Rise of the Wolf (Mark of the Thief 2)

I understood. But understanding the risk did not mean I could control it.

It was decided that Brutus and I would go into the catacombs alone while my mother was held near the temple doors. I glanced back at her and forced a smile to my face. It was the complete opposite to how I really felt.

"May the gods go with you," she said.

And I nodded, again without saying a word. I could fake a smile, but every phrase of comfort seemed hollow, and might've given us both false hope. I turned away, regretting that I hadn't at least tried to say something.

As I descended the ladder, I debated whether to tell Radulf that Livia had the Malice. He would take a greater risk to find her if he knew that, but at the same time, his refusal to help right now made me angry. He should take the risk because Livia was his granddaughter. That should be enough of a reason.

"Can you create a light down here?" Brutus asked me. He held a torch in one hand, but it was flickering from the breeze coming down the ladder hole and had become dim.

I shook my head, which probably was a sort of lie. Of course I could create a light, but I wouldn't. I needed time for Radulf to get to Livia. So that meant, if necessary, I'd wait in here until dark, because then he'd easily be able to get closer to her. But I doubted Brutus would let me stall for that long. I probably didn't even have three minutes before he'd lose patience with me.

"Where do you think the Malice is?" I whispered to Brutus.

Because I had no idea where I should look, or pretend to look in this case. This underground room was vast and very dark, and thanks to my refusal to use any light, it was mostly bathed in shadows. Like on the main floor, there was little of anything down here. This temple was nothing but an enormous tomb. A place for Atroxia to die. No wonder she cried in my head the way she did. Of all the punishments I'd faced as a slave and all the violence in the amphitheater or events of the circus, nothing in Rome seemed more cruel than to have locked her in this room, dead to the world long before her body knew it.

"The Malice is meant to be worn. I'd expect to see it on the statue of a warrior, perhaps one of the god Mars." Brutus motioned to his forearm. "It will be made of silver and for the person who wears it; it'll extend from the knuckles halfway to the elbow. The carvings on it will be very fine, but most prominent will be a carving of Mars's wolf."

What he described was very similar to the armband Radulf had wanted to use as a trick. Maybe that had been a good plan before. Of course, even if we had fooled them, it wouldn't have lasted long.

I started to walk away, to search in any other part of this temple for what I already knew was no longer here. But Brutus grabbed my tunic. "If you think you can steal the Malice for yourself, then know this. I do not fear awakening the Mistress. If you try to get away with the Malice, I will wake her."

I shook my head at him. "If I find the Malice in here, I will give it to you. I don't want it."

"Call me Dominus," he said. "I am about to hold a most powerful possession. I have earned the right to be called by a superior title."

"Tell that to your dogs outside," I muttered. "You haven't earned that title from me." Then before he could answer, I moved deeper into the shadows of the temple, alone.

It was cold down here, and damp, but I shivered for entirely different reasons. The cries in my head were growing louder, so much that I knew I was walking toward Atroxia, or the Mistress. I tried not to go forward, but it was as if my body had become chained to her will.

Somewhere in my thoughts, Radulf was trying to break through, with warnings or information or I didn't know what. But I couldn't hear him, not anymore, not while the cries for help were so much louder.

I needed to see the Mistress, to reassure myself that she was still asleep, or better yet, that I really was only hearing an echo from three centuries ago, from before she died in here. Because soon, Brutus would give up his search, and he and I would leave the temple. I couldn't leave without knowing what had become of the vestalis.

There she was, just ahead, her body laid out on a small bed that was really only cloth stretched across a wood frame. A thin blanket completely covered her, but it couldn't have kept out the cold. I was already chilled and had only been down here for a few minutes. She'd have likely frozen to death long before she felt the effects of hunger or lack of air.

Her cries were pounding inside my head, ripping at my heart for their sadness, their desperation. And yet in some ways I felt better. Because she lay there so perfectly still, not even breathing.

Valerius had been right. The cries were nothing but an echo in my head.

I wondered how in three hundred years, she had not yet decayed into dust. Perhaps that was the curse Diana had given her, to preserve her body, forbidding her spirit to ever rest in the afterlife. Looking her over, I realized one hand had fallen out from beneath the blanket. For as long as she had been gone, the skin should have long rotted away, but her hand looked perfectly whole. I leaned over to cover it with the blanket, simply out of respect.

Then I caught my breath in my throat. Her hand was warm.

Atroxia was as alive as everyone had warned me. Alive, but asleep. I started to pull my arm away, but in an instant, her hand turned and caught my left wrist in her grip.

My breath released in a sudden gasp of pain. This was no ordinary grip, far beyond the worst that had been done to me by Sal or his brute guards, or even by Radulf in the fiercest of our battles against each other. The pinch of her fingers around my wrist had instantly broken the bones like they were nothing but brittle twigs. A wave of nausea swept through me as I fell to my knees and tried to stay conscious, more locked to her than any chain had ever been to me.

There was no other movement from her, not even a flutter of her eyelashes, as far as I could tell in this dim light.

Only her voice in my head. No longer crying, but saying with the deepest feeling of sorrow, "Help me."

With the pain in my wrist, I couldn't hold my thoughts together enough to answer her cries for help, but then, I wouldn't answer either. Clearly, there was a connection between us, just as Radulf and I were connected, but I didn't want to hear her. I never had. And giving her any reply would only strengthen that bond.

I froze in place, hoping as her body relaxed back into a deeper sleep, her hand would also release my wrist. I needed her to release it because I wanted to cry out for my own help, and I knew I couldn't. Whatever else happened, I had to keep her asleep.

Finally, footsteps were behind me, and Brutus brought his torch. "It's not anywhere," he was saying. "What are you -- oh!"