Page 39 of Firebird (The Fire That Binds #1)

EPILOGUE

Four months later …

MALINA

Stefanos and his dog, Amica, chased the sheep back into the pen. We’d told him a thousand times that Amica could do it by herself, but he refused to let her do it alone. So here I was at the top of the hill above our new home, sitting on the green grass, watching a gangly boy and his dog herd sheep.

“What’s that smile for?” Julian lowered himself behind me, straddling his legs on either side .

I placed my hands on his woolen pants as he wrapped his arms around my waist and bent forward to kiss the side of my neck. There was an unsealed scroll in his left hand.

“Word from Trajan?”

“Yes. What’s that smile for?”

“Stefanos.”

“Not for me?” He curled his fingers into my ribs and tickled.

I laughed and squirmed until he stopped and buried his face in my hair as he always did. He practically commanded that I leave it down all the time, which was ridiculous because it was a hassle and in the way. Nevertheless, I left it down more often than not.

“I love how happy and carefree he is here,” I finally told him.

Julian watched with me, seeming to see what I did. When I turned my head to look at him, he wasn’t smiling. He was frowning.

“What is it?”

“It’s a shame is all.” His timbre dipped, his expression thoughtful. “He should be able to be this way anywhere. Not just in Britannia, a foreign land so far from his home.”

This weighed hard on Julian. He accepted full responsibility for the failure of their plot to overthrow the emperor and his followers. Even though he said none of the allies directly blamed him—or that’s what Trajan told us—the fact was that it would be more difficult to get to the emperor now. We both knew that. Ciprian had given us little choice, but it didn’t make the current state of affairs any better.

“What of Rome?” I asked soberly.

He heaved a sigh. “The consul Valerius just pushed a new law through the senate.”

“And?”

“No Roman may leave the city without direct permission from the emperor.”

I scoffed and half turned in his arms. “How could he enforce such a law? ”

“He’s enlarged his praetorian guard. Special recruits from Legatus Drussus’s legions.”

“What does that mean?”

He swiveled his amber-gold gaze from down the hill to me. “Drussus is as cruel as they come. He’s given orders to kill any Roman trying to fly out of the city at night. He’s also assigned deathriders to guard the skies.”

“But they never discovered any of your allies, have they?”

“No more than Marcus and Phillius.” Those were the two senators who had been seen by Ciprian’s slave and named in the report to the emperor. They’d been killed when they refused to give any other conspirators’ names before the praetorian guards had then gone to Julian’s home the night we fled.

“Thank the gods Trajan’s quick thinking saved himself that night.”

“Indeed.”

After Trajan had killed the final praetorian guard, he’d watched us fly away, then rushed to the emperor’s palace. But he waited in the shadows until we’d had enough time to flee beyond anyone following us and until the shouts of alarm could be heard at the top of the hill. That was when Trajan rushed into the palace, covered in blood, still in half-skin—knowing it was against the law.

When the praetorian guard shifted into half-skin and captured him, the clamor of noise bringing the emperor to the entrance, he told the emperor that Julian was a traitor. That he knew he was going to Ciprian’s to take back his slave girl, and when Trajan went after Julian to stop him, he’d attacked Trajan.

That explained why he was in half-skin and bruised and battered. Trajan had declared angrily that Julian was a traitor. Somehow, being the first one to bring the emperor the news made him more believable. Igniculus didn’t suspect Trajan as part of Julian’s alliance, as far as we knew. If he did, Trajan wouldn’t be sending us messages through our connection in Londinium .

He’d taken up speaking out against Julianus Dakkia in the forum, that it was a heinous betrayal that a general killed another general for a mere slave girl. Interestingly enough, Trajan said he could see who agreed with him and who did not by the looks in their eyes when he spoke out against us. He’d already rallied more allies to their cause that way.

Julian lifted the scroll. “Do you know they actually elected him tribune of the senate?”

“Really?”

“All his talk against me”—he gestured to himself—“the traitor Julianus, bought him sympathy with the Romans following Igniculus.” He smiled. “And of course, his own grandfather and our allies fell right in line, cheering him on as he blackened my name on the forum pulpit.”

I laughed, imagining Trajan putting on quite a show in the forum. “He must be a superb actor.”

“Apparently so.”

“We should’ve brought him on tour with our troupe.” A maudlin memory of me and my sisters dancing whispered across my mind.

“No,” said Julian gravely, “then he’d be flirting with you and your pretty sisters incessantly and I’d have to beat him for it.”

I leaned back against him and let him take my weight—physically and emotionally—for a moment. That was what was most fascinating about the tether I’d created between us. There were times when the memories were too much, and he was able to lift that burden from me, to comfort me with his love. And the promise that we would right the wrongs. That we would create a new Rome.

“Look at that,” he said, holding me close, pointing toward the garden behind the farmhouse we all shared.

Ruskus followed Agatha along a line of squash in the garden, holding her basket while she pulled the ripe vegetables from the vines. Agatha was the older, widowed daughter of a local blacksmith who was one of Trajan’s contacts here in Britannia. We’d hired Agatha to aid us in getting settled here in our new home, and she’d been paramount in helping us.

“I know,” I sighed. “Who would’ve thought? A Thracian and a Saxon.”

He nuzzled my cheek and kissed my jaw. “A Roman dragon and a dancing Dacian.”

Laughing, I turned my head for a kiss. He obliged as always.

“And did Trajan deliver our wedding gift to the emperor?”

Julian smiled against my mouth. “He said he’d deliver it whenever he had a way of not getting caught.”

“Of course. We don’t want Trajan’s head on the Wall of Traitors.”

“I wish I could be there to see the bastard’s face when he opens it.”

“No more talk of Rome,” I said, turning and pushing him to his back. I sprawled across his chest, admiring him in his non-Roman clothes. He wore the same shirts and pants as local Saxons. I liked seeing him out of a toga. “Right now, your new bride wants your undivided attention.”

“Whatever my wife wants, she gets.”

Then he pulled me down for a deep kiss. We stayed there until the sun began to set. And until Stefanos called up the hill that it was time for dinner.

Back in Rome …

“Sir, we found this box on the palace doorstep.”

Igniculus looked up from the dinner he was having alone. “Who delivered it?”

“We don’t know. No one knows. It is addressed to you.”

The emperor waved for the praetorian to bring the box to him. It was an ornate wooden box carved with Roman gilding and the goddess Minerva on the top. He unlatched and opened the box to find a single gold coin in the bottom. An aureus .

Igniculus frowned. It wasn’t minted with his likeness, but it appeared shiny and new.

He lifted and flipped it over, recognizing his family symbol of the Dakkian dragon flying upward and blowing flame. On the other side was the profile of a woman. He didn’t understand. Who had minted gold with his own seal and a strange woman’s face?

Some of the older generation had the custom of doing this for weddings. But he hadn’t authorized any weddings of the aristocracy, and certainly not of his—

He made a sound of distress.

“Emperor?” His praetorian stepped forward, then saw the emperor’s face and stepped back as Igniculus seemed to understand who had sent him the gift in Minerva’s box.

The emperor’s furious roar could be heard all the way down Palatine Hill to the forum, where Trajan was meeting with a group of senators. He looked up at the sound and smiled.

But in one home farther up Palatine Hill, where Consul Valerius lived, a slave woman who’d been in the herb garden startled at the deafening sound. She froze and stared up, waiting to see if the beast who’d made that cry would soar overhead.

“What was that?” called the new young girl, coming up beside her.

“I don’t know.”

“Perhaps the dragons will all kill each other soon,” whispered the new girl.

“We can only hope so,” said Lela, staring up at the noonday sky, wishing it were so.