I stumbled out of Titus’s tent. My sword needed cleaning too; it was covered in gore from all the chopping, and my centurion would roast me for putting it back in the scabbard so filthy. But my hands were shaking too much, and I swore and kept moving. Hardly anyone in the camp tonight—as Titus said, the rest of the legion was up getting drunk in Old Sarm except for a few unlucky ones posted as guards here below.

“Vix?”

Sabina stood before my contubernium tent with a water pail in one hand. She had a bundle of my tunics in the other—laundry. Of course. Laundry didn’t stop just because wars had been won, or kings had died. “You know you’re doing a hero’s laundry?” I said.

She lifted her brows, putting down the pail. “Am I?”

I spread my arms, grinning. “I’m a hero.” Why was the grin so hard to force? I’d killed the king of Dacia—I’d ended the war—I’d have a laurel crown for it, once the Emperor heard, and a string of medals for my belt, and why couldn’t I smile?

Sabina was regarding me with the same grave caution that I’d seen on Titus’s face.

“The Dacians have something called a solar disc,” I informed her, slinging my helmet aside. The helmet crashed into the water pail and upended it, but I paid no attention. “A solar disc—did you know that?”

“No, I didn’t know that.” She took a step closer.

“It’s something to do with measuring the sun, maybe the moon too. It’s round, and it’s all put together out of white stones fitted like tiles, and why are you looking at me like that?”

She opened her arms. I dropped into them, crashing to my knees. “Kings are crowned on solar discs,” I said into her waist.

“Ssshh,” she said, her fingers running through my hair.

My eyes were dry, but I was shaking. Head to toe I was shaking, and I didn’t know why. I didn’t know why. “Kings die on them too.”

“Hush, my love. Hush.”

I gripped her, drowning, and I loved her more than anything on this wide green earth.

CHAPTER 15

VIX

“—selfless devotion to duty, risking his life not for gold but for the legion’s honor—”

Who was my centurion droning on about? Surely it couldn’t be me. I didn’t get compliments from centurions. I got nasty looks and the occasional caning.

“—attentive even off-duty to the treachery he saw before him, he reflected great credit upon himself in keeping with the highest traditions of—”