Chapter 8

They called me Gemini still.

The herald bellowed it. The crowd screamed it.

But as I knelt in the sand after the match, blood drying in the crook of my elbow, I realized something:

I didn't want to be remembered for my hands.

I wanted to be remembered for what they couldn't see.

The second hoplomachus had lived. Barely. They dragged him out on a litter, blood leaking from his thigh where I'd opened him. I hadn't meant to spare him for kindness. That was a lie the crowd told itself. Mercy made them feel noble.

But I spared him because I knew it would haunt him longer than death.

Cassian was pleased.

That was more dangerous than any wound.

Back at the villa, I sat in the cold bath longer than I should've. The water darkened. I didn't scrub the blood off. Just watched it swirl.

Kesseph sat near the brazier. Quiet. Watching.

"You're bleeding inside," he said.

"Not enough to matter."

"You didn't kill the second one."

"I killed his future."

He grunted. Something like respect. Or understanding.

"They're chanting different things now," he said. "One called you Umbra. Another shouted Orcus."

"Do they know what they're calling?"

"No," he said. "But maybe you do."

That night, I stood in the villa's lower courtyard, where the laurel trees didn't quite block the moonlight. I had cleaned my blades. Rewrapped my hands. Watched the bruises bloom and fade faster than they should.

And then I said it out loud:

"Tenebris."

The name tasted old. Like rust and prayer.

"That's yours?" Kesseph asked, emerging from shadow.

"Not theirs. Mine."

"It suits you."

"Why?"

"Because you don't just walk through the dark," he said. "You bring it with you."

Cassian summoned me the next morning.

He didn't rise when I entered. Just sipped wine and gestured to the cushions.

"The fight was flawless," he said. "But now you must do more."

"Win again?"

"No," he smiled. "Be seen winning again. Not just as Gemini. As something they can argue about. Build songs around. Let them wonder."

"What do you want me to do?"

He leaned in.

"Bleed. Laugh. Spit. Pray. Doesn't matter. Just give them a story."

"And what will you do?"

He poured more wine.

"Sell it."

Later That Day — The Arena Tunnels

I was called back to the sands the next day—two matches, staggered. Not the Colosseum this time, but the lesser stone amphitheater near the Caelian Hill. Still watched. Still deadly.

The first bout was against a secutor, heavy-built, shield like a wall, slow-footed but brutal. He swung hard. Hunted like a wolf.

I let him.

I let him think he was winning.

Battered my side against the stone wall. Let the dust cover my blade. Took a grazing cut to the thigh that stung just enough to draw blood.

The crowd saw pain. They roared.

And when I turned, grinning blood through my teeth, and drove my sica beneath his chin?

They howled.

The second bout came before I could change out my gear.

Two retiarii.

Tridents. Nets. Fast-footed.

They circled me like hounds.

I dropped to a crouch. Made myself small. One moved in—I rolled forward, inside the net's arc, severed his wrist with a clean cross-slash.

He screamed. Dropped.

The second panicked.

I stepped past the body, kicked the trident from the first man's slackening hand, and threw it.

It pierced the second man's chest before he could scream.

I stood over both bodies.

Arms spread.

Not proud. Not shouting.

Just present.

And from the stands, they started chanting:

"Umbra… Umbra… Umbra!"

"Orcus! Orcus! Orcus!"

"Gemini! Gemini!"

I turned my back on them.

Let them argue.

The name I'd chosen echoed only in me.

Elsewhere – The Woman in the Arch

She'd followed him for days.

From the Minora to the Colosseum. To Severus's villa. She never stepped too close. Never drew attention.

But now, as she watched him leave the arena bloodied and unbowed, she whispered a different name.

Not Gemini.

Not Tenebris.

"Kalon. That was your name once," she said. "In Attica. In Delphi. You held a blade in one hand and a prayer in the other."

"And you died begging not to."

She turned.

A man in a hood waited nearby. She spoke to him in a tongue not heard in Rome for two hundred years.

"The curse still holds."

"And the pact?" he asked.

"Fractured. But not broken."

Back in the villa, I cleaned my blades again. Kesseph brought wine, and didn't ask questions.

"You've chosen your name," he said.

"I've earned it."

"Tenebris," he muttered, rolling it in his mouth like a coin. "They'll never chant it."

"They don't need to."

"Why not?"

I looked out the window, where the city of marble trembled like a mirage in the moonlight.

"Because when they sleep," I said, "that's what they'll dream of."

Carthage – Spring, 269 BC | General Hanno the Younger, Adirim of the Western Fleet

The harbor of Carthage glittered like a blade slicked with oil.

Ships moved with purpose—triremes and merchant convoys, warships with bronze-tipped rams, their timbers creaking in the salt air. Below, slaves unloaded Cypriot copper and Iberian horses. The world still bent to Carthage.

But Hanno watched the sea like it might bite.

He stood on the stone terrace of the Admiral's Hall, tunic damp from sea spray, lips pursed in thought.

"Rome grows fat with victories," said his cousin Bomilcar, handing him a clay scroll sealed in wax. "They've taken all of Samnium. Now they breathe down Sicily's neck."

"Then it is time to teach them the taste of brine," Hanno said.

"It's not war. Not yet."

"But it will be. And when it is, we will not wait to meet them on land."

He turned, gazing out at the horizon.

"We'll meet them here. Where Carthage has no equals."

Inside the hall, maps lay stretched on bronze-bound tables—Sicily carved in black ink, trade routes in red, Roman patrols marked with tiny etchings of wolves.

A slave poured wine.

Hanno ignored it.

"We hold Lilybaeum. Drepanum. Palermo. The Greeks squabble like children, but the Romans... they build. They plan. They prepare."

"So do we," Bomilcar said.

"Not enough."

Hanno ran his fingers over the map, stopping over Messana.

"This is where it starts. Maybe not this year. Maybe not next. But it starts here."

"And how will you prepare?"

Hanno smiled.

"We don't beat wolves by barking louder. We slit their throats in the fog."

Back in the arena, under Roman skies, I stared at the blood on my hands.

It felt... normal.

Too normal.

And as the torchlight flickered down the walls of the hypogeum, I whispered the name again.

"Tenebris."

And it answered.

Not in sound.

But in memory.

Something I'd once promised. In another tongue. Another life.

Kalon.

That name came unbidden.

But I wasn't ready to remember it.

Not yet.