Champion in Love (bxb)

CHAPTER 26. The Dead Man Walking

Victor's confession sounded like a cruel joke to me.

"You can't be Inimicus," I argued with the Fates who made me fall in love with the Fidus Empire's public enemy number one. Who, by the way, hadn't even told me he loved me back.

"Inimicus is dead. In the battle of..." I looked at Victor helplessly. "I can't remember the name of the cursed place, but Claudius feasted the city for months after his Triumph. There were Games."

He scoffed. "Naturally, you hadn't forgotten that."

I rubbed my forehead. It was a big event, that Battle of... the barbarian name was on the tip of everyone's tongue, except for mine, apparently. "It will come to me."

"Oh, give it up. I didn't die at Waasiqutali."

"You're repeating things."

"Because it's true. I didn't die."

I might have screamed, bringing a bitter smile to his lips. "It started well enough, and we fought bravely, but Fidelis didn't fall into my trap. I knew we lost the battle when my horse fell under me. Caught in the press, I blacked out. Someone must have decided my life was worth saving and removed my armband. Without it, one barbarian does not differ from another for Fidelis slavers. I lost my army, my family and the support of my people, but I didn't die."

His arrogance, his knowledge, his bitterness, his training... everything had a simple explanation. Inimicus was a Prince, that's why. But he also... "Inimicus was a strategist, a schemer! He... he...!" He couldn't be my Victor. I was going to prove it somehow.

"I wish I was as good a strategist as Claudius painted me to glorify his victory." He sighed wistfully. "I grew up on the stories of Arminius. My father was an Imperial ally, so I had a Fidelis tutor, which is a far cry from Arminius' upbringing, but as close as the Fidelis come to trust us. I fantasized it was my destiny to be my people's Arminius."

This name was even more cursed to me than Inimicus. He was the barbarian who lured the three Roman legions into a trap in Germania by betraying his commanders. If the portal to Nanciscor didn't open, everyone would have been slaughtered. To me, Arminius was a lying demon. Yet Victor revered him. Again, I rebelled against the obvious. "Inimicus was a thorn in the Empire's backside for six years. You're twenty if that—"

He shook his head.

"Twenty-one?"

"I'm twenty-three."

"I don't believe it! I just can't believe any of it!"

"Maximus! Do you realize the futility of arguing with me about who I am?"

"No." I swallowed hard. "Yes. I don't know!"

It was almost dark. His voice descended to me with the night.

"Fidelis forced me to find my wisdom fast when my father had traveled to Fidelium with our grievances. They paid him so well for his services that he came back short of his head. Some senators must have thought that a young son would be more malleable. Alas, I hadn't grown in wisdom as much as I'd imagined.

"For years, I watched Fidelis to 'divide and conquer'. Where steel doesn't work, you use silver. So, I told everyone as much. Told them if we stand together, but pretend not to, we'd outwit the Fidelis. Alas, the wound Arminius left on your collective psyche runs deep. It beat our cunning for now."

The sucking void grew in my chest as the very flatness of his tone dismantled my denial. He didn't waver an inch in his conviction that we were enemies because he trained with me, or saved Quintus, or because I kissed him.