YOU’RE softening,” Gallus said with disapproval. “Yes, yes, I know you’re still packing them in, but I know you, boy. You’ve gotten cautious, that’s what. And caution doesn’t win points in the Colosseum.” Sighing. “It’s the Pollio slave, isn’t it? Don’t look so surprised, dear boy. I know she’s giving you something else besides letters these days. Well, better Lepida Pollia’s slave than Lepida Pollia, but still . . . if she’s the one who’s making you lose your form, I’ve half a mind to send her packing—”

Arius had both hands around his lanista’s throat before Gallus could blink. “Don’t,” he said. “Or I’ll squeeze.”

“That’s the spirit!” A rapidly purpling Gallus patted Arius’s shoulder. “A little more of that in the arena, please. You can, ah, let go of me now, dear boy.”

He hated to admit Gallus was right, but Thea wasn’t good for him. Not that he’d told her so, but he’d lost his edge. Still, his luck had held so far. Every time the games attendants dragged a fallen enemy off through the Gate of Death, he’d been able to think, a few more weeks with Thea.

“I’ll bet you say that to all the ladies,” she teased him one night when he said as much. “ ‘A few more weeks with Sulpicia, with Cassandra, with Lepida—’ ” She shrieked as he tipped her over onto her back, trapping her between his arms like a mouse under a cat.

“None before you,” he whispered into her ear, “and none after.”

“None before me?” She cocked her head in genuine interest.

He shrugged. No need to tell Thea about the demon, and what the demon whispered that a man should do to his women. Thea and the demon didn’t belong in the same room. He smoothed a hand over her face, and wasn’t afraid of hurting her anymore.

Some evenings she sang for him, drawing his head into her lap and stroking his hair as she crooned the melodies of Greece and Judaea and Brigantia. Her rich alto resounded in the pit of his stomach, washing up through his spine and sinking into every muscle until he fell asleep wrapped in the music of her hands and her voice. “Witch,” he told her. “That voice of yours is a wand.”

Sometimes they lay with their hands entwined on the pillow between them, silent as the circles of standing stones that marked the holy places in Brigantia, and her eyes swallowed him up whole. “What are you thinking?” he asked, as his hand memorized her cheek, her throat, the fall of her hair. She always shook her head, pressing her body hard against his so there was no space left between them, and they fell asleep intertwined like the roots of a tree. When he woke, her eyes would be open already, and her mouth curved in a smile that made him shiver with pleasure.

Sometimes she traced the map of scars on his body: the ragged lattice of whip marks over his back, the puckered marks of stones and lacerations on his feet, the sharp lines of blades and tridents marking his shoulders. “And this one?” she would ask.