Page 81 of City of Secrets and Shadows
I needed... I wasn’t sure what. Not the academy’s sterile comfort. Not the suffocating weight of maintaining appearances. I just needed somewhere I could breathe, where I didn’t have to pretend, even for an hour.
The streets grew narrower as I descended into the lower city, buildings pressed close together, the smell of cooking fires and cheap ale replacing the academy’s perpetual scent of cedar and old books. I found myself drawn to familiar territory — not thewealthy merchant districts or the noble quarters, but the edges where common folk lived and worked and survived.
Before I fully realized where my feet were taking me, I was standing before a shabby tavern with a faded sign depicting a broken sword. Above it, a narrow staircase led to apartments that could be rented by the week. I climbed the stairs, my heart hammering against my ribs for reasons I refused to examine.
The third door on the left. I hesitated, my knuckles poised above the wood. What was I doing here? What did I expect? I should return to the academy before my absence was noted, should compose myself and attend the ceremony as required, should—
My hand knocked before I could talk myself out of it, three sharp raps that echoed in the narrow hallway.
For a long moment, there was silence. I was about to turn away, equal parts relieved and disappointed, when I heard movement inside. The scrape of a chair, footsteps approaching the door.
It swung open, and Marcus stood there, his expression shifting from guarded to surprised recognition. He wore a loose shirt and worn breeches, and his hair was damp, as if he’d recently bathed.
“Livia?” His voice was soft with disbelief, eyes searching mine with confusion and concern.
I opened my mouth to explain, to manufacture some practical reason for my presence. But nothing came. Instead, to my horror, I felt tears well in my eyes — tears I hadn’t shed in years, not through all the horrors of the arena, not through the degradation of the ludus, not even when I’d been torn from my village.
“I…” My voice broke, and I hated myself for the weakness. “I shouldn’t have come.”
But as I turned to leave, his hand caught mine — not grabbing, not restraining, simply making contact. Warm. Steady. Real.
“Livia,” he said again, his voice gentler than I’d ever heard it. “What happened?”
The genuine concern in his voice undid me completely. I looked up at him, no longer Lady Cantius, no longer even the hardened gladiator, but simply myself — lost, angry, and terribly, terribly tired of fighting alone.
“I need you,” I said.
21
Ihadn’t expected anyone to knock on my door that evening. Octavia had gone out with a merchant who'd been sweet-talking her at the tavern for weeks, and I’d been looking forward to a rare night of solitude — just me, a bottle of cheap wine, and the silence I’d come to appreciate after years of the ludus’s constant noise.
When I opened the door and saw Livia standing there, my first thought was that I’d somehow conjured her from my imagination. She haunted my thoughts often enough that it wouldn’t have surprised me. But imagination couldn’t capture the slight tremble in her hands, the pallor beneath her skin, or the unshed tears brightening her eyes.
“Livia?” I kept my voice soft, uncertain if I should reach for her or maintain the careful distance we’d established these past few months.
She started to speak, then faltered, something breaking in her expression. “I... I shouldn’t have come.”
As she turned to leave, instinct took over and I caught her hand — gently, just enough to make her pause. Her skin was cold despite the mild evening.
“Livia,” I said again, concern rising like a tide. “What happened?”
The question seemed to crack something inside her. I’d seen Livia stand unflinching before opponents twice her size, had watched her suffer wounds that would have crippled others, all without a single tear. But now her eyes filled, and the sight tore at something in my chest.
“Come inside,” I said, stepping back to make space for her to enter.
My room was sparse — a bed, a table with two chairs, a small hearth where a modest fire burned. All I could afford was what my pitiful job at the butchers paid, but it was mine. No bars, no masters, no chains. Freedom, even impoverished, tasted sweeter than any luxury the ludus had offered.
Livia hesitated at the threshold, then stepped in, her movements stiff as if she were fighting her own body.
“Octavia’s not here,” I explained, closing the door. “She’s spending the evening with some merchant who’s been courting her at the tavern.” I gestured toward the lone bottle on the table. “I can offer wine, though it’s nothing like what you’re probably used to at the academy.”
She shook her head, standing awkwardly in the centre of the room. I’d never seen her uncertain before, and it unsettled me more than any wound ever could.
“What happened?” I asked again, keeping my distance though every instinct urged me to go to her.
“There was a man,” she began, her voice so soft I had to strain to hear it. “At the academy. A nobleman’s son.”
As she spoke — recounting the changing room, the ambush, the knife — I felt a familiar rage building inside me, the battle-fury that had both kept me alive and earned me punishment in the arena. My hands curled into fists, nails biting into my palms.
