Authors: Monica Burns

Assassin's Heart (35 page)

BOOK: Assassin's Heart

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“Legatus Maximus Caecilius Atellus?”

He answered the question with a nod and waited for the man to continue. With the
traditional Roman salute, the soldier handed him a scroll of parchment.

“Emperor Constantine extends his greetings and wishes to assure you there will be no
repercussions for any supporters of Maxentius. He asks that you meet with Legatus
Octavian to discuss the disbandment of the Praetorian Guard.”

His fingers curled around the scroll, crushing it. Empathy swept across the soldier’s face,
but the man said nothing. Aware he needed to respond, he offered the man an abrupt
nod.

“I accept the … Emperor Constantine’s offer.” He swallowed the fury rising inside him
at the thought of having to report to a traitor. “Where might I find Legatus Octavian?”

“He’s dealing with some unrest in the city. Several of the more fanatical Church
followers are threatening to burn several citizens at the stake.”

“I thought you said there would be no repercussions,” he snarled. “I hardly call burning
someone at the stake a display of benevolence.”

“The mob’s actions are not condoned by the emperor,” the man said stiffly. “Legatus
Octavian has gone to stop the slaughter.”

The words were like icy water streaming through his blood. The man didn’t know
Octavian was a fanatic follower of the Nazarene. He wouldn’t hesitate to burn heretics
who refused to convert to his way of thinking. The man hadn’t gone to stop the mob, he’d
gone to watch. A sudden image of Cass filled his head, and for a moment, he could have
sworn he’d heard her call out his name.

The sound had been so real, he found himself surveying the landscape in hopes that she
was somewhere close by. When he didn’t see her, his mind closed around the fact that
Octavian wanted the
Tyet of Isis
, and he’d do anything to get it. He stopped himself. Not
even Octavian had the
colei t
o murder a senator’s daughter. He ignored the voice inside
him that said otherwise.

“Then perhaps I might return home and make myself presentable for the Legatus.”

“Of course.” Once again, understanding flashed across the man’s face as he nodded.
“We’ll see that your men are fed and the wounded cared for.”

There was a sympathetic note in the young man’s voice that indicated his sincerity. It
made it that much harder to accept the man’s offer. Hate he could deal with, but not this
quiet concern from the enemy. He swallowed hard, and with a few instructions to the
lead centurion, he nudged his horse forward. The Porta Flaminia grew closer, and he’d
almost reached the gate when a familiar figure rode out of the city at breakneck speed.
Tevy. His heart stopped as he acknowledged the fact that Cass and Demetri weren’t with
the tribune. He sagged in the saddle. They were gone, and he’d never felt so alone in his
life.

LYSANDER shot upright in bed with a shout. His heart pounded like a freight train in his chest as he gasped for air. Almost immediately, a pair of soft arms wrapped their way around his shoulders and waist as Phaedra pressed her warmth into his side. She wasn’t gone. She was here with him. He hadn’t lost her. Her hand stroked the back of his neck as she pressed her lips against his bare shoulder.

It was a tender touch that made him realize what Maximus had lost. A shudder rippled

through him. The battle he’d just seen was haunting in its sharp clarity and vivid imagery. He understood death, although he’d never seen anything on this grand a scale before. It had been so real he could still smell the stench of it.

It had sickened him then just as much as it did now. The thought made him stiffen. It was a Freudian slip—nothing more. But the battle wasn’t the most horrifying part of the dream. He’d seen, felt, what Maximus had experienced when his tribune had rode out of the Flaminia Gate to meet him. The man’s wife and son were dead.

“Hush, c
arino
, shhh. It was just a bad dream.” Her voice soothed him, but it didn’t lessen the ache deep inside.

“He lost them,” he whispered.

“What are you talking about, c
aro?
Who lost who?”

“Maximus. I saw him when he received the news that Cassiopeia and Demetri were dead.”

He gently broke free of her embrace and fell backward into the pillows. His eye closed, he saw the image of Tevy riding out toward Maximus. The memory of that last moment in his dream filled him with the same despair he’d experienced just before he’d woken up. It echoed the sense of hopelessness he’d experienced the night Nicostratus had told him he was a half-breed.

If there was anything about Maximus that resonated in him, it was that despair. The knowledge that things would never be the same no matter what he did to atone for his choices. If Phaedra were ever to learn his secret, she wouldn’t just hate him for his tainted blood. She’d hate him for hiding the fact from her. For making love to her without telling her what he really was. It might not have been a conscious choice the first time, but every time he made love to her, he was making a choice.

For the past week and a half, he’d awakened every morning to her nestled in his arms. He’d still not figured out what sort of ground rules to set for their relationship. Instead, they’d simply fallen into a comfortable, yet open-ended routine. Once they’d finished their cataloging of monuments for the day, they’d come back to the installation, have dinner, and come back to his apartment for some quiet time together.

She hadn’t pressed him for a commitment, but he knew she would eventually. The farther down the road the better. He needed time to come up with a solution that would allow them a permanent relationship without the blood bond. That wasn’t going to be easy to do. Phaedra wouldn’t understand his refusal to seal their relationship. She shifted her body to lie on her side, her head propped up with her hand, while her other hand rested on the spot where his heart was still pounding at a quick pace.

“You said Demetri was dead.” Her soft observation made him turn his head toward her.

“Yes.” He shrugged slightly. “Demetri was their son.”

“How do you know that?”

The question pulled every muscle in his body taut like a wire. He knew she still believed their dreams were interconnected, but she’d not pressed him on the matter in several days. It seemed the topic was officially off hiatus. Just looking at her face, he knew she’d recognized the name Demetri. He just didn’t want to know
how
she knew the name. Her gaze narrowed on him, that lovely mouth of hers tight with determination. He shrugged as he tried to come up with an answer that would satisfy her and yet save him from the trap he knew lay just up ahead.

“I must have heard it somewhere.”

He wasn’t about to confess that this wasn’t the first time he’d remembered the name. The first time had been the dream he’d had of Pha—Cassiopeia being pregnant. The images from that dream came flooding back, and he clenched his jaw. He wasn’t going there.

“Where did you hear it?” Her persistence made him grimace.

“
Merda
, I don’t remember,” he growled.

“Of course you don’t,” she snapped. “That’s because none of the stories we’ve heard ever mentioned a son or a Demetri.”

“
Christus
, woman, it was just a dream. I must have heard the name somewhere and my head just threw it in for the hell of it. It doesn’t mean a goddamned thing.”

“Yes, it does,” she said with a flash of triumph in her brown eyes. “Because in the last dream I had, I saw Maximus and Cassiopeia’s son, Demetri. So tell me why our dreams mean nothing if we
both
know they had a son called Demetri?”

Okay, he hadn’t seen that one coming.
He immediately backpedaled and tried to come up with a response.
Il Christi omnipotentia
, the woman was relentless in her determination to make him admit a connection between the two of them and the ancient Roman couple. A small voice in the back of his head challenged him to listen to her. He squashed the idea just like he would an irritating gnat.

The ramification of believing he was Maximus to her Cassiopeia was the one place he didn’t want to go. It was one thing to think reincarnation plausible, but it was something entirely different to believe his dreams were an instant replay of a past life. Dreams where he relived another life’s joys, sorrows … mistakes.

“They’re dreams, Phaedra, nothing more.”

“Then how can we be dreaming about moments that aren’t included in all the stories about Maximus and Cassiopeia we’ve heard since we were kids?”

“Such as?” he grounded out.

“Such as the fact that they had a child named Demetri.”

“That’s stretching it a bit thin, don’t you think, c
arissima?
” He released a harsh breath of exasperation. “Why are you so dead set on these dreams meaning something?”

“Because if we are Maximus and Cassiopeia, I don’t want us to wind up the same way they did—one of us … dead and the other one left alone.” Her words sent a chill down his back.

He remembered the despair Maximus had felt in his dream. Had her dreams created similar emotions in her? It would explain the fear he’d heard just now in her voice. What if he bought into her idea that they had once lived together as husband and wife in ancient Rome? It would mean he’d have to accept the possibility that he’d once lived as Maximus Caecilius Atellus. A man revered by the Sicari.

That reason right there was why he couldn’t believe. Maximus’s blood had been pure-untouched by the madness and the hate that flowed in the veins of the Praetorians. By the circumstance of his birth, Lysander’s blood was tainted, and he wasn’t even worthy of thinking he could have been Maximus. He reached out to caress her cheek.

“You’re worrying about nothing, i
namorato
,” he said. She turned her face into his hand, her lips grazing his palm.

“Am I? I wish I could believe that,” she whispered as she met his gaze. “It’s kind of hard not to worry when you hide things from me.”

“What are you talking about?”

His heart skidded to a halt before it kicked into high gear. Did she know about his plan to visit the Circus Maxentius tonight with Ares and Pasquale? No, he’d been careful not to let anything slip. He studied her face closely. What he saw in her eyes scared the hell out of him. She shook her head.

“You shut me out for more than a year after that night in the warehouse. You’re still shutting me out about what happened.” Her whisper resounded with a pain and sorrow that ate away at his heart. But she’d just helped him figure out one of the ground rules.

“Ground rule number one. We aren’t going to discuss that night. Ever,” he bit out.

“Deus, you’re a stubborn devil. You’ll talk to Atia about it, but not me.” Again the note of hurt in her voice. He forced himself to ignore it.

“It’s over, Phaedra. It’s in the past.”

“No.” she exclaimed in a low, fierce voice. “It’s not over. You’re still paying the price for what they did to you, and so am I. It doesn’t matter that you’ve talked to Atia. It’s a wall between us, and it says you don’t trust me.”

“
Il Christi omnipotentia
, that’s not true.”

“Yes it is,” she snapped as she rolled away from him to stare up at the ceiling. “I hate those Praetorian
bastardi
for what they did to you. I hate them for killing my parents. Every single one of them deserves to die. No quarter given. I want
all
of them dead.”

He turned toward her to see tears of pain and anger well up in her eyes. The sight sent ice sluicing through his veins. How in the hell could he ever tell her the truth? He’d made the right decision to reject her a year ago. And he’d made a grievous error to let himself believe they might have a chance now.

She was right. His secret was standing between them. It always would. She’d suffered too much at the hands of the Praetorians. There wasn’t a chance in Tartarus that she’d be able to love a half-breed like him. She rolled into him, her warmth heating his skin as her lips brushed against his chest.

“I lost you that night in Englewood, Lysander. And now that I have you back, I don’t think I can bear losing you again.”

The heartfelt words flayed at his conscience like a whip. If she ever found out the truth …
Christus
, their relationship was based on nothing but lies. Except one. He loved her. That was the truth.

The alarm on his watch pierced the quiet between them, and he turned his head toward the timepiece sitting on the nightstand. He needed to meet Ares. The relief sailing through him at the thought of escaping was followed by guilt. He was running, and he wasn’t proud of himself for it. But leaving her right now would give him time to try to find a solution to the problem. The minute the notion slipped into his head, he immediately knew there was only one answer. Telling her the truth. Something that would destroy them both.

In a quick move, he rolled her onto her back and kissed her. She sighed beneath him, and he lifted his head to look into her beautiful brown eyes. Instinctively he knew this happiness wouldn’t last, but at this moment in time, he was the luckiest man alive. He kissed her again, then got out of bed and proceeded to dress.

“Where do you think you’re going? I haven’t had my way with you yet tonight,” she teased lightly as her fingertips trailed their way across his bare shoulder and down his back. It was a tempting touch that appealed not only to his base needs, but the inner piece

of him that adored her. He resisted the urge.

“I told Ares I’d meet him in the library.”

“At this hour?”

“It’s not that late.” He glanced over his shoulder at her and smiled. “Take a nap.”

“I’m not sleepy. When will you be back?”

BOOK: Assassin's Heart

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