Page 115 of Of Love and Treason
But he didn’t.
No one said anything, but dread curdled in Iris’s stomach. Had Titus really left when he stormed out? Had he circled back around and arrested Valentine? She didn’t voice her fears; they were already written on everyone else’s faces. Phoebe and Delphine served calda, then left with Martha to put the children to bed. Quintus dozed. Beatrix sat on a stool near Iris’s perch on a stack of barley sacks, sipping from her cup in silence.
When Cato began to pray aloud for Valentine’s speedy and safe return, she clenched the cup, fear swirling. Surely if Cato did not feel the same dread, he would not be praying like this. Her shoulders ached, but as Cato prayed, the tension lessened. The hour and the prayer stretched. She let her head rest against the wall.
The latch on the outside door jiggled. Iris jerked awake at the sound, startled and confused to find herself in the culina. It came back to her in an instant as Cato lurched to his feet.Valentine.Relief melted the uncertainty tightening her shoulders as the jiggling latch turned into a pounding fist.
Cato unlatched the door and swung it open. “It’s about time, Val. You had us all—” He took a step back. Titus stepped inside and shut the door behind him, but not before Iris noted the pale light of dawn behind him.
She stood, her legs shaking. “What have you done?” she choked. “Where’s Valentine?”
LII
WHENVALENS LEFT THECALOGARUS HOME,he could not help but wonder if Titus had truly left or if he lingered in the shadows outside, waiting for his chance to arrest him. He’d almost given in to Iris’s pleading to stay. They had everything they needed to escape the city. It would have been so easy to take her hand and remain, to marry her then and there in the presence of her father and their friends. He wanted to change his mind and stay, but as the words were on his tongue, a niggling sense of unease filled his gut. How could he marry the woman he loved and be satisfied, knowing he’d broken his word and left another couple waiting in the dark? Did his word mean nothing? So he’d kissed her again and told her he’d return soon.
With a quick prayer, Valens left the safety of the culina and turned down the alley, heading for the public gardens on Esquiline Hill. They were his least favorite of the garden meeting places, located near the city dumping grounds and over what used to be mass burial pits for the poor. Always the gardens carried a stench no amount of flowering shrubbery could hide—even if they were in bloom. Early in the month of Februarius, everything was still stark and bare.
No sign of Titus. Valens pulled his hood up and gripped the edges of his cloak against the wind and set off at a brisk clip. Hector had not sent men to escort him tonight. It rarely happened that he forgot, but there had been a few times he and the ex-legionnaires had been onlyminutes behind each other. They’d meet eventually. He forged ahead. The Gardens of Maecenas were on the opposite edge of the city from the villa. It’d take him forever to get there and back.
Valens tried to keep alert for movement in the shadows. The hilly streets cast in the silvery-blue moonlight were bright and not wholly abandoned. The people taking advantage of the illumination and milling about the streets gave him a sense of security that allowed his mind to wander back to Iris, the kisses, the promise in her wide brown eyes. He’d marry her tonight if Quintus agreed.
The sound of his footsteps changed from sandals scuffing against cobbles to the crunch of gravel paths. Had he arrived so soon? Valens took a moment to catch his breath and then scanned the gardens. Stone terraces held up copses of trees and bunches of shrubbery that in summer would bloom in brilliant patterns but now seemed haphazard and overgrown. He walked the paths, scanning the stands of trees for figures. They would see him first, standing on the moonlit path, silhouetted by the white gravel. Usually the man emerged first, made certain of Valens’s identity before waving his beloved from hiding.
No figure emerged. Had he read the missive correctly? Ithadsaid the Gardens of Maecenas, had it not? A stick snapped in the clump of cedars ahead. Valens moved toward the sound, feelings of relief and anxiety swirling in his stomach. A shape shifted in the shadows—was that an arm? Waving? A cloud obscured the moonlight for a moment. He tilted his head, squinting. Yes, definitely waving. This couple must be especially cautious. Sandals whispering over dried grass, he left the path, moving toward the figure, which grew in height and girth the closer he came.
His whispered greeting was met with a hissed word that might have been“Hush!”or“Run!”
The world brightened as the cloud unveiled the moon and the man’s face came into view. Valens stopped short.
Titus.
Titus was the groom?
No. No, of course not.
Titus opened his mouth as if to speak, then clamped it shut as guards broke through the thicket behind him and surged toward Valens, spreading and circling. Titus’s eyes slammed shut with a look of... remorse? Valens’s limbs laced with quivering energy, but he didn’t move. Even if he could have, there was no way he’d outrun Praetorians. Titus hesitated, the torn look in his face hardening as he shouldered through the saplings separating them. He reached Valens before the others did and gripped his arm as the troop surrounded them.
“You’re under arrest,” Titus grunted as he twisted Valens’s arms behind his back and tied the wrists.
Iris.
Oh, Lord,Lord, my friends!Were there guards at the Calogarus house too? Would Marius and Martha be arrested for hiding him? Abachum and Audifax? Cato? Would Titus put Quintus and Iris at risk? He didn’t think so, not after what Titus had done to rescue Quintus, but he’d left in a rage.Lord, protect my friends.
Valens could think of nothing else as Titus grabbed the back of his neck and one arm and shoved him ahead of the guards, who were whooping and pounding each other’s shoulders as if they’d won some hard-fought victory instead of hidden in a few bushes to waylay a single man armed with a pen.
One of the guards stripped him of his satchel and riffled through the contents. He lifted a scroll and unrolled it, tilting it into the moonlight.
“Urian! I’ve found your marriage contract!”
Urian ripped the scroll out of his hands with a sharp laugh. “What say we let him go and I marry Saphira instead?”
The first guard snatched the scroll back. “She’d never agree to you; she likes me better.”
“I tried to warn you,” Titus growled in his ear and glanced from side to side at the men surrounding them. He straightened. “I always said I’d get him eventually.” His voice was too loud. Confident. Triumphant.
Valens shouldn’t have been surprised. He shouldn’t have felt thestrange sense of betrayal swirling in his gut. Titus owed him nothing. Titus had given him one chance to leave and Valens had not taken it. If Valens was a man true to his word, so was Titus.
With the tip of his gladius, Titus kept Valens at a quick march. The impenetrable walls of the Castra Praetoria loomed ahead in the darkness. Once he entered, there would be no hope for escape. His thoughts centered on Iris and his friends. He prayed constantly, silently, the only thing that kept his feet moving forward as Titus pushed him through the Porta Principalis Sinistra and toward the prison built into the northeastern wall.
