A red-hot rock fell into the courtyard, making the ground around it steam and sink. Attia was knocked down onto her hands and knees by a woman running past her. Less than a second later, another rock fell right on top of the woman with a terrible thud, breaking her back and melting her skin like wax. The sight jarred Attia out of her paralysis, and suddenly the sounds were magnified. The woman screamed. Gods, how she screamed.
Attia tore her eyes away from the woman’s burning body to focus on the main gate, where dozens of people were fighting to get out. Then she saw that a handful of men were trying to get in.
And Xanthus was leading them. He and a group of men dressed in black pushed through the gate, every one of them armed. She kept her eyes on Xanthus as they ran to each other. She didn’t stop until she could wrap her arms around him, holding tightly so she knew he was real.
“You’re alive,” he whispered into her hair. “Thank the goddess, you’re alive.”
“I told you I’d wait,” Attia said, but her voice was cracked and dry from the smoke.
“My brothers!” Xanthus shouted, pointing toward the training courtyard. One of the men in black ran to free the gladiators from their quarters while the others focused on ushering slaves and servants to the gates. None of them paid any mind to the patricians screaming for help.
The gladiators appeared and headed straight for the outer storeroom, filling their arms with skins of water and sacks of grain. Sabina was helping corral the kitchen slaves out of the villa, and Lucretia tugged a long tunic over her sheer dress as she led the house slaves into the courtyard. Albinus and Ennius accepted swords from the men in black.
Attia knew she should be doing more than simply standing there. But there was someone else who’d appeared with the group—someone she’d thought she would never see again. Someone she’d thought had died in the hills along the Aegean.
“Crius?” she gasped.
Her father’s captain kissed her hand before pulling her roughly into his arms.
“How are you alive? How—?”
“Later, Attia. We need to get out of here.”
“But…” She turned to stare at the other men, the strangers in black with the bloodred strips of cloth banded around their necks. And she realized they weren’t strangers at all. They were Maedi.
How? How were they alive? How had they survived the war and avoided capture? And where? Where had they been while she’d lived as a slave in Timeus’s house? And why? Why hadn’t they come for her? Why had they abandoned her to the Romans?
The questions practically choked her as they fought each other to her lips. But in the next second, all coherent thought flew out of her head anyway.
A new sound cut through the night, shattering the unnatural silence of her shock. A sound clearer than anything else—a child’s scream coming from inside the villa. “Attia!”
Rory was still inside, alone and terrified because Attia had left her behind when she’d been pushed out to the courtyard. She’d promised to keep her safe, and now the child called for her. That was all Attia needed to know.
She ignored the protests of Crius and Sabina and Xanthus, sprinting straight back into the collapsing villa just as another volley of burning rock landed in the courtyard and blocked the doorway behind her.
Inside, the opulence of Timeus’s house had been reduced to ruins—a grotesque husk of marble and stone. Huge chunks of the walls and pillars had crashed to the floor. Food, linens, and dead bodies were strewn everywhere. Dust and ash hung heavy in the great welcoming room, already coating the floor.
Attia ran past all of it, calling for Rory. She finally found her near the back of the room where Tycho’s dais had stood. The child was curled into a tight ball and weeping, but otherwise unharmed. Attia pulled her into her arms.
“It’s okay. You’re okay. I’m going to get you out of here.”
The northern entrance was blocked. The eastern door—a massive bronze thing that Timeus had imported from Greece—was so hot that Attia couldn’t even stand near it. There seemed to be only one way out, and that was up.
Attia pulled Rory up the stairs to the second floor, searching for a room with a window that looked out over the courtyard. Just as her feet hit the top step, the whole house shook, causing a wall to collapse behind her. She pushed Rory out of the way just before a piece of marble the size of her head slammed right against her left arm. She fell to the side with a pained cry.
When the house was still again, she swatted at the dust that coated her face and tried to inspect her arm. A long, jagged gash stretched from her wrist to her elbow, dripping blood onto her lap. At least it didn’t look like the bone had been broken. The falling columns had completely sealed off the staircase now.
Rory was still sobbing quietly, and she wrapped her arms around Attia’s neck.
“It’s all right,” Attia said. Her voice was steady despite the pain. “I’m fine.” And she had to be. She couldn’t die yet. Rory needed her too much.
With a determined grunt, Attia ripped the hem of her tunic and wrapped the fabric around her arm, pulling it tight to stem the slow, deep flow of blood. When she was done, she took Rory’s hand. “Hurry now! Run!”
The wall along the top floor had buckled, exposing wide gaps between it and the ceiling and weighing down the doors. Attia tried to push into one of the rooms, but it was like shoving her shoulder into a mountain. The doors wouldn’t budge. She repositioned herself, focusing instead on the cracks in the wall. If she could find a weak spot, she thought she could make a portion of the wall break completely.
A few feet down, the wall had splintered with a long, deep crack. Attia took a running start from the other side of the hallway and threw all her weight against the wall. It caved, and she tumbled into the room with a spray of stone.
But the impact had dislocated her shoulder with a loud pop. Attia rested her forehead against the floor and tried to hold back a scream. When she could see straight again, she got to her feet and staggered to the door. She took a deep breath, clenched her jaw, and jammed her shoulder into the door, forcing her arm back into its socket. Her vision nearly went black from the pain, but she fought off the darkness. She reached blindly for Rory and took several more deep breaths. The child’s pale face was wet with tears.
Attia staggered to the window and saw Xanthus in the courtyard below, his eyes desperately scanning the upper floor.
He shouted an expletive as soon as he saw her. “It’s blocked off—we can’t get in! You’ll have to jump!”
Bodies littered the courtyard. Attia knew that some people had already been killed by the rocks and the stampede. But she also saw dead soldiers and guards with gaping sword wounds. The gladiators and Maedi must have struck them down.
Attia snatched the linen from the bed and threw one end around Rory’s waist, looping it several times before pulling the knot as tight as she could. She tied the other end around the post of the bed. Her wounded arm throbbed and bled onto the floor. “Rory, look at me,” she said softly, kneeling in front of the child, who had her hands over her eyes.
Attia knew that in another few minutes, the fires would reach the villa. If they didn’t escape soon, they’d be left to burn.
Attia hardened her voice. “Rory! Look at me!”