Page 50 of Thawed Gladiator: Cassius

Diana’s response is too quiet to hear, but I force myself to keep walking. I have no right to that conversation, no right to defend myself. I can only prove Jason wrong through my actions, moment by moment, day by day.

My muscles flex with familiar power as I attack the physical task of mending the fence, grateful for the mindless task. My hands, once soft with privilege, are growing calloused again like they were in theludus. It feels right somehow, earning my place here through honest work.

“You missed a nail.”

I turn to find Quintus watching me. He doesn’t quite meet my eyes, but he points to a spot I overlooked.

“Gratias,”I say quietly, fixing my mistake.

He grunts and walks away, but it’s the first time he’s spoken to me since my return. Another small victory.

The sun climbs higher as I work, and I hear the day’s lessons beginning. Diana’s voice carries across the paddock, patient and clear as she instructs a new student. I allow myself one glance in her direction, then return to my task.

This is my penance, but also my choice. Every splinter in my hands, every suspicious glance I tolerate, every careful request for permission—they’re all steps on the path to becoming someone worthy of trust. Not just Diana’s trust, but everyone’s.

“Cassius?” Diana calls out. “We need help with the grooming lesson when you’re done there.”

“I’ll be right there,” I respond, careful to keep my tone professionally neutral despite the way my heart leaps at her voice.

Small steps. Small victories. Small moments of trust rebuilt.

It will have to be enough.

Chapter Forty-One

Cassius

Perhaps it was Jason’s anger at me, comparing me to his father. Whatever caused it, as I hammer in the last nail, a dam breaks open. Memories my mind has kept hidden from me since I woke from my long sleep are pouring in and I’m drowning in the flood.

Father.

Does everyone have such a relationship with their father? My thoughts are a rolling barrage of memories—sweet moments as he praised me and taught me to ride, harsh afternoons of his lectures as he impatiently scolded me for not catching on faster, and many times as I became a man and he expected so much of me.

Although my emotions are mixed and I carry much anger, the prevailing feeling when I think of him is love. That’s why the memory of his execution grabs my gut and twists it in a knot, bringing me to my knees.

I’m no longer fixing a fence in Missouri, no longer seeing the long, dappled shadows of leaves in the trees. I’m fully back in time, two thousand years ago, in the Forum Romanum. The execution of a senator who plotted against the Emperor isn’t a private affair—it’s spectacle, entertainment, a reminder of Imperial power.

The stench of unwashed bodies mingles with expensive perfumes as patricians and plebeians alike crowd the space. The morning sun glints off the golden roof of the Temple of Saturn, casting an almost divine light on the proceedings. How fitting, I think bitterly, that the god of time should witness this moment when my world ends.

They didn’t grant him a quick death. That would have been too merciful for a traitor of his rank. First came the parade of shame—stripped of his senatorial toga, dressed in rags, and forced to walk through the streets while the mob pelted him with garbage. Yet he walked with his head high, every inch a Cornelii.

Then the torture began. They wanted information about other conspirators, yes, but mostly they wanted to break him, to see that patrician pride crumble. The snap of bones, the sizzle of hot irons, the methodical work of the torturer—these sounds will haunt my dreams forever. But Father never broke. Never begged. Never named names.

Mother stands beside me. Though she trembles, her face is a marble mask, as I imagine mine is. I thank the gods that my manservant had the forethought to tell me not to eat today. If I had, the food would have come up and splattered at my feet when the sound of my father’s femur breaking carried to my ears.

My younger sister Claudia clutches my arm so tightly her nails draw blood, but I barely notice. All I can see is Father, barely recognizable now, as they drag him to the execution block.

The herald reads the charges: conspiracy against the divine Emperor, Titus Flavius Vespasianus, and treason against Rome herself. Father’s eyes sweep the crowd one last time, finding us. Even through the blood and swelling, I see his lips move. “Memento quis es,” he mouths. Remember who you are. “A Cornelii.”

Then the sword falls.

But they aren’t finished. Not yet. This is Rome, where death itself is theater. They dismember the body—hands that dared write treasonous letters, tongue that spoke against the Emperor. Each piece is thrown to the dogs while the crowd roars its approval. Finally, what remains is dragged by hooks to the Gemonian Stairs, where it will rot as a warning to others.

The memories won’t stop now. They tumble through my mind like bodies thrown from the Tarpeian Rock. My stomach somehow finds old remnants of food, now little more than bile, which comes up and spills on the ground. I’m drowning so deeply in my memories that I barely notice.

The pictures change to later that day when the Praetorian Guards stripped our villa bare, taking everything of value—including our dignity—saying it was all a debt owed to the Emperor. Mother chose a quick death by poison rather than face slavery.

My sister vanished into some senator’s household, her beauty ensuring a marginally better fate than mine. And I, the twenty-four-year-old son of a traitor, was stripped of my citizenship, made a slave, and forced into aludusto train as a gladiator.

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