He was truly his father’s son. The knowledge sickened him, but still he would keep her. He would keep her until she forgot about her need to escape, her desire for revenge. He would keep her until Olympus itself crumbled to dust.
“Tacitus—”
“I have no intention of releasing you. You can’t be trusted outside my quarters and therefore you will not venture outside my quarters.” He glared at her, daring her to disagree, willing her to say I’m sorry.
Silence crackled between them, their gazes locked in a mute battle of wills. Finally she tilted her jaw at him, a proud gesture that he recognized, and pain stabbed through his heart.
“Perhaps you’ll allow me to venture outside your quarters if you accompany me.”
He had the sudden vision of them riding across the Cambrian countryside, unencumbered by the chains of their pasts or the dark clouds of their present. It was dangerously seductive.
“I doubt it.”
He watched blood heat her cheeks but she didn’t look angry at his refusal to succumb to her Druid-inspired charms. She looked hurt.
“Perhaps in time you’ll change your mind.” She sounded as though she struggled to keep her voice calm, and he clenched his fists in an effort to prevent himself from reaching for her and dragging her into his arms. Did he have no self-control when it came to Nimue? “I give you my word, on the names of my beloved foremothers, that I wouldn’t attempt to escape from you.”
“Why should your word mean anything to me?” She had once before given him her word. And she had broken it.
But she hadn’t pledged her honor on the names of her beloved foremothers. Did he really believe that made so much difference?
Again, silence stretched between them, and an unaccountable trickle of unease stirred deep in his gut. Why did she look at him as though there was something she wanted to tell him? Why didn’t she simply say what was on her mind? She had never thought twice of doing so…before.
The tip of her tongue peeked between her lips but with that same sense of unease he was certain she didn’t do it to be provocative. There was a strangely haunted air about her that hadn’t been present just moments ago, and he recalled what she’d said to him when they had first arrived back at the garrison.
She wasn’t used to being confined inside for extended lengths of time. Was it possible she might truly lose her mind if he denied her freedom?
“I pledged my word to the Briton king, Caratacus, to protect his queen and daughter before I ever met you.” She continued to gaze at him and he knew what she was saying. But he didn’t want to hear it. “As a warrior, my oath is my bond, Tacitus. I had to release my people and, although I failed to save the queen, I didn’t do any of it with the intention of abusing your trust in me.”
“And yet you did abuse my trust.”
“You would have done the same in my place.”
He stared at her, momentarily speechless. Did she really think their positions could ever be comparable?
She called herself a warrior, but simply because she knew how to wield a dagger and possessed bravery to the point of self-sacrifice didn’t qualify her as such in his mind. Gods, next she would tell him that she’d been part of the battle itself.
He knew it had been the Druids who’d led the uprisings against the Legions when they’d first marched into Cambria. But they were male Druids. And any woman who followed her man into battle had to be built like a man herself. How else could she survive?
“What I would have done is irrelevant.” He swung off his cloak so he had an excuse to break eye contact. They might no longer share the level of intimacy he craved, but it appeared Nimue was still capable of challenging his long-held beliefs with her conversation. “I’m a Roman Tribune. My loyalty lies with my Emperor, with Rome and with my family honor.”
The words sounded hollow to his ears. Because by keeping Nimue from harm he had irrevocably betrayed all such loyalties.
“We’re not so different, you and I.” Her softly spoken words hammered through his mind but he refused to acknowledge them. She was a woman, not a warrior. Her loyalties were, by virtue of her sex, different from a man’s.
Black guilt gnawed through his heart. For his actions in protecting Nimue from his Emperor’s decree, did he still possess the right to call himself a warrior?
“Tacitus.” She curled her fingers around his wrist, and her touch sent desperate need splintering through his blood. He turned to her and once again became lost in her beautiful eyes. “Can you put this behind us? Could you not learn to trust me again, in time?”
If she continued to look at him with her deceptively innocent eyes then gods help him. He’d agree to anything that poured from her lying mouth. He pulled free from her grasp before he was tempted to lose himself in the scented sanctuary of her arms.
Except he was lost already.
He turned his back. In time, he feared he would forgive her for anything and everything. But now was not the moment to let her know just how far he had fallen under her Druid spell.
“If not for me,” her quiet voice, filled with such sadness it made his chest ache, halted his planned exit, “then for the sake of our unborn child.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Nimue saw Tacitus stiffen at her words, and nerves tangled low in her stomach. She gripped her fingers together and waited for him to say something. Anything. But he remained utterly still, as if he had turned to stone, and the nerves multiplied, filling her stomach and heart and closing her throat.
Nothing had gone as she had imagined. When Tacitus had appeared, she’d thought it was a sign he’d forgiven her. She thought she would be able to persuade him into granting her a measure of freedom—dependent upon him accompanying her.
That was of utmost importance. That he accompany her when she left the fortification. Hadn’t Arianrhod, through her brother god Gwydion, bestowed her blessing on her wish that Tacitus be spared from the coming devastation?
But even the most beloved Goddess gave nothing easily. And so she’d had no choice but to share her most sacred of secrets. The secret she’d intended to tell him when they were safe in the enclave.
Finally he turned to face her. Any small hope she’d harbored that he’d greet her news with pleasure withered. Horror etched his features as though she’d just admitted to murdering his precious Emperor.
“How can you be—?” He choked, unable to even say the word. His glance slid to her belly as if seeking confirmation. “I used protection.”
She dug her fingernails into the palms of her hands and focused on that pain in the vain hope it would help diminish the pain eating through her heart. “It seems Arianrhod had other ideas.”
He exhaled, and appeared riveted to the spot. “How can you be sure? It’s too soon to know for certain. You’re mistaken.”
Even though every word pierced her with the knowledge of how deeply he wanted nothing to do with their child, one thing shone through the darkness. He hadn’t questioned her on her certainty that he was the father.
“I know, Tacitus.” She pressed one hand against her belly and a part of her died at the way Tacitus flinched at her action. “I’m an acolyte of the Moon Goddess herself. How could I be mistaken in something like this?”
“My child.” His tortured gaze clashed with hers. “Conceived on a slave.”
Another time his words would have stoked her fury, burned her pride. But the look of anguish in his eyes, the self-disgust in his voice, caused only a deep sense of grief in the core of her soul.
“I don’t have to be a slave,” she whispered, to be yours, but those words remained locked tight in her heart.
“Fuck.” He paced the room, as if Belatucadros, god of destruction, rained fire at his heels. “If you’d agreed to my request, you would already be my concubine.” He swung around and faced her. “I swore on my mother’s heritage I would never force a child on an unwilling woman.”
Doubt whispered in the back of Nimue’s mind at his wo
rds. They weren’t the words she’d expected from him. Was his horror at the situation not because the thought of siring a child with her repelled him, but because he thought she must hate the circumstances?
“Tacitus.” Once again she reached for him but he stiffened as though her touch was unwelcome. She hesitated for a moment, then gripped his arm regardless. He didn’t jerk away. “I wasn’t unwilling.”
He looked as if her confession shredded his soul. It didn’t make sense. What else could she say to make him understand that she no longer loathed the thought of having his child?
“How the gods delight in exacting their vengeance.” His words were bitter, and although he looked at her, Nimue had the feeling he didn’t see her at all. “The blood of Rome triumphs once again.”
Unease snaked through her at the wild look in his eyes. “I don’t know what you mean.”
He didn’t seem to hear her. “How I despised my father for what he did to my mother. What choice did she have? Yet now I find I’m no better, despite my lofty pledges.”
Self-disgust dripped from every word and Nimue stared at him as disjointed fragments of all their conversations tumbled through her mind.
She’d jumped to conclusions at his disclosure that he possessed two mothers. Tacitus had never truly clarified what he’d meant. Now she thought about it, his reaction to her assumption had been oddly…muted.
Her stomach churned as another possibility reared its unsavory head. Surely not. Tacitus belonged to the upper echelons of Roman society. She didn’t know a great deal about the patrician class but she knew enough. Romans didn’t embrace those they considered their inferiors into their jealously guarded noble ranks.
Yet the thought plagued her mind as Tacitus’ tortured gaze scorched her face.
My mother is Greek. When he’d told her that, she had imagined his mother to be a high-ranking Greek lady, related somehow to Tacitus’ Roman-born mother.
What choice did she have?
Skeletal fingers raked over her flesh as she saw beyond his words to the anguish beneath. To the underlying reasons why he was so conflicted whenever he mentioned his parentage to her.
“Your mother,” she whispered. “Your Greek mother, Tacitus. Why did she not have a choice?”
He gripped her arms and jerked her toward him. “Slaves don’t have the choice to say no, do they, Nimue?” His words were savage but despair filled his eyes. “They’re at the mercy of their masters’ whims. They don’t even have the right to keep their child if their master decrees otherwise.”
Pain engulfed her heart as finally she understood. His birth mother hadn’t given him up at all. He had been taken from her and given to his father’s Roman wife. “I’m so sorry.” It was hard to speak through the lump that choked her throat and the words were muffled. But he heard her and looked at her, as though he didn’t understand; as if she spoke a barbaric tongue that he had never before encountered.
“I would have done anything to prevent this outcome.” He sounded so wretched her heart squeezed with pain.
He’d misunderstood her words.
“No, Tacitus.” It was important he realized that, unlike his mother, she did have a choice. That she had knowingly made a choice. “I could have prevented this. But I chose not to take my womb cleansing tea. Arianrhod intervened—but only because she knew how much I wanted this.”
How surreal that she said such things to him, a Roman. And how humbling for her Druid pride to know that she meant every word.
He looked at her as though he couldn’t process the depth of her confession. “I’ve dishonored my mother and my sisters. I swore on their names a child of mine would never be stigmatized in such a way.”
Nimue pulled free of his grip and grasped his jaw in one hand, forcing him to look at her instead of looking through her. “No child of mine will ever be stigmatized, either.” Did he think she would allow their child to be thought of as a slave by all of Rome? “You aren’t, after all.”
He gave a bitter laugh, but instead of thrusting her aside, he covered her hand with his, and pressed her palm against the roughness of his jaw. “My father was desperate to sire a son. I have seventeen older half-sisters, all conceived with various slaves. In their eighth month he granted their manumission, in the hope the child would be a boy. He had no intention of his only son being born into slavery.”
“Your father took all the babies away from their birth mothers?” She tried to keep the horror from her voice because she didn’t want Tacitus to think she judged him. But the tortured look that flashed across his face made it clear that she hadn’t succeeded.
“He had no interest in daughters, Nimue. They may have been born free but he didn’t acknowledge them as his own. They’re merely the bastards of his freedwomen. But they’re still my sisters.”
Repressed anger vibrated through every word and she stared at him, transfixed. His culture placed little value on females. Yet despite the actions of his father, she knew Tacitus would never turn his back on his child, simply because it wasn’t a son.
Hadn’t the commander said he would never abandon the child of the woman he loved? Why did she think of her father now? Was it because she knew, in her heart, that her mother had seen the same noble qualities in her Roman officer that Nimue saw in Tacitus?
“The Emperor granted permission for my father to adopt me. I lived in luxury while my sisters toiled as servants. My father could never understand why I insisted on recognizing our blood link.”
She had the savage urge to plunge her dagger through Tacitus’ father’s arrogant heart. “It’s clear you don’t take after your father at all in such matters.”
Not only did she mean the words with every fiber of her being, she meant them to comfort Tacitus. But he jerked back from her, as if her words scalded, and a wild light gleamed in his eyes.
“You’re wrong.” His gazed raked over her, burning her skin. “We’re more alike than I ever imagined. You’ll only stay if you’re not allowed to leave. What choice is that, Nimue?”
Before she could even fully process his caustic question he snatched up his cloak, swung it around his shoulders and marched from the room.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Nimue jerked awake as the door swung open. Tacitus stood there, his foreign armor gleaming in the light from the lamp that he held, his cloak adding to the dramatic effect. For a moment she wondered if she still dreamed of her Roman lover, but as he entered the room and the light chased shadows back into the corners, she knew that this was no dream.
She pushed herself upright on the bed that he hadn’t shared with her during the night. Or was it still nighttime? Disoriented she raked her tangled hair off her face and frowned at him. After he’d left her last night, she’d followed him, only to watch him stride outside and disappear deeper into the fortification. And the legionary on guard made it clear that his orders to ensure she remained inside hadn’t changed.
“Get dressed.” His voice was pitched low, but it was a command nevertheless. For a moment, she continued to stare at him in bemusement and then the meaning of this odd nocturnal communion blazed through her.
Heart pounding she pulled on the gown she’d worn the previous day, slung her empty medicine bag over her shoulder and wrapped her cloak around her. Tacitus watched her in silence. His expression gave nothing away.
Blessed Arianrhod, thank you. Nimue sent endless prayers to her beloved Goddess as she once again clutched the pouch that held the shard of bluestone and followed Tacitus outside into the dusky early morn. All the half-formed plans she’d made during the night, to try to persuade him to accompany her to the secret enclave, faded back into the shadows. While she’d endlessly worried, her Goddess had weaved her magic around Tacitus, irrevocably entwining their destinies together.
He took her hand and led her toward a horse that waited on the wide Roman road that bisected the fortification. The legionary by the horse stepped back, and raised his arm in the traditional sign of respect
she had come to recognize. Tacitus merely jerked his head in response and helped her onto the horse. Then he adjusted a strangely shaped pack that was slung over his shoulder before he swung up behind her.
Without a word, he urged his mount forward. She gripped her fingers together as they neared the great gates of the fortification but she needn’t have worried. They passed through without the slightest problem and she released a relieved breath.
“How far from here are your people?” His voice was clipped and she looked over her shoulder, but it was too dark to discern his expression. For a moment, unease rippled through her mind and she glanced at the pink-streaked sky. Although dawn had not yet broken, the starry wheel had fallen. Yet even as the thought formed, an unassailable certainty gripped her.
Once again, the Moon Goddess had not reigned in the nighttime skies. Was it because Nimue had failed in her original mission? Was this a facet of Arianrhod’s displeasure?
But wasn’t Nimue following her Goddess’ orders now? Why then did Arianrhod continue to conceal her radiance from her people?
She pulled her mind back to the present. To Tacitus’ question. “We’ll be close when the sun reaches the zenith.” She pointed in the direction they needed to travel and ignored the tiny flicker of alarm that edged her consciousness. Tacitus would never betray the location of her people. But in any case, the concern was irrelevant. Tacitus wouldn’t be returning to his fortification. She, with the help of her elusive Goddess, would make sure of that.
He redirected his horse and dug in his heels. His strong arms encased her but only through necessity. He didn’t wind one arm around her waist or give any indication that he’d accepted Arianrhod had bound their futures together.
As the sun rose on the eastern horizon, casting a golden glow across the land she loved, the unease within her heart expanded. She was close to fulfilling the first part of Arianrhod’s plan by returning the shard of bluestone and completing the sacred circle. The magic of the bluestones would ensure her people’s safety from the might of the Eagle—but this time the gods intended more. Gwydion had conveyed the message. She knew devastation would follow. Knew also, in her heart, that should she succeed then great knowledge of the Spiral of Annwyn, the Source of Universal Life, would be hers to embrace.
Enslaved (The Druid Chronicles Book 3) Page 25
