The second time you have sex with her, she notices the marks on your abdomen left from your pregnancy.

"You've had a child, Helena?" she asks, wide-eyed, like it's the most remarkable thing.

You close your eyes and trail your fingers over hers where they linger to the side of your navel. "Yes. Four years ago."

She traces the faint, whitish marks with reverence. "Where's your child now?" she asks.

"Gone," you say, before slipping your thumb between her teeth and watching her lips close around it.

\\

Walking alone feels like a victory as great as any battle you've fought.

Leena stands beside you, arms outstretched to catch you if you fall, as you take your first unsupported steps in weeks.

"I knew it!" she exclaims, smiling broadly. "I knew we could get you fixed up. I could tell you were strong enough."

You grin back at her. You can't help it.

\\

When the Roman arrives for her daily visit to find you walking carefully across the floor of your cell, she lets out a whoop of happiness as she drops the game board and pieces to the floor and wraps her arms around you. She lifts you up and spins you around, laughing into the crook of your neck.

"You seem taller than you did before," she says when she sets you back down, settling her arms around your waist.

"Still less an Amazon than you," you retort. Even her aristocracy, her unbearable Roman-ness, will not dampen your relief today. You don't even notice the smile that tugs at your cheeks as her sparkling eyes take hold of yours.

As your strength continues to improve, you venture out of your cell. You help Leena with her chores around the ludus: everything from washing sweaty gladiators' armor and padding to washing plates, sweeping and tidying. You offer to help her cook, once, but after you burn three batches of bread in a row, she suggests that perhaps she should do that on her own.

The more time you spend with her, the more you like her. You come from two places as far apart in the empire as two people can be, but you find common ground surprisingly easily. You are both people who pay attention, as best you can, to the goings-on of the world you live in. You talk politics, and share stories from your pasts. She was brought to Rome in her twelfth year, you learn. But she remembers the stories she grew up with – the legends her parents would tell her, to pass the time – and she shares them with you. You remember far less of the stories you heard from your family, but you share with her the ones that you can, and embellish them with the products of your own imagination.

You have experience telling stories. You had a daughter, after all.

\\

You begin to spot them: the Roman's gazes that linger on your skin as you pull your tunic back on. The coy smiles that she offers you before looking away. The growing urgency and desperation of her kisses; the way she murmurs your name like benediction.

\\

When you can, you creep above the training grounds to watch the Gladiators in practice. They move through rehearsed series of steps, and many of them have remarkable grace and poise for such enormous men. Your eye drifts to one, in particular, on the far side of the group. He's of a slimmer build than many of the others, but his movements have a crisp precision that indicate he's likely among the most deadly.

You rarely come close to them, though. They are considered dangerous, especially to women, so you and Leena enter their space only when they're training in the yard, or when they're in their cells.

Young Claudia visits you when she can. You come to realize that she has a brilliant analytic mind. You ask the Roman if she would be willing to leave the game board with you, in your cell, and you teach the rules to Claudia. She can rarely stay with you long enough to finish the game, but you scratch reminders in the dirt of where the pieces lay so that you can resume the game the next day.

When the Roman visits, you vanish into your cell together and close the door. Sometimes you play a round or two of Latrunculi. Sometimes you skip that altogether and fumble your way to the nearest wall or your blankets in the corner.

The whole situation grows more terrifying with each passing day. Because, truly, it's not so bad, this life you're living. You still don't know, really, what you're doing here. But you're quite certain that MacPherson didn't have you beaten and dropped here only to live this life of relative luxury.

The relative comfort is making you soft. You're beginning to smile, sincerely, when Claudia insists on calling you "HG" when she learns it was a nickname you had, back before you were captured.

You're beginning forget that the way you absorb Myka's warmth and her touches is merely a series of moves in a longer game.

You begin to forget that she is a Roman and your Domina, and you shouldn't call her Myka.

You need to know what the Domini's strategy is, so you can make sure that yours is better.

\\

"My parents are desperate for me to become engaged again," Myka offers, as the sweat cools on your skin. She is nestled in the crook of your arm, her thigh wrapped around yours.

"And why haven't you?"

She shrugs. "I haven't liked any of my suitors."

You smile. "Surely you must have half the city beating down your door."

She squeezes your arm affectionately. "Hardly. There's only one, right now."

You refuse to acknowledge the twisting in your chest, when she says that. "Well, what could possibly be wrong with him, if he's got the good taste to come after you?" you offer, instead.

"Oh, he's nice enough," she says. "I've known him my whole life. But he's my father's age. Recently widowed, and just looking for someone to fill the gap. And he owns a brothel staffed with slaves, and you know how I feel about that."

You refuse to acknowledge the spike in your pulse. "What's his name?" you ask, and you swear you don't sound like you're choking.

"MacPherson."

\\

It's perfect, you think. Because you hate him more than any other living person in the world, and he wants Myka. And there's little you'd love more than to keep a person you hate from something he wants.

\\

"Can you ride?" are the first words out of her mouth, one day, when she finds you in your cell. She's grinning at you, wearing the more traditional clothing of a roman noblewoman, today.

You stare at her blankly for a moment, completely taken aback by the unexpected question. "Ride horses? I used to. It's been a long time."

"Good enough," she says, and she grabs you by the wrist and pulls you down the corridor and up the stairs, into the light.

It's the first time you've left the ludus since you arrived. You exit into a busy market street and know almost immediately where you are—just a few streets over from MacPherson's. The road itself is clogged with carts, chariots, pack-mules, and its edges packed with vendors selling everything from vegetables to cloth to household trinkets. For a moment, the noise of it is overwhelming and you have to remind yourself to breathe.

Myka dropped your wrist as soon as you stepped out into the road, and you understand why: for a noble and a servant to seem too familiar would only encourage unwanted attention. She notices your moment of distress, though, and steps close to you, putting hand on your shoulder.

"Are you all right?" she asks, quietly.

"Of course," you say, with what you hope sounds like indignation.

She gives you a crooked smile and squeezes your upper arm before dropping her hand to her side. "Follow me closely."

You do, as she hugs the side of the ludus to dodge most of the traffic, until she crosses a road and turns left behind another large building. You come upon a stable built into the back of a building, and an enclosure with a few horses.

"Wait here," she says, before she goes to speak to a stable-boy. He disappears into the barn, and emerges several minutes later with two saddled horses.

"Do you need help getting up?" he asks, as he hands the reins of the bay to Myka, and the dapple grey to you.

Instead of answering, Myka simply flips the reins over her horse's head and vaults up, sitting sidesaddle, as her long dress requires.

You watch her method, then stand back and attempt to duplicate it. Your first attempt falls flat (literally), but your second attempt lands you, however clumsily, behind the horse's whithers.

"We'll work on that," Myka grins at you, cheekily. Then she thanks the stable boy, who bows politely and runs back into the barn.

Sitting sidesaddle is awkward, but you develop a feel for it as you follow Myka through the city. An hour later, when you have left the city through the north gate and travelled a league up the road, she stops, adjusts her skirts, and swings her leg over so that she sits astride.

"Thank the gods," you say, as you mirror her actions. "This is how I learned."

"I know," she says, "but if my father saw me ride this way, he'd take away my horse."

"That one's yours, then?" you ask.

She nods. "I call her Athena, after the Greek goddess of wisdom."

You smile. "That's a terribly big name for a little horse."

She grins at you cheekily. "Don't tell her that. You'll offend her."

"Have you named mine, as well?" you ask.

"I call her Artemis."

"Goddess of the moon," you say, tracing your hand over her dappled neck.

You travel for two more hours at a quick pace. When Myka finally slows, you're passing through a thick wood. The road bends left but she stays to its right side, and when she passes a large tree with a missing limb she veers off altogether.

"Stay close," she says, "the path is faint and easy to lose."

You look down, and sure enough, you can see where the roots and foliage have been slightly beaten to dirt. You follow her, ducking and dodging branches and tree limbs, for what feels like an endless amount of time until you emerge in a small clearing. There's a creek moving through it, and on the far side you notice a shelter, low to the ground, with a fire pit. The frame, you can see, has been there for some time, but the cloth stretched over it is new.

When you reach the center of the clearing, you pause and circle your horse around. You can't make out where the trail entered the clearing, and you feel suddenly, blissfully alone.

You follow Myka to the shelter, where you dismount and hitch your horses to a low-hanging branch.

She walks to the shelter and runs her fingers along its top beam. "Sam built this when he was a boy," she says. "He built it with two of his friends, but they stopped coming out here before they were men. But he kept it up. This is where he brought me to talk about marriage. I still come here, sometimes, when I want to be alone."

Your arms are wrapped across your stomach and you feel, suddenly, like an intruder. Which reminds you, of course, that you are. You seduced this Roman for your own ends, and you still have every intention of becoming her undoing.

But then she looks up at you, her eyes curling up at the edges, and says, "I was the only person alive who knew this place was here. Now there are two of us." She steps close to you, slips her arms around your waist, and kisses you, softly.

She sends you into the woods to find tinder and dry branches, and when you come back you find her sitting near the fire pit, skinning a rabbit.

"I came by yesterday to fix the cloth on the shelter," she says. "I set a few snares while I was here."

Sam taught her to do that, as well.

She keeps a firestarter in a metal box in the shelter. It doesn't take long for you to have a roaring fire burning, and you're eating a lunch of roasted rabbit meat with your fingers. You offer her a piece from your hand and she takes your fingers into her mouth with it, licking them for longer than she needs to, in a way that sends warmth to your groin.

After your meal, you clean your hands in the stream. When you sit back down by the fire, she positions herself behind you, encouraging you to lean back against her tall frame. Her fingers find purchase under your chin and she tips your head back so that she can kiss your lips, softly at first, then deeper, harder, claiming, but in a way that begs you to claim her back, to curve your hand around her neck and pull, so you do. Breathlessly, she pulls away and urges you to lean forward. Her fingers hook under the hem of your tunic and trail themselves up your thighs, over your hips, and along your torso. You shift a little to free the fabric from under your body, and she guides it gently over your head. With gentle pressure she angles your torso forward and then you feel her lips, her nose, tracing over the soft, pink scars on your back, her breath caressing them like a healing balm.

Then you're leaning back against her, again, her lips toying with yours, her fingers tracing idle patterns over your abdomen. She untangles you from your undergarments. Her soft hand cups your breast as the callused one trails down your front until your legs fall open, into the cradle of hers. Then she's everywhere, around you, inside you, her body warming your back as the fire heats your front. You move helplessly, endlessly into her touch, panting into the soft side of her neck, heels of your sandals digging into the dirt, fingers gripping her knees like you might levitate if you let go.

"By all the gods," she murmurs into your ear, her voice clipped, breathless. And then she shifts, adds another finger that curls inside you with the first two, and you swear your spirit bursts free from your body, following the campfire smoke into the distant blue sky.

\\

Hours later, when the sky glows pink with sunset and you're sitting sidesaddle again, following her back through the city gates, you allow yourself to acknowledge what you're feeling. You know that what you're feeling, in this moment, is dangerous. It's dangerous to you, to her, to the dark plan you have for both of you. You remember that MacPherson is courting her, and what that should mean for you, for your intentions.

But as your eye watches the way the folds of her dress follow the slope of her shoulder, the way her hair reflects the red in the sunset-the feeling is so beautiful, you can't bring yourself to care.