Page 28 of Thawed Gladiator: Quintus
I settle on the familiar log and close my eyes, letting the night sounds wash over me before I begin. Tonight calls for somethingdifferent—not the gladiator laments I usually sing, but something more personal. More vulnerable.
The melody rises from memory, carried in my mother’s voice across almost thirty years of slavery, survival, and two millennia under the frozen sea. She used to sing this when the hunger got bad, when my youngest brother cried from an empty belly, and there was nothing left to give him.
I sing the old lullaby:
Sleep, my little shepherd,
Dream of green fields far from here,
Mother’s love will find you,
Even when she is not near.
The Latin words flow like water, carrying me back to that one-room roundhouse where love existed despite everything—despite poverty, despite the Romans’ crushing tribute, despite the impossible choice that tore our family apart.
My voice cracks on the final verse, the way it always does when I sing Mother’s lullaby. After so many years, the wound still bleeds fresh when I prod it. But tonight the pain feels different—not just loss, but longing for something I thought was forever beyond reach.
The silence that follows stretches until I hear the soft crunch of footsteps on gravel.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to intrude.”
Opening my eyes, I see Nicole standing at the edge of the clearing, moonlight catching the strands of copper in her chestnut hair. She approaches slowly, like I’m a wild creature she might spook with sudden movement. There’s something different about her presence tonight—less hesitant, more determined, as if she’s made a conscious choice to be here.
The tears on her cheeks glisten silver in thepale light.
“You weren’t intruding.” I gesture to the space beside me on the log. “Music is meant to be shared.”
She lowers herself onto the log, careful and deliberate, as if choosing to share not just my song but my silence. “That song… it was beautiful. And touching.”
“My mother used to sing it when there was nothing left to give us but hope,” I say quietly. The memory tastes of hunger and love all at once. “She sang it the night before I was sold. That was the last gift she could give me.” No one here has ever heard me speak of that night. Until now.
Nicole inches toward me, close enough that I breathe her scent—linen, woman, heat—and it steadies me more than it should. Her hand finds mine in the darkness, fingers intertwining without hesitation. The pressure of her touch says everything: I see you. I’m here.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers. Her thumb strokes my hand as if she could smooth away history. “Sold. At that age. No child should have to pay that price.”
“Many did. I was not unique in my suffering.” But her touch makes the old pain feel less isolating somehow.
“Is that how you kept yourself human? With music?”
Surprise flickers through me at how profoundly she understands me.
“Music is the only piece of me they never broke or stole,” I admit. “The only part still mine.”
She studies me, thumb tracing across my knuckles, sending heat up my arm. “This side of you—it changes everything I thought I knew about you.”
“We were more than killers,” I murmur. “The arena stripped away everything except what we chose to protect. For me, that was music. The only way I could still create beauty in a world that demanded blood.”
We sit in silence, hands linked, both lost in thought. The night air carries the scent of approaching autumn, and somewhere in the distance an owl calls to its mate.
“Why do you still sing alone?” she asks eventually.
“Habit, perhaps. In theludus, music was private—a small rebellion they couldn’t take away.” I look at her profile in the moonlight, struck by how right she looks here beside me. “But also because the songs carry pain. Not everyone wants to hear more reminders than they already bear.”
“I want to hear it.” Her voice is soft but certain. “All of it. The pain and the beauty and whatever else you want to share.”
The simple statement hits me harder than any punch I’ve ever taken. When was the last time someone wanted to know all of me, not just the useful parts?
“That is a dangerous offer,” I warn.
