39. KissKill

Kiss or Kill

Luella

It hurts. Stones, it hurts. Sweat beads between my shoulder blades and my breath comes in staccato as Cassius continues to tug me down the hall, and into his rooms.

It’s… green. The jewel green chamber reminds me of the temple of Ceres, where the jade hewn floors of polished chrysoprase reflect the sky above through the numerous arches and skylights.

The floor is the same here, as are the skylights. The walls are limestone but each tapestry is a scene from nature. An ancient temple covered in ivy. Baths filled with lily pads instead of people. The coliseum seats cracked and broken, and the pit filled with wildflowers.

His room is the opposite of the republic. It’s nature and nurture. It’s freedom and joy.

It’s treasonous, and I might love it if I wasn’t ready to cut my own wrist off for the pain. That probably wouldn’t help, though.

I lean against the nearest wall. I have a vial for this, a vial that is half opium and half stimulant. It masks the pain and gives a burst of energy, but I won’t take it yet.

“Stones, Luella.” Cassius guides me to a plush bench at the foot of his large canopy bed. Gauzy white curtains hang around the dark green linens. I sit, cradling my left wrist with my right. It’s swelling already, the tiny bones inside screaming in protest as the fluid inside begins to press on the injury.

He’s on his knees in front of me for the second time today as he cradles my wrist gently in his hands. “Shh,” he murmurs when I try to remove it from his grasp. “Just let me look.” The confrontation with his brother has sobered him and he moves smoothly, earlier signs of swaying gone.

I try not to hold my breath, blowing out softly as he twists my whole arm to look, not letting my wrist shift. Hot and sharp, the pain explodes when he underestimates where his elbow is and bumps it into my shoulder, jostling my wrist in his hand. I bite down on my lip to stifle the cry that begs to be released.

She just screams so pretty.

Maybe I will rethink my stance on torture. Maybe I’d like to see the Emperor scream so pretty.

“I’m so sorry,” Cassius says. “It’s definitely broken. I’ll summon a healer.”

I shake my head, pain clouding my ability to mask myself. “I want to see my own healer.” I trust no one but Mia. Healers, the ones blessed by Aesculapius, feel inside of you. Mia says I feel different. She’s never said if that’s because of Janus or because I make my own bodies, or because of something else.

I don’t want to find out.

“Luella, you’re in pain,” Cassius argues.

“This is the least of my pains,” I say, eyeing him.

He tosses his hands up. “Then I’m coming with you.”

Stones. That’s not what I want. “Please, Dominus. I am fine. You have more important things to do.”

“What could be more important than this?”

Beating floras. Fighting with your brother. Drinking sapa and fucking and playing mind games.

“I see a plebeian,” I say instead.

“So?”

“Is that really a place for the Dominus?”

“Is it where you’re going?”

I pause. “Well, yes.”

“Then it’s a place for me,” Cassius says and shrugs as if the second most powerful man in the republic often follows women around. I narrow my eyes.

“Why?” If he thinks he will catch me as Skylar or that Mia will implicate me, he couldn’t be more wrong. Any lady would think it strange for her betrothed to attend her personally. Send for someone, yes. Send her to someone, yes. Scoop her into his arms to carry him herself? No.

“Cassius, careful!” I screech as he does just that, wrapping arms around me to lift me off the bench. I brace my wrist against my chest, shielding it from him.

“It’ll be faster this way. You look like you’ll faint any moment.” He’s not wrong. I feel pallid and ill and weak. It’s just a bit of pain but it’s pain I hadn’t prepared for.

She just screams so pretty.

I shake my head once, twice. I’m so close and the pressure is getting to me. Cassius has succeeded in confusing me, yes, but he won’t ruin my plan. He won’t.

I won’t let him.

“Hurry, boy,” Cassius says impatiently when Taln asks why we are here. I glare at him.

“Please,” I stress the word. “Tell healer Mia that Luella and the Dominus are here to see her.”

Taln pauses, just for a moment, at the name. Cassius is watching him, of course, and notices it. Stones, gods, and offerings, this man is too observant for his own good.

Thank Janus Taln doesn’t know this face nor does he know my abilities, and he leaves to bring Mia.

When she enters she knows her role well.

“Good day, Luella,” she greets. “I hear you have injured your wrist. Did you fall?” The nice way women tell each other what’s been done to us. How many falls has Mia treated over the years, without a single woman having slipped?

I nod but Cassius interrupts, not understanding the language of women. “She didn’t fall.” I shake my head at him and he looks between us. “You didn’t fall, Luella. It’s okay to tell her.”

If I was a younger woman, a more naive one, I might find this charming. If I wasn’t so broken, I might find his honesty refreshing.

I am none of those things, so instead I find him stupid. “Women fall all the time, Dominus,” I say each word slowly. Urging him to understand. “Floras. Wives. We can be quite clumsy.”

Cassius narrows his eyes and understanding must dawn on the entitled fool because he doesn’t argue and instead asks, “Can you heal her?”

“Of course, I’ve healed much worse,” Mia says.

Cassius' gaze darkens further and he asks, “On her?”

I’d like to roll my eyes. I’d also like to kiss him. What? That can’t be right. The pain is making me delirious and rational thought is slipping between the sieves of my mind. I need Mia to heal me and then I need to sleep. I need to stop thinking about Cassius and it would be much easier if he’d stop being kind.

It would be much easier if I’d killed him already.

Mia doesn’t answer, instead she lays my wrist in her lap, arranging my arm so that all is in proper alignment. She makes a noncommittal noise in the back of her throat.

Nice or not, Cassius isn’t used to being ignored. “Have you healed much worse on her, healer?”

“I cannot disclose information about the patients I treat, Dominus. You know that,” she says instead. He does. It’s not an explicit rule, but it is an oath the healers swear to Apollo or his son, Aesculapius.

If he’s put out, I don’t know or care. Mia clasps one of her hands gently around my forearm and asks, “May I heal you, Luella?” She’s asking if she can look for everything, everywhere, and I dip my chin. I wouldn’t hide anything from her.

The familiar feeling of sinking into a warm bath envelops me and the tightness in my shoulders loosens just a bit as the pain begins to ebb away. She’s incredible.

“Thank you,” I murmur.

Mia pats my hand. “Always.”

Cassius doesn’t speak, watching the way Mia holds my hands, the familiarity with which our skin brushes. His face is unreadable, still as stone, and my stomach sinks.

He sees too much.

Neither of us speaks on the walk back. The fog of pain has receded and my mind feels sharp again. I’m irritated at Cassius and whatever game he’s playing, but I’m more irritated at myself for starting to consider that maybe he was right. Maybe I don’t know what he wants.

He doesn’t return me to my rooms. Instead he steers me towards his own. I keep my steps sure, but I check the pearl between my teeth, rolling my tongue over the smooth sphere. I reach into my pocket and feel the unique shape of each vial, counting and recounting the small thumbnail sized life savers. Well, subjectively speaking.

Silas and Ledo and dozens of others might call them something else.

I twist my wrist, testing its movement, making sure it feels functional. I listen for the sounds of anyone else in the hall, and I look at Cassius out of the corner of my eye. He’s slumped, shoulders rounded. His copper hair is disheveled, and he runs his hands through it for what is clearly not the first time.

He stops at the door just before his. “I’ll have your things moved in the morning, but you’ll stay here now.”

I clasp my hands behind my back and debate for only a moment before I decide that if I have said I am Luella, and Luella is who Cassius says he wants to marry, then I will show him her. Well, pieces of her. The pieces he saw when I was Skylar and the pieces he seems to be gravitating to. The jagged ones.

“Why?” I don’t hide the challenge in my voice.

“Why? Because my brother just broke your wrist,” Cassius says. He reaches forward and tugs my arms, easing the once broken one forward to look at it again, scrutinizing it. It's nearly dark now and the sconces of the hall cast flickering light over us, the firelight dancing across his mussed hair and his golden face. "I should have known,” he whispers.

“Known what?” I ask.

He looks up from my wrist, the gold in his eyes brighter in the firelight. “That he would notice you. That I couldn’t keep you safe.” He shakes his head and nothing in his expression matches the confidence I’ve seen so far, or the coldness in front of the Emperor. “This was a mistake.”

“You… you want to call off our engagement?” My wrist falls from his hands as I take a step back.

“No, I just…” he trails off, because he doesn’t know what he wants. I can see it, the struggle playing across his face. “I want us to work together. To trust each other.”

I laugh. A cold, broken sound. A sound the real me would make. “Trust would kill me,” I say, shaking the laugh away. It’s not an admission. It’s a universal truth. A plebeian and a Dominus. A man and a woman. A killer and praeda.

“I’m trusting you,” he says. “And I keep wondering if it will kill me.”

He steps forward, until my back is against the wall, my chin tilted up to him as he looks down at me with something I can’t believe. It’s want and desire, but it’s care and curiosity, too. It’s lust but it’s reverence.

The warmth of his body seeps into me and our breath mingles, so close I could touch him.

I just can’t decide what I would do with that touch, what I want.

Kiss or kill?