorway. “I do not love you, Conall. I could not find love, or a future, with anyone such as yourself. Lowborn. Fighting for a living. And poor—even with the winnings from a thousand fights, you would still yet be poor compared to me. You certainly may find love in this life, but it will not be with me.”

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O
ut of the cell blocks. She walked in the shade to avoid the notice of the training gladiators for as long as possible.

The lead doctore Murus would yell at her if she ventured too close—she was an “exotic distraction” in the mind of the gladiator trainer.

Up the stairs. No eye contact with anyone. They were not to see her face; the frozen mask she used to hide the swell of emotion just almost bubbling over.

The guards let her through the gates, and she continued upward.

Behind the estate, there was a small pocket of land between the hill and the walls of the garden. She retreated there now, holding herself tight.

What she had said to Conall had been the brutal, honest truth. It flew in the face of a great many of her emotions, though, and they had all howled with protest as every new word left her mouth. Now those emotions had reached a rioting point.

The nook behind the garden was a safe place to let it all out. She shuddered and groaned, kicking at the dirt of the hill.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Stupid, insane,
beast
of a man. Why had he broken the silence? Why did it have to be out in the open, displayed for everyone to see? Why did it have to be anyone’s business at all except for the thoughts in their heads, forever silent and tranquil? Like a drop of water in a perfect semi-sphere on marble, the thoughts of whatever affection she felt had been transparent, lovely, and most of all fragile.

There was no tolerance for any shift in the surface tension, and Conall had just quaked the very earth.

She did not cry. She was not some child. She was merely furious. Annoyed.

And crushed.

She had been speaking to herself as much as him. She
could not
be with the man. It was impossible to think of, and even more impossible to make happen. Every part of her life was dedicated to returning her brother to freedom and returning herself to her family.

Some surely-doomed relationship, with a gladiator of all people, would have destroyed those dreams. A princess in her country had her marriage—and so her love, if ever there were to be any—completely arranged. And she was expected to be pure of heart and virgin in experience. If even the slightest suspicion were placed on her, it would ruin her chances for marriage forever, and so destroy any real value she had to her family—in turn destroying any chances she had to return home.

Her body may have wanted Conall. Her mind may have drifted from time to time to the thought of what those strong arms might have felt like wrapped around her body. Holding her tight, perhaps, or holding her underneath him as he had his furious, animalistic way with her. It would have been ecstasy. Her body melted with the thought of it, and ached to return to him right away and fall into bed with him.

But her mind knew better, and her mind always won.

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C
onall found Publius in the kitchen, butchering a pig alongside the cook.

The ludus was under hard times. The previous owner had been a woman named Porcia. She was beautiful and temperamental, driven entirely by her passions. Her two biggest passions were for ostentatious decoration and gambling. As one might expect, these did not mesh well.

Eventually, it was her passion that ended her life.

But, during her life, Porcia had driven the entire estate into so much debt that it would have been impossible to keep track of all the lenders, were they not knocking on the doors every day informing Publius of the amounts he owed.

Publius, to his credit, seemed to take this information with as much grace as he could. He was a stoic man—living by their philosophy in every manner—and did not place much stock in any excess of emotion. And so, as he butchered the pig now, chopping one leg clean, his face was focused entirely on his task.

Part of the hard times that the ludus suffered meant that if a slave earned enough to buy their freedom, or died, or fell sick, that Publius could not easily afford new slaves to replace them. He could buy
poor
slaves, but Publius was a man of standards, and purchasing something he had to train would have taken more time than he wanted away from other, better pursuits like figuring out a way to pay off all the debts his house was under.

This much Conall knew from Leda, who caught much of the gossip of the day from her quarters inside the house proper. It was as much as Conall had learned of the inner-workings of the ludus in the time since he had arrived there. But, it also confirmed much of what he had suspected already from his interactions with Publius and his observations of Porcia’s spending.

He pushed thoughts of Leda aside. There was only heartache there—and limitless desire he feared never to have quenched.

“You’re looking well, gladiator.”

Conall nodded. His ribs were taped still, but they felt whole and mended. The black conversation with Leda had been just yesterday. Conall had spent many hours considering what she said, hoping to find some hole in her logic. Some manner to be with her, no matter the differences in class.

“There are games in a month’s time, Dominus, are there not?”

“Yes.” Publius hacked at the leg with a large cleaver. “We will celebrate the many victories of Trajan. Do you feel well enough for them? Nyx told me you were close to ready.”

“I do, Dominus. I want to fight.”

“Good.” Having detached the leg, Publius slapped it down on the table, discarding excess. “We’ll find a match for you.”

“In the primus.”

“What?”

“I want to fight in the primus, Dominus. I will put down any man they can place against me.”

Publius nodded and cleaned his hands with a cloth before answering. “Who fights in the primus is yet to be determined, gladiator. There are a great many factors involved. Imperial agents to talk to. And to bribe.” He let out a sigh, as in exasperation already from the ordeal of it. “Gears to oil and people to please. We will know more later on.”