In contrast, I wasn't at all delighted. Why had she come here? Why now?
"Keep me with you while Nic sees his mother," Aurelia said. "Then when he's had a chance to talk to her, he'll turn himself back over to you in exchange for my release."
I rolled my eyes. The whole idea of this plan was not to turn myself back over to Brutus. Maybe it was too dark for her to see the strain on my face each time Brutus pressed against the Divine Star, but surely she had heard the pinch in my voice.
"All right." Brutus removed his hand from the Star, and then at least I could breathe again. But he still held my arm and used it to pull me to my feet, where I nearly blacked out from dizziness.
The Praetors grabbed Aurelia and took both her bow and knife. She protested but that didn't get much sympathy from me. What did she expect they would do?
Brutus started walking me away from the villa but also farther from the vines and into the wooded area of
land I hadn't visited before. The cypress trees here were tall and dense and filled with thick underbrush around our narrow trail. Once inside this grove, I saw at least a hundred Praetors staring back at me from a small clearing, all of them armed and every one happy to do whatever it took to get the key. And those were only the Praetors I could see. I had no doubt there were many more in the darker shadows of these woods.
Aurelia was allowed to catch up to me, and when she did, I barely looked at her.
"You're angry," she said.
"I didn't need you to sacrifice yourself," I muttered. "Did you think this would help?"
"It wouldn't make things worse, based on how you were managing on your own. Why did you go down there alone?"
"To get the --" I paused, unwilling to say more.
But Brutus, still holding me, already knew. "You wanted the bulla that had been tied onto that unicorn. I'd heard Radulf had one, but never was sure. We saw it when we surveyed the property."
I turned to him, my eyes wide with alarm.
Brutus only laughed. "We saw the bulla, but the unicorn wouldn't let us anywhere near it and dodged our arrows. He disappeared for a while, but when we saw him again, the bulla was gone. It must've fallen off when he ran. My men are searching for it now. It's only a matter of time before they find it."
My heart sank. So it had fallen from where I had laid it beneath his saddle, and obviously my knot hadn't worked either, at least not well enough for Callistus to be chased through thickets and vines. This was why Radulf had warned me not to bring the bulla anywhere near the Praetors.
Beside me, Aurelia squirmed against the man escorting her. "Can you relax your grip just a little? I'm cooperating; you don't need to hurt me."
I wasn't sure if the Praetor loosened his grip or not but she stopped protesting, so I hoped he had. There wasn't much I could do anyway. I wasn't angry with her, not really. After all, she was trying to assist me. But I hated the feeling of being so helpless.
Up ahead, I saw a wagon with bars and nearly fifty Praetors around it. That's where we were going. My heart leapt into my throat. I was nervous, and terrified. And certain that if I wasn't careful, everything could go horribly wrong.
"We'll honor our agreement, that Nicolas can have some privacy," Brutus said to the men around him. "But keep the sewer girl where he can see her."
Aurelia was dragged off in one direction while Brutus turned me to face him. "Here are my terms. If you touch your mother or allow her to touch you, the sewer girl dies. If you raise a hand to any of my men, even just for a friendly wave hello, then the sewer girl dies. And when I call for you to return to me, you obey immediately, even if it means you walk away midsentence. If you do not --"
"Then we all join in a game of small ball? I understand the terms, Brutus."
He smirked back at me, then released my arm, cautiously, as if he intended to grab it again if I made that necessary. And though I felt magic start to flow again from the Divine Star, I wouldn't be using it. Not now. Aurelia was behind me and somewhere up ahead ...
A woman had her face pressed to the bars and one arm outstretched through them. She was chained in there too; I could hear the metal when she shifted to get even closer to me. Despite all that -- the dirt on her face, the shabbiness of her thin tunic, and the metal bars, caging her as if she were no better than the animals of the venatio, she was beautiful. More elegant than the finest woman any of these Praetors returned home to at night.
Everything else melted in my vision as I came up to the cage and smiled back at her. "Hello, Mother."
My mother was crying. I hadn't noticed that until I came close enough to see the tears running in lines down her face. They washed through the dirt in streaks, yet they did nothing to diminish her beauty. Livia would grow up to become just as lovely, no doubt.
"You're alive," she whispered.
I nodded. Tears were welling in my own eyes, though I didn't want her to see them. I needed her to believe I was strong enough to finish the fight still ahead for me. Or more likely, I needed to believe that.
"And Livia?"
"She's better than ever." At least, I hoped that was true. I'd had no chance to ask Aurelia about her in private. I wouldn't risk asking while Brutus could hear us.