Page 41 of Thawed Gladiator: Cassius (Awakened From the Ice #3)

Chapter Forty-One

C assius

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 a ludus to train as a gladiator.

“You’re nothing now, patrician ,” the ludus master sneered on my first day, making the title a curse. “Just another piece of meat for the games, for the entertainment of your betters .”

The other gladiators were cruel, eager to torment the aristocrat’s son. They tried to break me in training, but even as a newly enslaved patrician, my natural warrior spirit emerged. Each beating only made me stronger, more determined. I learned to fight through pain, to turn their taunts into fuel for my rage.

But it was the ludus master who knew how to truly break a man. He starved me, forced me to crawl in the dirt, made me fight for scraps like a dog.

I learned to survive. To kill. To become the weapon they wanted.

But it wasn’t enough. After three years in the ludus , they sold me again—this time to a merchant bound for Britannia. The docks at Ostia… Gods, now I understand. The story the others told of my defiance on the docks never made sense. Why would a slave beg punishment or even death for his rebellious actions? The memory crashes over me like a wave, leaving me gasping with the force of the revelation.

That day at the docks, when I spat in Sulla’s face, when I hurled insults at everyone around me—it wasn’t just about being sold or sent away. It was about being stripped of the last thing I had left—Rome herself. The city my father had served, had died for. They were sending me to the edge of the empire, to die in some foreign mud for the entertainment of barbarians.

In that moment at the docks, I became my father. Standing proud, hurling defiance in the face of power, choosing pain over submission. My arrogance wasn’t just pride—it was survival. It was the only piece of my father I had left.

Gods, what a fool I’ve been. That same pride, that desperate clinging to who I once was—it’s followed me here, into this new world. I’ve been trying so hard to be the patrician’s son that I forgot how to be simply human.

Rising from my knees, my legs trembling from the impact of the brutal memories, I lean against the fence and look around me. I’m alone. The weight of understanding settles on my shoulders—not as a burden, but as clarity.

For the first time since waking in this century, I see my behavior through unclouded eyes. Every harsh word, every condescending glance, every moment I treated others as beneath me—they weren’t the actions of a noble Roman, but of a wounded man desperately clinging to the tatters of his former status. Regaining my strength and my determination, I set out for the barn. It’s time to break this cycle, time to honor my father’s memory, not through pride, but through courage.

I look at Jason again, seeing him with new clarity. His rage, his pride, his desperate need to prove himself—I know these demons intimately. We’re not so different, he and I. Both of us fighting against a world that tried to break us, both clinging to whatever scraps of dignity we can salvage.

“Brother,” I say softly when I reach his side, the word carrying new weight. “Let me tell you about pride, and how it can both save you and destroy you.”

As I begin to share my story, I feel something shift inside me. Perhaps in finally facing these memories, in understanding why I’ve held so desperately to my patrician pride, I can begin to let it go. Not forget—never forget—but maybe, finally, heal.