66. The Widow

The Widow

The pain that wakes me is two-fold. My back and wrists and face scream in agony at my shift in movement. Worse, though, is the pain of remembering that Mia is not here, will never again chastise me.

I’m done, Mia. I promise if you just come back, I’ll be safe. I’ll bake bread and help you in the infirmaria and swim in the frigidarium, and stop making you worry.

I don’t want to open my eyes. I’m afraid to see what the world looks like now, but then he speaks.

“How are you feeling, cor meum? ”

“Why must you call me that?” I say, the jagged little pieces of me feel sharper than ever. As if the whip was a whetstone last night, each touch from Tristan another new fracture.

“It’s how I feel. Why does it irk you so? And what would you rather be called?”

I finally drag my eyes open and gasp. “Jupiter's stones, what happened to you?” Cassius' usually golden face is black and blue, one of his eyes is bloodshot, and red seeps from a gash across his cheek. His lip is split and swollen and blood stains splash across his chest as if he was whipped, too. We’re in the nerium room, the traitorous frescoes and tapestries welcoming this new, yet old, version of me.

“When you didn’t return I knew something was wrong… but Tristan dragged me into a trial. I was flogged for my failure at Bai-Zu last night.” A legion conquest over six years old. Tristan had restrained Cassius the least incriminating way he could, through politics. Cassius would have been brought before the Senate to be lashed.

“How many?” I ask.

“One hundred. With the five-pronged flagrum,” he says, shaking his head. A death sentence. “The Senate protested and they all left the room after ten. Tristan was already gone so it was just me and the flogger.”

“He stopped?”

“Tristan may have friends among the Praetors and Senators, but I have friends where it matters.” He doesn’t say any more, but I understand what he means. His friends are the people that Tristan manipulates. Manipulated?

“Cassius, is he…?” I close my eyes again, afraid to hear the answer. Afraid that I did it, and more afraid that I didn’t.

“He’s dead, cor meum. You did it.” He reaches out and grabs my hand, gentle with the skin I broke by wrapping my chains around them. “I’m only sorry you had to do it alone. And I’m sorry you had to pay such a high price…”

He reaches his free hand out to brush a finger across my temple, where I’m sure I’m bruised. I turn away. “Flavia, Mia…they’re gone.” I tell him.

“Flavia, yes, but Mia isn’t.” He smiles in a sad sort of way. “She will have lasting damage, and she can’t speak or use her powers right now, but she’s alive.”

I move to sit up. “I have to see her,” I gasp against the pain, my back tearing anew.

Cassius moves to lower me back to the bed. “Soon, cor meum , soon.”

I let him lie me back and I close my eyes.

Crack. I hear the whip. I feel Tristan on top of me, forcing into me and each time blends together. My first wedding night. The night I was punished as Luella. The night I became a real widow.

Crunch.

The sound of broken bones and flesh as I smashed Tristan’s face in with feral rage. Black and blue and blood.

I open my eyes. Cassius looks back at me with something like longing. Adoration. The same thing I saw on our wedding night. Love. C or meum , he says.

But his face is golden. Even his hair is tinged with it, the red and gold copper strands mussed in the low light of late day. He got what he wanted. He’s the Emperor now.

“I can’t do this, Cassius,” I say softly, gently.

He shakes his head. “Don’t say that Luella.”

“You got what you wanted; let me go.”

“Of course you can go,” Cassius growls, rising to stand over my bed. “I’m not a monster! But I love you.” He falls to his knees, grabbing my hand again. “I love you, Luella. Whatever you can do, I want that.”

“What if I can’t stand it? To see you in his robes, in his rooms. To hear you addressed as Imperator? To see your face…” I choke on it, the idea of loving the brother of my worst nightmare. Of being married to an Emperor again.

“You can change it. Make me into whatever face you want to see. I don’t care.”

“It doesn’t work like that. Besides, you need this face to be Emperor.” A small laugh escapes me. “Would you give that up?”

“I think you’d hate me if I did, if I changed nothing after everything you sacrificed, but I still would, if you asked me to.”

I hate that he understands me. “I wouldn’t ask for that, even if I could change you.” With a dark chuckle, I add, “Besides, I’d hate for you to be made into anything other than that of your own choosing.”

He looks down at our hands. “Please,” he whispers and I blink back the tears mounting on my lower lashes.

“How did you recognize me?” I finally say, remembering that he’s never seen this version of me, the version that’s mine.

“I told you, Rose.” I take a sharp, careless inhale before my ribs and back protest at the sudden movement. “I would recognize you in any life. I’d know you in any form.”

“You knew?” The words beg to be answered as much I want them to be ignored.

Cassius nods. “Not at first, but then those eyes…” His gaze lingers on my right eye, on the two specks that are so hard for me to alter. He runs his fingertips up my arm, the barely brushing touch sending goose-pebbles up the back of my neck. It’s soft. It’s right. “And I didn’t know how that could be. Then the longer we spent together, the more I saw you, the more I started to hope. And then I stopped caring, because it didn’t matter who you were or had been, because you were simply… you.”

I don’t know if I’m breathing, existing. I don’t know what he’s saying and I do. “Don’t, Augustus,” I beg. It’s different than before. It’s different if he knows everything. If he knows I didn’t choose correctly all those years ago. If he knows the depths of my suffering, the past that shaped me. It means he’s not seeing the mask, the persona, the body I’ve created.

He’s seeing me.

He smiles softly at the old nickname. “All that matters is that I love you, cor meum . And I’ll keep loving you as long as you let me.”

A soft sound escapes me, a strangled cry or perhaps a plea. I close my eyes.

But then I hear it again. The crack of the whip, the crunch of bone.

She just screams so pretty.

I yank my arm away, instinctively fast at first and then more slowly, reluctantly. “Please,” Cassius says again. Begs .

I don’t want to have the power, but I don’t want him to have it either. I want to trust, but how can I? Rose can’t do that anymore, and I don’t know if Luella can either.

I don’t know which version of me I am anymore.

I don’t know if I know me, without my list of praeda.

Who am I, if I’m not revenge?

“I need time.” I don’t know what I need, but I want Mia and space and to be far away from the gods-forsaken Domus Aurea where I finally became what I always wanted to be.

A widow.