The Champion (17 page)

He frowned. He hated the Fates and the way they had of reminding him how much he and Tibi were ill-suited.

“What’s wrong, Alexius?”

“Nothing. I’m thinking how different we are, is all. You, so softhearted you can’t bear to harm a rodent. I, so hardhearted I’m willing to kill men for a living.”

She paled and bowed her head to hide her face from him. Had she somehow forgotten who he was and what he did? Did she despise him now for the reminder?

Without a word, she stood and smoothed out her tunic, leaving him alone on the island created by the beaver fur. “I don’t think you’re hardhearted, Alexius. In fact, I think your profession gnaws at you more than you admit. You told me before not to broach this subject, but my interest is sincere…as is my concern for you. Please…I’m asking you to tell me why you fight when you don’t have to.”

They were in the open air, but he felt pushed into a corner. Searching to escape the cage closing around
him, he stood and turned his back on her. He wanted her close, but the answer she sought was the one thing certain to send her running. Rage for all he’d lost, all he wanted and could never have, flared inside him and erupted like a fountain of acid. “I
do
have to fight,” he growled. “
That
is the crux of my problem.”

“A
ll right,” Tibi said in a soothing voice she might use on a rabid animal. He turned around. There was trepidation in her eyes, but far from running, as he feared she might, she eased closer in his direction.

Fists at his side, he closed his eyes and grappled with the enraged beast thrashing for release. Haunted by the source of his pain, he regretted allowing Tibi to see his loss of temper. She must think he was a lunatic. What kind of man exploded over what should be a simple question?

To his amazement, he felt her arms band around his waist. She pressed her cheek to the center of his chest in an act of selfless comfort that sent the beast he’d failed to conquer running for its cage. Without thought, he crushed her against him. He kissed the top of her head, her temple, the gentle curves of her cheek and chin. Their eyes met in a moment of deep, intense connection. He claimed her lips with a kiss infused with all the adoration she inspired in him and belonged to her alone.

“I love you, Tibi,” he whispered near her ear. “I shouldn’t tell you so, but I do and I
always
will.”

“Why shouldn’t you tell me?” she breathed.

“I’m not good enough for you…I never could be after what I’ve done and the life I’ve lived.”

“Shh…” She quivered against him. She rose up on tiptoes and looped her arms around his neck. Her face was filled with wonderment. “Speak no more of being good enough or not. Be you the emperor or…or a hair plucker at the baths, you’re my heart’s one desire. I love you, too—with every fiber of my being. I’ve known since the day you took me to the
thermopolium
. I was too afraid to hope you might someday return my feelings, but my love grows more for you with each breath that fills my lungs.”

Afraid that he’d stumbled into a dream, he held her tight, terrified he might wake up. “I know I can’t have you forever, Tibi, but you’re all that I want. The thought of losing you is worse than…”

“Than what?” she asked, her eyes misting with tears.

He swallowed the rock of pain choking him and buried his face in the fragrant curve of her throat. She deserved to know how acutely important she was to him, but the truth at the center of the matter flayed him on a rack of guilt.

“Never mind,” she whispered. “I don’t wish to cause you distress. You don’t have to share it with me.”

“I want to. I
need
to tell you the truth,” he said, his voice husky with suppressed grief. “It’s just that I’ve buried the pain so deep for an eternity. I don’t know how to explain or even where to begin.”

Tibi buried her fingers in the soft curls at the nape of his neck. Euphoric from his declaration of love for her, she wanted to surround him with care and devotion. If it were possible, she’d wipe away every drop of pain he’d ever endured. Hoping to ease some of what
troubled him and distract him from his anguish, she brushed a kiss across his temple and whispered, “Let’s sit down. All this time on your feet can’t be good for your ribs.”

He allowed her to lead him back to the beaver-pelt blanket. He collapsed more than sat in her former spot, his back supported by the trunk of the lemon tree. She took the place next to his uninjured side and enjoyed the way he pulled her close, as though he truly desired her near him.

The flow of the river, the buzz of a bee and the song of a kestrel filled the long moments while Alexius wrestled with his past.

“I told you before about my family,” he said finally. “What I didn’t tell you is that it’s my fault they were murdered.”

“Murdered?”
She arched back, horrified by what he must have suffered. His love for his family had touched her from the first moment he’d spoken of his parents and sisters. To learn they’d all come to tragic ends added to the devastation. “I don’t understand how their deaths could be your fault.”

He rubbed his eyes and began in a gruff voice, “The day I turned sixteen years old, my father gifted me with a plot of his land to tend. Custom suggested I marry in the next few years and my
abba
wanted me prepared to support a wife if the right girl came along.

“I had grand ideas. My family’s only lack was money, and I planned to correct that. In my dreams, I was going to turn my plot into a thriving enterprise big enough to rival that of the wealthiest family in Iolcos.” He smiled bitterly. “I suppose I’ve never known my place in life. That’s why I don’t take kindly to people
like your sister and the senators who think, by rights, they’re better than ordinary mortals.”

“Whether you’re rich or poor, you’re far from ordinary, Alexius. You are the best there is,” she said with unvarnished sincerity.

He squeezed her and continued. “I worked hard and at season’s end, harvested a bountiful crop. My family helped me and rejoiced in my success. My sister, Kyra, pitched in the most because she and I were closest in age and friendship—only eleven months separated our births. On market day, I told Kyra to stay home. I knew she’d be angry, but I had my mind set on selling the harvest and making plans with all the coin I’d take in that day, not keeping her out of trouble.”

“What trouble?” Tibi asked. “Are the markets of Iolcos so hazardous women don’t venture there?”

“No. Kyra was special in that regard and instance. She was lovely, the most sought-after girl for miles. Ulixes, the eldest son of the wealthy family I mentioned, wanted her for his own.”

“And she didn’t wish to marry him?”

“He had no plans for marriage. He was already a husband. In his mind, she wasn’t good enough to wed anyway because of our family’s poverty. He planned to make her his mistress and believed she should be honored by his ‘favor.’”

“Swine!”

“Yes.” He closed his eyes and swallowed hard. “But Kyra was much like you—too freethinking for a female and always landing in trouble.”

She stiffened, but he held her closer and kissed her brow. “She followed me to town without my knowledge. I should have taken her home once she made her presence known, but I would have missed the market
and lost much of my crop before I had another chance to sell it. Concerned about the coin as I was then, I let her stay with me.”

The sunlight began to soften as the afternoon waned, bringing a new coolness to the day. Tibi reached for her cloak beside the food basket. She wrapped it around her shoulders and snuggled closer to Alexius’s warm side. “I think anyone would have done the same.”

“I know, but that doesn’t change what followed and I’d do
anything
to turn back time.” He took a deep breath and released it slowly. “Ulixes and his cohorts arrived while we were packing up the empty baskets for our return home. He sniffed out Kyra and began to pester her immediately. She knew of his snobbery toward her and wanted nothing to do with a married man. Kyra being Kyra, she couldn’t simply ignore him. She berated him in front of his friends. I stepped in and sent him on his way. Or so I thought.”

Alexius stroked her hair, talking faster and faster as if a dam had burst. “We left in the late afternoon. Our farm was farther out of town than most, but we would have been home before dark. Ulixes and three of his men attacked us on a quiet stretch of road. I fought as well as I could, but at sixteen, I was no match for the four of them. They left me for dead and…and abused Kyra. She died from their violation a few days later.”

Tibi’s chest ached for his loss and pain. “I’m so sorry.”

“My father took them to court,” he continued in a flat voice as if he hadn’t heard her. “Ulixes’s wealthy family bribed the magistrate. My grieving father hadn’t sought reparations; he’d simply wanted an apology. Instead, he was forced to pay an unearthly sum when Ulixes claimed that my father’s petition amounted to
slander. When
abba
went to pay the money he could ill-afford to spend, Ulixes taunted him with the sounds of Kyra’s cries as she’d begged for mercy.”

A sob caught in Tibi’s throat. “You must have wanted Ulixes dead.”

“Yes,”
he said in a low voice so cold she shivered. “While I healed over the next weeks, I planned my revenge. As soon as I was able, I hunted down Ulixes and killed him, along with two of the other men who’d ravaged my sister.”

“What of the third?” she asked, feeling both horrified and justified by his actions.

“He escaped and told Ulixes’s relatives what I’d done. Naturally, his father went to the authorities. I was arrested and sentenced to death. I felt no remorse for my actions, but accepted the justice meted out to me. What I didn’t anticipate was that my enemy’s kin would seek revenge of their own. Months after I’d been sold out of prison to the gladiator
lanista,
I learned they hadn’t been content to see me die for the revenge I took on their son. They sent assassins by night to kill my blameless family. My eldest sister, Eleni, was away visiting friends at the time. When she returned home she found everyone dead. I heard that the sight drove her mad.”

He started to move away, but she refused to let go. It wasn’t until he tightened his hold that she realized he’d been giving her a chance to flee if she planned to reject him.

“Where did your sister go?” she asked, struggling to contain her sorrow.

“It’s a mystery I can’t unravel. Several years passed before I had enough money to search for her. By then, Eleni had disappeared without a trail to follow.”

Tibi bent her head and lifted the back of his strong, scarred hand to her lips. There were no words of comfort to offer equal to the level of heartbreak he’d suffered. In her own life, she’d tasted grief and unhappiness at the hands of her father, but nothing she’d borne compared to the tragedy that had cost Alexius his whole beloved family.

The shadows of a flock of birds passed over the thicket as she and Alexius held each other in silence. She tried to push back her sadness, but a single sob worked free from her throat. She buried her face against his shoulder.

“Tibi,
agape mou,
I didn’t tell you about my past to hurt you. If I had my way, you’d never experience pain again. I told you to answer your question, to give you the whole truth and make you understand why I have to fight. Before I was sold to the
lanista,
I sat rotting in prison, cursing the gods and those hags, the Fates. A rage formed inside me then that even now I struggle to keep buried. My anger is like a wild creature clawing to be free or a volcano on the brink of eruption. When I fight in the arena, I can unleash the beast and know for a time, no matter how short, I’ll gain a measure of relief and a sense of my true self. If I stop fighting, I’m afraid…” He choked on the word. “I’m afraid I’ll lose control and hurt, not a trained gladiator armed with weapons, but someone powerless to defend himself against me.”

She eased from his embrace and stood. “I understand your dilemma now, but I think there
must
be some other solution.”

He smirked. “Caros claims I need his God.”

She picked a small white lemon blossom from the tree and pressed the sweet bloom to her nose. “Perhaps
He
can
help. Caros used to be such a dark and forbidding man, but now he’s filled with joy. You said yourself the change in him is too great to ignore.”

“And why would a God of peace care anything about a violent man like me?”

She bit her bottom lip, searching for a reasonable answer. “Pelonia’s told me many times her God loves everyone, no matter who they are or what they’ve done. Maybe it’s true.”

Scowling, Alexius leaned his head against the tree. His eyes closed. He crossed his arms over his middle. Slivers of sunlight glinted off his silver wristbands. He looked exhausted and defeated, something she’d never thought she would see. Little wonder: telling her about his tortured past must have exacted a terrible toll on him.

With neither of them able to discover a resolution to their problems, she knelt beside the basket. The fur-covered grasses sank beneath her weight. Careful not to disturb Alexius when she hoped he was falling asleep, she began to quietly stow the parchment wraps and recork their empty bottles of water.

Once Tibi put everything away, she coaxed Alexius to lie down on the fur, his dark head on one of the pillows.

Confident that Alexius was getting some much-needed rest, she decided to take one of her favorite walks along the river before she woke him to return to the
ludus
.

“Tibi?”

Alexius reached for her, but his fingers found soft beaver fur instead of smooth, supple skin. Disappointed, he rolled to his back and blinked the sleep
from his eyes. He must have slept at least an hour. It was the darker side of twilight. The trees were an inky smudge against a sky the color of a deep purple bruise.

He rubbed his brow, wincing at his remembered confession to Tibi. Embarrassment pummeled him like hail, although he had to admit that the storm inside him seemed calmer for the first time in years.

“Tibi,” he called. The chirp of crickets was all that replied. Worry sparked to life. Had she deserted him? She’d said she loved him
before
he admitted to what he’d done to Ulixes. She was too gentle of heart to reject him outright, but perhaps she’d reconsidered the wisdom of loving a gladiator with such a violent past.

But would she have deserted him without a word?

That didn’t seem like her.

“Tibi!” No answer. He surged to his feet, straining against the darkness to find her. He knocked over the basket of uneaten food as he left the thicket. Moonlight filtered through the poplar and pine trees of the abandoned garden. An owl hooted somewhere nearby. Where was she? “Tibi!” he shouted.

Growing more worried with every step, he charged toward the river along the uneven path. So soon after reliving his sister’s assault, his mind raced to the worst possibilities. What if she’d fallen into the frigid depths or been bitten by a poisonous serpent? He started running. The river’s edge revealed nothing of her location—no footprints or sign of anyone of any kind. Light from the moon and stars reflected on the water’s rippled surface. The gentle lap of the current was the only sound to fill the eerie silence.