65. Luella

Luella

Rose

An older man finds me curled over Daisy’s half buried body. He sees me, turns on his heel, and leaves. I hope he comes back to kill me.

That thought comforts me as I drift to sleep, but when I wake up, I’m not dead. Obviously. I’m in the man’s dark arms and he’s telling me everything will be okay. His voice is soothing, kind.

I don’t trust it one bit, but my traitorous body succumbs to sleep once more.

When I wake this time, I’m in a dark room with two doors, one solid and the other with a small portal to open and see who’s outside. Another woman is here, and she looks a bit older than me with brown hair. I can’t see the color of her eyes since both are swollen closed. The bruising looks fresh if I know anything about black eyes, which I do.

I’m cleaner than I’ve been since I don’t know when, and I’m in a new tunic.

I try to speak, but it comes out as a rasp, my throat still so raw from screaming. I try again and manage, “Where?”

The woman looks up. “You’re in the infirmaria. Been out since I arrived.”

“I can’t be here,” I say. I sit up, not knowing how to tell her that I can’t be seen by the Emperor, by my pater.

“Only the women know about this place,” she says, gesturing to the back door with the slit. This must be the back of the infirmaria I see everyday near the Baths. The alley behind likely serves to ferry women to the safety that must be kept a secret, else the men would take that, too. “And I’m guessing a woman didn’t do that to you.” It’s not a question, so I don’t answer.

“Healer ran out of stones fixing you, so she had to leave. She’ll be back.”

I’d heard she was blessed by Apollo or Aesculapius, but never was sure. Blessings are rare. The Senate said it was because we were already divine as Divusians, which means it’s probably the opposite. I lie back and it’s as if I’m floating over my own body, watching myself exist in a place I know I don’t belong. My eyes close against a fresh wave of regret, the what ifs and should haves strangling me.

After a few moments I ask the woman, “Who did that to you?”

She smiles, baring her teeth, maybe not realizing or not caring that the front two are chipped. “You first.”

“My husband.”

She nods. “ Idem .” Same.

“Before that, my pater,” I say.

“ Idem ,” she says again. Silence settles between us again, heavy as the burden of feminity in an empire ruled by men. It makes me angry. No, not just angry, incandescent.

“We won’t have peace will we? Virgins, whores, or corpses.” The words are sharp, enhanced by the gravely quality of my worn vocal chords.

“I pray to Tisiphone,” she admits. “To make me a widow. To give me freedom.”

“A widow?” I ask, but I realize what she means. It’s… freedom. “A widow…” I say again.

The woman closes her eyes. “He’d never see it coming. Tisiphone would be beautiful even as she slipped a dagger into his chest.” A contented sigh looses from the woman, as if the image of her husband’s blood pouring from him would be like the sounds of a bubbling stream or a string melody.

There must be so many like us, those who want nothing more than to escape our own matrimony, leave behind the pain of obedience. To be free from the lie we’re fed from the moment of our birth, whispered to us in our maters’ protective embraces and lectured from beneath our paters’ fists. Released from following generations of women who say, ‘see, like this,’ and the men who say, ‘or else.’

Someone should stop the cycle. Someone should say, ‘not anymore.’

“What’s your name?” I ask.

“Skylar,” she says. “But it doesn’t matter. I’m 'ia' in every way that counts.” The way I was Octavia to my pater’s Octavius. The way I’m now Evandia to Tristan Evander, even if he doesn’t know it.

“Do you ever want to run? To start over with a new name?”

“Mmm.” She hums her assent, content to keep what it would be to herself.

I think about who I might want to be now. I can’t be Rose anymore. I could be like many men and use my middle name. It was unusual for women to have middle names, but my mater had insisted, giving me and Daisy the same one.

“It was my mater’s name,” she had told me, “and she didn’t have any sons. So her gens is already lost to the world. Luella Amulius will never exist again, but Daisy Luella and Rose Luella will. She can live in you girls, she can keep you together.”

“My name’s Luella,” I tell Skylar.

She nods, as if she knows I’ve just decided this, and her approval feels good. “I like it,” she says.

“ Idem ,” I say, closing my eyes against the memories of Mater, of Daisy.

The pain drags me back into sleep and restless dreams where my face transforms. First I become my mater, slipping a dagger into my pater and staying to raise Daisy and me. We’re laughing at the festival, and she’s teaching me to bake bread instead of leaving me to learn it on my own at age five. Then I’m Skylar, slitting her husband’s throat, smiling when the blood sprays across her chipped teeth, eyes flashing green with hate and triumph.

My face begins changing faster, shifting and morphing between my own, Daisy’s, and the likeness of the goddess Tisiphone. Our features start merging, like the statue in the temple of Janus where the god’s whispered words and magic must have healed me enough to give me a second chance.

‘What do I do?’ I want to scream, but the words won’t come. Instead I see myself, Daisy, and Tisiphone, morphed into one beautiful face with blonde hair and the bluest eyes with twin specks in the right one. One red as a rose, the other daisy yellow. I see this person who is me and isn’t.

She kills man, after man, after man. She slits throats, and poisons, and finally she kills Tristan with her own two hands wrapped in the chains of marriage. She shatters his face with centuries of pain and obedience and betrayal. The sound of shattering bones as his skull collapses in on itself startles me awake, reality crashing over me.

Drenched in sweat and shaking, I look around the room once more, rage rising like the Maero in summer.

Someone should stop them.

And it’s going to be me.