Page 17 of Firebird (The Fire That Binds #1)

XVI

MALINA

He was not back by the afternoon. I’d read an entire book by a Roman philosopher who thought very highly of himself, yet still made some valid points on the ethics, morality, and responsibility of dragons. It must’ve been written an extremely long time ago, for I’d seen little to no ethics or morality in the current dragons ruling Rome.

Koska had come in once with some bread, figs, and cheese. I’d devoured the meal alone, then spent the remainder of the day sitting at the entrance and peeking stealthily out of the tent flap.

I was mostly surprised at what I witnessed. Soldiers working together alongside slaves to build tents and fire pits. They’d even laughed together over a meal around a fire. One of the younger soldiers passed his water flask to the slave he’d been working with the whole day.

To my relief, Julian had told me the truth, that no one marched around in half-skin. They appeared so… normal. And yet, in my mind, the Romans had always been monsters. I never imagined them working amiably and laughing together.

Koska came again, setting a tray of roast hog and vegetables with more bread on the table in the private quarter of the tent, behind the curtain. He also brought a pitcher of clean water and a bowl to wash with.

He didn’t speak a word to me, and I didn’t ask if I was permitted to use the water. But I did use some of it to wash up. I was about to blow out the oil lamps and change into my night dress when I heard voices approaching. Remaining behind the curtain, I watched as Julian entered the tent with another man.

“Malina,” he called, summoning me.

I walked out to realize that the man with him was the one he’d met with in the forum when we brought Enid home, one of his tribunes. He was the one who talked Julian down from shifting into half-skin when that soldier manhandled me.

He was near the same height as Julian, but that was no surprise. All dragons were built much larger than humans. His skin was a deep bronze, his eyes a clear blue, and they glinted with mischief. He was extremely handsome and seemed to know it.

“Malina, this is Trajan.”

“Salve, Malina.” He nodded a greeting, smiling to himself at some joke I didn’t get.

“Hello.”

“If you ever need anything, and I’m not here, you can go to him. His tent is directly to our left. ”

I stepped closer, frowning at his amused expression. “What are you smiling about?”

Seeming surprised, he laughed. “I apologize. I’m not laughing at you.”

Julian grunted disapprovingly. “Now you’ve met her, you can go.”

“I’m laughing at him.” He gestured toward Julian, ignoring his suggestion to leave. “He was very put out when I suggested we meet in case you ever need something when Julian isn’t here.”

When I made no reply at his rather familiar teasing, he went on.

“These campaigns can actually be rather long and boring. As it is, we don’t even know where our enemy is.”

“Really?” I moved closer to them. “And who is your enemy this time?” That was something Julian hadn’t bothered to tell me yet.

Trajan glanced at Julian, seemingly for permission. After Julian nodded he said, “We don’t know. They’ve sacked several provinces, burning one to the ground, and yet none of the survivors can even tell us who they were.”

That was unusual. Most clans would leave something behind or would proudly leave a mark so everyone would know who had destroyed a Roman province.

“What language did they speak?”

“They didn’t,” answered Julian. “No one heard them speak at all.”

“That’s strange.”

“Exactly,” said Trajan. “Quite the mystery, these marauders. But we’ll dig them out soon enough.” He turned for the door. “Good night, Legatus. Malina.”

Then he was gone, and I was alone with Julian.

“What are you thinking?” he asked with that pensive look he often wore when he regarded me.

“I was feeling sorry for the marauders that you’ll be killing soon.”

“Do you not feel sorry for the families, the women and children they murdered for no reason at all? They weren’t all dragons living in these provinces. There were free men and slaves alike who were killed.”

“Of course I don’t want any innocent person—dragon or human—to die. But they weren’t killed for no reason . It’s a rebellion against the Roman state.”

He smiled that crooked smile and walked past me toward the living quarters, disappearing behind the curtain.

“But you know that already,” I called.

The sound of him removing his uniform kept me from confronting him face-to-face.

“Yes,” he finally answered. “I know that.”

“And so”—my voice vibrated with anger—“yet again, you will root them out and kill them all and put their king’s head on a pike on your Wall of Victory as a sign that the Romans are the almighty rulers of all.” I paced beside the war table, breathless and furious. “Always the same thing,” I muttered to myself.

“Malina.” He stood in a plain tunic, holding the curtain aside. “Join me for dinner.”

“I’ve already eaten,” I snapped. “What’s left is yours.”

“Join me anyway. Let us talk.”

“I don’t feel like talking.”

He paused, then used his heavier, more dominant voice. “Then come assist me. I require a bath.”

There was a heavy promise in his words and in his eyes. He seemed tired. Not physically exhausted, but weary emotionally. It tugged on the tether between us, killing the ire that had inflamed me only a moment before.

He turned but I could see him clearly enough, pulling his tunic over his head. Even though I was in fact his body slave and was required to assist him in such things, he hadn’t demanded that of me yet. There was nowhere for me to go, and even if I could, I didn’t want to go anywhere else. Or be anywhere else. I couldn’t refuse him .

Moving the curtain aside, I found him seated on a stool that Koska had set over the small tub, nude but for a piece of linen draping his lap. I also noted the small table next to him with a bottle of oil and the strigil, the concave instrument made of bronze to scrape the oil and dirt from the body. I’d seen it used before, though I never had used it myself. I preferred a wet cloth or a stream, like the Celts did.

He watched me, almost daring me to do my duty. If he thought to scare me off by having me cleanse him with oil and strigil, he would be disappointed. I marched across the small chamber, the room lit by a single oil lamp, and stood behind him.

Pouring an ample amount of oil in my palms, I rubbed them together, then spread them across the expanse of his back. He stiffened, then shivered beneath my touch. I couldn’t help smiling at how intensely quiet and still he was, his hands on his knees.

Once his entire back was covered with the oil, I took the strigil and curved it across his shoulders first, admiring the taut lines of muscle. I scraped the oil in silence, shaking the excess off into the tub beneath him. I set to my work with ease and comfort while my pulse beat wildly from seeing and admiring the lovely lines of his body so closely. It was almost meditative.

By the time I circled around to his chest, he couldn’t hide his heavy breathing. He was as affected as I was. I refused to meet his gaze, concentrating on being thorough as I applied the oil to his chest and began methodically scraping with the strigil along the firm lines of his pectorals. He kept still while I did my work, his body heat radiating to me, both of us breathing the same air.

It was when I pulled the strigil down one side of his abdomen, all the way to where the linen in his lap stopped my progression, that he finally moved. Like a viper, he caught my wrist. I flinched and finally met his gaze—all fire and embers glowing burnished gold.

Breath caught in my throat; he held me still but I hadn’t even tried to move .

“Enough,” he grated, his nostrils flaring as he let me go and stood to move around me, avoiding my touch.

Now I was panting, glancing over my shoulder to get a full view of his naked body, unable to pry my eyes from his hard cock. I turned quickly, biting my lip so I wouldn’t make a sound.

I busied myself setting the strigil and oil to a side table. After a moment of shuffling and the sound of cloth moving on skin, he heaved a sigh and said, “You can turn around.”

He took a seat on his bed beside the low table where the tray of food had been waiting for him. He ate quietly, picking at the meat rather than devouring it like he usually did. I sat across from him on the carpet.

There was a tremor of unease surrounding him, my empathic senses quickly picking up on whatever was circling in his mind. I assumed he was anxious or frustratingly aroused or both, like I was. But when he finally looked up at me, abandoning his meal altogether, he seemed apprehensive, nervous. Scared, even. That wasn’t what I expected. That wasn’t what I was feeling.

Then he broke the silence. “I don’t want to kill them.”

At first, I didn’t follow, my mind reeling and my pulse racing from the sensual experience of scraping oil from his body. Then I remembered what we were discussing before, what had gotten me annoyed and made him use his master voice to get me to obey.

“The marauders?” I asked.

“Not any of them. Not the Celts or the Macedonians, the Greeks, the Persians, the Carthaginians. Not the Dacians.” He held my gaze and said, almost in a whisper, “None of them.”

“But you’re the Conqueror. That’s what you do.”

“Yes. I must. To stay in my uncle’s favor. Because that is the only way I can stay close to him. To maintain access to him.”

My heart tripped faster, trying to reconcile what he was telling me. What I believed he was confessing to me.

“And why is that important?” I asked softly .

He was sitting with his weight leaning back on one arm, one leg stretched out on the carpet, the other slightly bent. He leaned closer across the table and spoke low.

“If I tell you this, it could jeopardize something very important.” The gold flared even brighter in his eyes, his dragon waking to the danger of the moment.

“Then why do it?” I asked.

“Because I need to earn your trust. So I must give you something valuable.”

“What’s that?”

“My life,” he answered easily, as if it were nothing.

I stared, breathing heavily, and not for the reason I was moments before. He was serious. He was willingly giving me power over his life—or death—in whatever he was about to confess.

Holding his gaze, I commanded confidently, “Then tell me.”

I could feel it in the thread still weaving us together, that what he was about to say would indeed change the balance between us.

“There are a number of Romans, including myself, who are not happy with the regime my uncle and his predecessors have created.”

“And,” I asked, near breathless, “what do you plan to do about it?”

The small flame from the oil lamp on the table glittered in his eyes, his expression softer than usual, more vulnerable. Even so, his dragon watched me carefully. Always watching.

“We plan to kill him.”

I gasped and held very still, unable to move or even blink. He went on.

“But we also know that killing Caesar will not be enough. Every emperor for the past hundred years has been worse than the one before. My uncle is the most insane and vicious of them all by far. Rome has created its own society of degenerate and corrupt leaders. We mean to eliminate all of them and create a new world order. A new Rome.”

I stared without breathing for what felt like forever. When I finally let out a sharp exhale, I nearly fell forward reaching for the cup of water on the table.

“Here.” Julian managed to stretch an arm across and brace me by the shoulder, then he handed me the water. “Drink.”

I took several gulps, my head spinning while I slowly recovered. He eased back to his side.

“Are you all right?”

I chuckled as I held the cup in both hands in my lap. “That was rather… shocking.”

“I imagine it was.” His expression and voice were both grave and somber.

“You’re serious.”

“I am.”

“Trajan is one of your allies.”

He paused, then said, “I won’t give you the names of my allies. If I’m to risk any life, it will be only mine.”

“Do you mean you think I will report you?” I laughed. “To the emperor?”

He remained quite sober. “You could. If you wanted revenge on me.”

“For what exactly?”

“For killing your adopted clan, the Celts. Enid. For stealing you away to be a slave in my home. Or to avenge your family, whose deaths you could surely lay on my head. It was my people who killed them, and I don’t blame you for hating me for it.”

He was serious. He believed that what he told me might be his doom, that I might turn against him and get him executed. A flash of his sightless eyes staring out from the top of the Wall of Traitors made my blood run cold.

“Julian,” I said quietly, kindly, “I will never turn you in to the emperor or anyone else. I couldn’t.”

“Wouldn’t? Or couldn’t?”

There was a distinct difference. It was like he knew about the tether, about my magic sinking her claws into him, winding deeper, curling around his bones, seeking the essence of his soul. My magic never wanted to let him go.

“Your secret is safe with me,” I assured him, unable to confess how far I’d fallen already. “But… why tell me?”

“Because while I’m forced to maintain my role as legatus, I would do anything to relinquish it. I don’t want to kill those rebelling against us. I understand them and why they fight so fiercely. Battling them is like battling myself.”

He combed a hand over his short hair, mussing the longer strands toward the front. I suddenly had the urge to comb my hands through it, to see if it was soft or coarse.

“But I must.” Then he looked at me again with a plea in those amber depths. “It’s all a means to an end, you understand. I must play my part until we are ready to strike.”

I shuffled closer on my knees and reached across to place my hand on his where it rested on his knee. “I will help you.”

He turned his hand and opened his palm, closing his large hand around mine. “All I need is for you to be near me. And safe.”

I swallowed hard at the implication he was making. I couldn’t protest, for I couldn’t deny what the gods had already told me. Their magic was my gift and it pronounced loud and clear that this Roman, this dragon, was bound to me. And I to him.

He gave my hand a squeeze and rose to walk toward the pitcher and bowl. “It’s late. And I’ve got to get an early start tomorrow. Let’s go to sleep.”

His weariness was evident, but there was a lightness between us that had never been there before. I rose quietly and tucked myself in the bed that was constructed a foot off the ground. His was a bit longer and wider, on the other side of the carpet.

I didn’t watch to see if he was naked when he blew out the oil lamp and climbed into his bed, the creaking of the wood proclaiming it had been used many nights on many campaigns. Strangely, I felt calmer and more peaceful than any night since I’d been captured by him.

I thought he’d fallen asleep but then he spoke in that deep, low timbre.

“My mother rode my father as a dragon.”

I turned to look at him but, sadly, could not make out even the slightest curve of his face in the dark.

Surprised, I asked, “Your mother was human?”

“Yes. She was a slave in a Roman province in Thrace when my father met her.”

I could barely breathe. His mother had been a slave? It hardly seemed possible.

“She worked in the household of a noble family, one of his comrades from his legion. My father—” He broke off with a chuckle. “He told me, ‘one look at her and my heart was gone.’ He begged his friend’s mother to sell her to him. She protested but my father had always been rather charismatic and persuasive.”

“He was a charmer, your father?” I asked lightly, even while I was breathless with this new revelation.

“Believe it or not, yes. I’ve always been more stoic like my mother.”

He shifted in his bed and when he spoke again, it seemed like he was facing my direction.

“My father said he took her back to Rome and straight to the public office of records and signed the papers to free her.”

“Right away?”

“Instantly. He knew he couldn’t marry a slave. Under Emperor Adolphus’s rule, it was also illegal to marry a slave, but you could marry any freed person from any country.”

Yet again, my poor heart galloped faster, knowing these intimate confessions tied us even tighter to one another.

“My uncle never accepted the marriage. Of course, he and my father were never close. My father was content to retire early from his military career as prefect, while my uncle continued to rise in the ranks.”

“What did your father do when he retired?” I asked.

“He started a family.” There was a bittersweet tenor to his voice. “They could only ever have one child.”

“I’ll bet you were spoiled,” I teased, wanting to ease the pain I knew he was feeling since his parents were gone.

“Ridiculously spoiled.”

I laughed, and he paused a moment. “I love that sound. When you laugh.”

“I don’t believe I’ve ever laughed in your presence,” I said with a teasing lilt again.

He said nothing in response, so I asked, “You are favored by your uncle?”

“Yes. He has claimed I will be his heir.”

“But your mother wasn’t noble-born. I’m surprised he holds you so highly because of it. No offense to you.”

“None taken.” He chuckled. “I was surprised myself. But growing up, he’d often come visit my parents’ home and take me in the yard to teach me some training tactics. He always said my Dakkian blood ran thick. I suppose on top of all his sins, my uncle was also a hypocrite because he easily overlooks my muddied bloodline.”

“Not muddied, Julian.”

“I know. But I’m not any different than Stefanos. It just so happened that my parents were married and my father was born of a higher class. When the decree that bastard children of mixed breeds must be sent to the gladiator pits was declared, I was simply fortunate that my father loved my mother enough to marry her, making it all nice and legal that I remained alive and well and climbed the ranks as the emperor’s nephew.”

A somber silence stretched between us. Then he added, “It’s also why I must prove my brutality as the Conqueror. If I show any signs of weakness, some upstart will claim it’s my mixed blood and try to challenge me.” He paused, then added, “I haven’t had as hard a road as yours, Malina, but lately… the path has become more difficult.”

I had never thought to feel sorry for Julian’s plight. But to be a man in his position with the legacy of his father behind him but also the expectations of his cruel uncle in front—an uncle he obviously hated—I couldn’t imagine that kind of pressure and strain.

No wonder he was so grave and stoic, wearing the mask of a statue for the world to see. So that they could never truly see him. But I was beginning to, and the sight of the man beneath the mask curled tenderly around my heart.

“I’ve heard you laugh many times,” he said softly, changing the subject. I didn’t mind at all.

“When have you?”

“In the yard with Stefanos.”

The reminder that Stefanos could be his child, his own family, cut into the sweet sensation I’d been feeling. I’d told myself to leave it alone, that it didn’t matter. But now, after tonight, after his confession and the undeniable truth that I couldn’t sever myself from him now if I tried, I had to know.

“Julian, may I ask you something personal?”

“Anything.”

Inhaling and exhaling a deep breath, I asked, “Is Stefanos your child?”

There was a brief pause where my heart nearly leaped out of my chest. Then, “No. He isn’t mine.”

It wouldn’t have made a difference, not really. I loved Stefanos. But I could finally admit to myself that I was jealous he might have had a child with another woman, a woman he loved.

“Kara was a midwife for a while. She delivered the child to a freed woman, the daughter of a shopkeeper. She’d been seduced by a Roman soldier. The girl died during the birth, and the father took Stefanos out back to do what he was ordered by law to do.”

“To kill him.” I shuddered. “That’s why he has that scar.”

“After Kara cleaned up the mother as best she could and left, she heard the baby squalling in the trash. When she found him, he was in dragon form. That’s what saved him. His scales kept the wound from gaping too wide, from losing too much blood. So she brought him home and when I looked at him, I saw myself.”

There was a thickening silence, and I thought he might not continue.

“How do you mean?” I asked, wanting to hear more of this compassionate side of him.

“Had I been born when he was, my father wouldn’t have been allowed to marry my mother. I’d have been a bastard child, likely forcefully taken from my parents and killed in a back alley as well. Saving Stefanos was like saving myself. I could do nothing else but keep him.” He huffed a sigh. “It was about that time my plan against my uncle first took root.”

Suddenly, I sat up. “Wait, how old is Stefanos? He looks to be about ten or eleven, but I didn’t think Kara had been in your household that long.”

“She hasn’t.” He laughed. “Stefanos is only six. Dragons grow and mature faster. That’s another reason he knows he’s to stay at home as much as possible. I don’t want the neighbors catching on.”

“There aren’t many neighbors close to your palace on the hill.”

He chuckled again, the sound warm and lovely, melting sweetly at my center. “Would you be willing to live in a real palace, Malina?”

“What do you mean?”

Then he went silent for a moment.

“Nothing. Let’s get some sleep.”

I heard him turn over, the bed creaking some more, his body rubbing against the coarse sheets. I rolled to my side as well, trying to make him out in the dark, but I didn’t have the heightened senses of a dragon.

His question kept me awake for some time, the one he didn’t want to clarify. Because I believe it meant he intended to be the new Caesar, and he wanted me there with him.

The loveliness of the night dampened under the thought of him ruling Rome. I believed him when he admitted that he intended to overthrow the current Caesar and all the corrupt men beneath him. But one thing history had taught us about the Roman throne: it corrupts absolutely. I wasn’t sure that would be a path I could take, to join him there. Not if I had the choice. The idea was hard to imagine in my current status.

There was no guarantee he would even survive the coup he was planning with his allies. That thought cut me the deepest.

He couldn’t die. I wouldn’t allow it. I’d do whatever I had to do to keep Julian on his path to overthrow Caesar. I simply wasn’t sure I would be able to walk with him the entire way.