43. My Type

My Type

Luella

Cassius squeezes my hands tight. I know I should pull away, but instead I lean in as he whispers, “It's you.”

“If it was… I’d be very curious about why it mattered now. About why you hurt those women. And why you’d want to marry me.”

“My brother…” He shakes his head and starts again. “I need help.”

I shake my head. “If you want my trust, I need yours. Tell me everything.”

“There is a lifetime to tell.” He swallows. “My brother… is a belua. ” Monster.

“I know about your brother,” I say.

“Luella, you don’t. It's more than you could possibly know.” I don’t correct him; there is too much I cannot tell him. “But it’s only become worse. The floras know much of his… worship.”

“Worship?” What a word.

“Of Bacchus. That’s why he does what he does.” The Emperor belongs to the mysteries. I didn’t know, but of course I wouldn’t. Bacchus followers are a legend, a nighttime story to keep children and virgins inside when the suns set, just like The Sabines. Some even believe The Sabines exist solely for the followers of Bacchus.

“So he’s a belua . A deviant. So was Ledo, so are 90% of the Praetors and Senators,” I say. Which now makes more sense. Many of the men I’ve killed were likely followers, appointed by the Emperor himself. “Why do you suddenly care? And what do you want from me?”

“I’ve always cared.”

“You’ve never stopped him.”

Cassius flinches at the accusation. “I couldn’t.”

“Because men are allowed to do what they want? Because he’s the Imperator? Why couldn’t you do anything, mighty Dominus?” I sneer. I can’t help myself. Over ten years. Ten years of women being beaten, raped, and murdered. Perhaps he called it worship now, but I know he hadn’t always. He was a twisted man who found a way to justify his deviance, and convinced others to join him in it.

“Because he had my siblings,” Cassius says, his voice cracking over each word. “Because he had the twins, kept safe in his wing to protect them from assassination.” The lie he’s had to swallow sounds cold, distant.

“Had?”

He looks up at me with eyes so haunted that it’s my turn to flinch. “They’re gone now… last year after we lost the battle at Nocia. He said they were kidnapped but…” The confident man I’ve seen has been replaced with a broken-hearted brother and I wonder for the first time if he might cry. “I found their bodies.”

He doesn’t elaborate, and I don’t want him to. I don’t want to know anything more about them because I can feel my heart breaking and I can see the thread forming between us, the one woven by loss.

He takes a deep breath and I see the steel in him once more as his shoulders straighten, his chest inflates. “He’s kept me at bay for years, using our siblings as leverage. I mourn their loss every day, but I won’t let their deaths go unavenged. My brother made a mistake, because without their lives on the line, I can do what needs to be done.

“What’s that?”

“Whatever it takes,” he says. "Whatever it takes for things to change.”

Everything falls into place. Warning me away from Ledo and his brother, then letting me go, then baiting me back with the floras once he realized who I was. And if he’s wrong about me, I could destroy him.

Because he wants to kill the Emperor.

“You want…” I look away. Venus is known for her deception, her affairs, her promiscuity. She blesses brides but curses married women. She is love and passion and jealousy. It’s fitting to discuss this here. “You want me to do your dirty work, take your revenge?”

“I want to help you do what I think you were planning to do anyways. Isn’t that why you asked me about him back then? Why you chose Ledo?”

He’s right, of course. “Why can’t you do it yourself?” I waive my hand over his form. “The Dominator? I’m sure you could best him.”

Does he blush? “Him, maybe. Him and his six handpicked Praetorians? No. I’m still just a man, and many of those men trained me. He’s only alone in his chambers with the floras, and even then not always. The Praetorians are always stationed outside. I’d never get close enough, but you could. The floras come and go, they don’t have an escort in or out.”

“Why would they,” I say, not as a question, just a reminder of the hubris of men like the Emperor. Men who think our pretty heads are too occupied with how to please them than with anything else.

“We can work together. Whatever you need, whatever I can do, whatever the floras can do. We can stop him, together.”

It is what I want. On some level maybe that’s why I decided to trust him, to admit who and what I am.

Because I’m driven by want as much as the Emperor, as much as Ledo or Silas or any other praeda I’ve killed. I want to end the Emperor more than I’ve ever wanted anything and the ache of it sets my blood on fire.

“Perhaps,” I say again.

“So, you’re not going to kill me?” He smiles in that charming way of his, sadness forgotten at the thought of taking his own revenge.

“ Matulo ,” I say, rolling my eyes. “I didn’t say that.”

“Fine, you’re not going to kill me, yet?” he clarifies, still smirking.

“Yet,” I agree. “Turns out, you’re not really my type, anyways.”

He throws his head back and laughs. The sound spreads through the temple, through my chest, through my core and I find that I’m smiling too when he says, “That’s too bad, because you’re mine.”