Eternal Promise

Prologue

 78 AD - Verona, Provincia Roma

The scrape of keys against Boden's cage door made him sit up with heart-pounding anticipation.

Instinctively, he knew who had come. He had spent all week waiting for her, the Roman woman with fiery red hair and sparkling blue eyes.

She was no Celt like him nor was she like any of the women from his tribe - the Iceni - for she spoke the local language fluently. It had taken a few years, but Boden now understood most of the two languages his captors spoke. He still struggled to speak them as well as they did but he knew the meaning behind most words.

Most of the time, he hated listening to the foreign words around him. His lanista shouted the words at him during training every day while the other slaves whispered them through the hallways and on staircases. Some of the other slaves spoke their home tongues as well, but all day long he heard the words of the people who had captured him, enslaved him, and now kept him here in this prison.

But the patrician woman who came to see him was different. The sound of the words coming out of her mouth did not irritate him. Instead, they lulled him. Her voice was like honeyed wine, sweet but smooth. She did not use it to shout at him or make demands. She merely spoke to him.

When he saw her in the light, he realized why.

This was no ordinary Roman woman, no mere patrician wife who had come for one particular reason. Boden had seen and heard the men and women who periodically came to the ludus, the training compound where gladiators lived. Anyone with coin could pay for an hour or two with some of the strongest and most popular fighters in the Empire. The most famous ones often had multiple strangers vying for their affections, and he had seen the reactions of women in public at the games. Even wealthy, powerful women would spend their husband's fortunes to bed a gladiator.

During the long 18 years that he had been in captivity, he had received more than a few visitors. His skills in the arena had garnered him a reputation worthy of wealthy female fans, and his lanista had made it clear that he could sell Boden's body however he pleased, whether it was for fighting or fucking. At first glance, Claudia had seemed just like another Roman woman looking for a night with a famous gladiator. Yet when she arrived, she had merely sat across from him the entire hour talking until she finally left with a blush.

Initially, it seemed like the nervous yammering of a woman who was too scared to admit why she had come to a ludus in the middle of the night. But once she sat at his spartan table with the single chair and started to relax, she had begun to talk to him as she would with a friend or neighbor: gently and with kindness.

Granted, he had also been speechless. After almost twenty years, he was face-to-face with the reincarnation of his beloved.

He had thought he was dreaming. Then he had doubted his own sanity. Perhaps the gods were playing a cruel joke. Yet he could remember what his teachers and priests had said - the soul did not die. Often, it came back to earth in another form.

No, he could not doubt that he was looking into the eyes of the woman he had loved and lost, the woman who had been murdered in front of him. The same bright blue eyes. The same tall, regal build. The same milky skin and long, red hair. Even the way she held her hands in her lap was the same.

Yet now she was clearly Roman. A very wealthy Roman. She spoke to the guard easily and her stola was made of very expensive linen, unlike his own worn and woolen tunic. Gold jewelry adorned her wrists and ankles and her sandals looked almost brand new. Half of her hair was braided but still modestly wrapped on the nape of her neck while red ochre covered her lips.