49. A Curse

A Curse

Luella

There’s no more time. Cassius understands what I am now, and I think I know what to do.

I'm ready.

I’m rushing towards our rooms, moving swiftly down each corridor in the late afternoon. The suns cast double shadows, although tomorrow will be the shadowing, the coldest day of the clipse. A day of rest, although not for me.

Instead, I’ll push Cassius to initiate my plan and by next clipse, this will all be over.

I turn the last corner to our rooms and collide with none other than Caul and another Praetor I don’t recognize.

An undignified grunt escapes me and I move around them. “I’m so sorry, Praetors.” I dip my head, but Caul is holding my wrist and when I try to move away he yanks me back.

“Just who we were looking for. The Emperor requests an audience.” He sneers and I realize too late that they were waiting for me.

Fear rises, and I don’t wait to see if it’s warranted. When intuition speaks, I listen, especially in situations I haven’t orchestrated. I scream for Cassius, my voice shrill, “Dominus! Cassius, help me!” I don’t know if he’s near, but perhaps Flavia or another flora will still hear me.

Caul yanks me against him and wraps his forearm around my neck, squeezing until I can hardly breathe, much less scream. The other Praetor checks the hallway and they begin leading me away. I struggle, knowing I can’t acquiesce.

In one moment the circumstances can change. I know this. I slow my struggle, taking slow breaths through my nose. I feel for the vials in my pocket, for the stones, but my cooperation warns them and the other Praetor sees my hand in my pocket and rips it out.

“Witch,” he hisses when one of the vials comes out in my hand, shattering against the marble and spilling the violet liquid onto the floor.

Caul’s arm tightens around my neck, and despite my urge to keep my wits, I struggle anyways. My head pounds, my face is hot, and I realize I can’t breathe at all. He’s going to kill me.

Then he loosens his grip, just a little. They must want me alive, and awake. Caul spins me around and slams me up against the wall, hoisting my hands above my head with one hand and punching me in the face with the other. I cough as blood pools in my mouth and I would likely crumple if he wasn't holding me up. “Don’t you ever disrespect me again,” Caul says throwing me to the ground. He kicks me and then I feel the weight of him on top of me, his hands working on his trousers.

Something wild in me breaks free and I scream, scrambling forward only for the other Praetor to kick me in the chest when I try to rise. My chest crunches beneath his boot and I make a noise between a gasp and scream, collapsing onto my stomach. Caul grabs my legs, dragging me back towards him. Then he’s on me again, knees digging into my thighs as he tries to hold me and undo his trousers at the same time.

The other Praetor drops onto my upper arms, his shins crushing me into the marble floor. He leans forward, body draping over me, as he begins to rip at my dress. I remember something then, the pearl between my back teeth. Mia told me not to use it, but I don’t care. I won’t let them take this.

I try to work the pearl free but the panic makes my movements choppy and I bite my tongue when the nameless man rips my undergarments free. Air rushes over the exposed skin and then over my entire back, my head. The man isn’t over me anymore.

“She's mine,” Cassius growls, throwing the man off me. His boots are in front of me and I could lick them for how pleased I am to see him. He draws the sword from his hip and steps to the side of me, swinging it with a whistle.

Caul doesn’t have a chance to say anything before the blade slices across his jugular. He collapses onto me, the weight shifting from my thighs to my back and I scream as I’m coated in his blood. Cassius shifts me from beneath the weight of the corpse, and lifts me into his arms. I see the other man crumpled against the far wall. Cassius threw him just right for his skull to crack, and blood pools around him, too.

The hall is bathed in blood, as am I.

Cassius carries me away and I take one last look over his shoulder at the crimson scene. I can’t help but wonder how much more blood will have to spill before this is all over?

“Get out,” Cassius snaps to the servants in the imperial Baths. It has as many pools as the public ones, but each is smaller, and more elegant. Frescoes and gemstones adorn the walls above and below water, each pool a vibrant vat of color. The best ones are cast in a hazy fog as steam rises off the surface.

Cassius starts to take off my bloody and torn dress and I flinch. “Luella.” He touches my face, his hand warm but firm. “It’s me. I need to remove this so we can clean the blood. Okay?”

I nod, letting him peel down the wet fabric from my shoulders. Nothing hurts and a distant part of me says that this is shock. You remember shock, Luella.

She just screams so pretty.

“I was just about to—,” I gasp as I move to pull down a sleeve, spikes of pain from my shattered ribs breaking through the fog. “—to escape. You didn’t need to interfere.”

We both know it’s a lie but Cassius has the decency to say, “Sorry, I didn’t think.”

“Now he’ll know I’m a weak spot for you,” I say, clenching my teeth as I step out of the gown. I’m in my underthings, but the strap to one side of my tunic is broken and my undergarments are ripped down the back. I can feel myself shaking, my body still unsure if I should be running or fighting.

“These are rubbish,” I say, dragging them off. I rip the seam on the side of my tunic and salvage the small yellow stone, the one I’d sown in when I moved to the Domus Aurea. Then I toss the remnants of the garments towards the center of the room.

Cassius is looking down in a very respectful attempt to maintain my privacy and I’m keen to let him until I lean down to pick up the warm water ewer. A hiss escapes me as my ribs shift and Cassius looks up. “Stones, let me do it.”

“I thought you’d never ask,” I manage, trying and failing to keep my tone light. I straighten, breathing slow. “I need the healer after this.”

“I should have let you flay them,” he says.

“Haven’t seen me be cruel enough?” I say, remembering how he had withdrawn at my methods last night.

“There is no such thing as cruel enough for that,” he says. I can’t decipher exactly what he means and I’m too tired to try.

In attempt to avert his eyes, Cassius smacks my cheek with the ewer. “Ow,” I snap.

“Sorry,” he says, dumping the next ewer of water over empty air.

I sigh. “ Matulo , will you please just open your eyes? I’m not shy and I can’t do it myself.”

I’m not shy. After all, I make these bodies for eyes to see. They are unblemished save calculated things. A mole above the left side of a lip. A smatter of freckles across the bridge of a nose. A sliver of a scar across a hand or shoulder. All to appear more real. And so I am used to gazes that undress, that demean, that imagine all manner of things that nearly actually occurred just now, and I know that’s not how Cassius will look at me. He will be collected, methodical. Courteous.

Except he’s not. His eyes roam across my face, moving between my eyes and down to my lips and then lower to my collarbone. Cheeks darkening he dips the shaking ewer into the water and pours it over my shoulders, the warmth streaming in rivulets down my bloody skin in the steamy air between us.

I’m more naked than I’ve ever been, beneath that gaze.

Once the blood is mostly gone, Cassius holds out an arm, letting me lean on him as he leads me to the hot bath. I tenderly lower myself into the steaming water, glad for his arm to steady me. I sink all the way in until the water reaches my chin and take a deep breath before submersing myself. The water rushes across my face, fills my ears, nose, and the spaces between each strand of hair and my whole body loosens.

When I come up for air, Cassius is sitting at the edge of the pool with his trousers rolled up past his knees and his feet soaking. “Are you all right?”

I don’t answer right away but when I do my voice is softer than usual. “It’s different, when you’re not prepared.” I lean my head back against the edge of the tub right next to Cassius, looking up at him. “Thank you, Cassius.”

His hand drops to my hair, smoothing it back. “I think I’d know those eyes in any form,” he says. A smile plays across my lips and he brushes his thumb across them, like he’s making sure it’s really there. “I think I might know you, in any form, Luella.” He says it like it’s a curse, like it’ll break him, and I stop smiling then. Because I know he’s right.

Whatever this is, it’ll doom us both.