Page 17 of Thawed Gladiator Thrax

Skye squeezes my arm reassuringly. “Ready?” she asks, her smile bright and encouraging.

I nod, not trusting my voice, and we step through the doors together.

The transformation of the cafeteria is impressive, I must admit. Draped fabrics, oil lamps, colorful pillows, and arrangements of grapes and figs on long banquet tables create a passable illusion of a Roman feast. But it’s the people who make my breath catch and my palms sweat.

Everyone is dressed in togas and stolas, rich fabrics draped elegantly over their bodies. They look exactly like the patricians I remember from my time in Rome—the wealthy, the powerful, the ones who saw me as nothing more than property to be used for their entertainment.

Suddenly, the room feels too small, too crowded. The chatter of voices blends into a roar in my ears. I can feel eyes on me, curious glances at my scarred body, my simple loincloth standing out starkly among the fancy costumes.

Dr. Diaz sees us from across the room and graces us with a smile. Then, out of nowhere, she raises her thumb toward me—the signal of death in the arena. She’ssmilingas she gives mepollice verso!This woman smiles as she orders my death!

My vision blurs at the edges, the present fading as memories surface. I’m no longer in the cafeteria of a Swiss hospital. I’m back in Rome, not in the Amphitheater of Capua awaiting my fate from the master of the games, but I’m standing in the corner of a lavish villa, my body on display for the amusement of the patricians lounging on their couches.

A woman in a purple-edged stola approaches, her gaze raking over my body with a mixture of curiosity and contempt. She reaches out, her fingers tracing one of the scars on my chest…

Chapter Sixteen

Thrax

I try to hold on to the present, wondering if I should reach for Skye’s hand to keep me from sliding back in time. Even as I tell myself this memory happened two thousand years ago, that all the people in the dining room that night are long dead, their bones ground to dust, it doesn’t keep the memory from barreling at me like aquadriga, a four-horse chariot.

“Well, it looks as though our dessert has arrived,” the woman says as she eyes me up and down, assessing me.

Time has gotten lost, but I think it’s my fifteenth or sixteenth year. I’d been loaned to mydominus’sfriends before. So many times, I’ve already learned how to vanish into a back corner of my mind and only emerge when whoever had used me last climbed off me and ordered me to get out of their sight.

There’s something about this “party,” something about the cruel smirk on myludusmaster’s face when he put me in the carriage to leave the barracks, something about the looks on the guest’s faces that reminds me of the hungry wolf statue in the Lupus Fames Forum, that tells me this is going to be worse than anything I’ve experienced before.

“Get him naked, Aurelia,” a woman urges, then pops a grape into her mouth. “It’s certainly not hisfaceI wish to see.”

Aurelia strides closer, puts one fingertip under my chin as though she can barely tolerate touching my face, and tips my head to examine my left ear.

She leans closer and barely controls a shudder. “Repulsive. Remind me to ask for some money back on his price. Whatever I paid was far too high.”

There is something about the depths of her distaste, the way she shivered in disgust at my mangled flesh, that kills a part of me. I’d disappear into the back corner of my mind if they weren’t demanding things that require a response.

“Strip, boy.”

I do as I’m told and then stand still as the group appraises me. Usually, people who buy my services for the night like it when I get hard, but no one seems to mind that my cock is soft as a damp cloth. This, along with everything else I’ve seen thus far, terrifies me about what’s to come next.

Aurelia uses one arm to push everything off the banquet table, resulting in a clatter of glass, dishes, food, and wine. Absently, I imagine that what just fell to the floor is worth more than all the purses I will earn in my lifetime as a gladiator.

To everyone’s murmured delight. I’m ordered to lie on my stomach on the table. As I step closer, I spy a small table nearby. My stomach coils in a knot as I notice the items on top of it. Ten candlesticks with lighted candles, several daggers with sharp, curved points, and an ornate silver bowl filled to the brim with large darning needles.

The men in my barracks talk about their sexual experiences when they return from being rented out for a night. I’ve heard stories of being urinated on or being ordered to stick their tongues into filthy places. Though no one has ever mentioned knives and needles, somehow, I have a clear idea of the hell I’m about to experience. It makes me wish for the usual abuses I’m forced to endure when I’m rented for the night.

Aurelia’s voice turns colder as she orders, “We won’t shackle you. It will be part of the fun to know you’re holding still of your own accord. Trust me when I promise that if you so much as move a muscle, the punishment you’ll receive will make what we’re about to do feel like a trip to Elysium.”

As the true meaning of her threat registers in my thick skull, she adds, “But feel free to make all the noise you want. I find it… arousing.”

My blood turns cold as terror surges through my body. Are they going to torture me to death or just torture me until I wish for death? I’m wishing for it already.

The eight of them—four women and four men, all dressed in perfect white togas and stolas with purple piping at the hems, indicating their high patrician status—converge on me like a pack of wolves wanting to get the best bite of a downed prey animal.

“Let’s start with wax,” Aurelia gleefully announces. “That way, this will last.”

They jostle each other to reach for a thick candle and laughingly argue about who will get the choicest areas of my tender flesh to burn with scalding wax.

It’s impossible to retreat to the little room in the back of my mind. The pain is too excruciating and I need to stay aware so I don’t move, as ordered. It goes on endlessly, until one of the men says, “I’m bored. Pass the bowl of needles.”

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