"Turn around!"
"Imperator's orders!"
The words were nearly swallowed by the wind as the horse thundered through the forest.
Behind us, the sounds of battle grew fainter with every stride. The blare of horns. Men shouting. Steel striking steel. Horses screaming in terror. One by one, they disappeared beneath the pounding of hooves until the trees swallowed them whole.
I twisted in the saddle, desperately searching for Marcus, but I could no longer see him.
"Fuck his orders!" I shouted, struggling against Quintus's grip on the reins. "Turn around!"
"You would not reach him in time."
"He needs me!"
Quintus did not so much as glance at me. His eyes remained fixed on the narrow path ahead, guiding the horse between ancient oaks and low-hanging branches with practiced precision.
"You cannot help him."
His voice was steady, maddeningly so.
"You do not know that," I argued.
"You are no soldier,domina.[1] You cannot wield a sword against mounted men, nor survive what waits behind us. If I turn this horse around, I lose not only you, but the charge my commander entrusted to me."
His jaw tightened.
"The Imperator chose to stay because he believed you were worth protecting."
The words struck harder than any accusation.
"If I disobey him now, then his sacrifice becomes meaningless."
I opened my mouth to argue, but nothing came out.
He was right. Marcus might have needed me in modern day-England, but this was his world. His battlefield. He knew how to survive it far better than I ever could.
I clung to that thought.
He would survive, he had to.
Quintus urged the horse into an even faster gallop. "The best way you can help him," he said quietly, "is by surviving long enough for him to find you again."
I turned for one last look, but the forest had already closed behind us. There was nothing left to see but an endless wall of trees.
The rest of the ride passed in silence.
Quintus kept one steady arm around me as the horse thundered onward, the dense woodland gradually giving way to open fields where a river wound through the valley. Beyond it, low hills rose against the horizon, their slopes dotted with orderly rows of Roman tents and standards, fluttering softly with the breeze.
The wind caught my hair, sweeping loose strands across my face as we descended toward the encampment.
Soldiers moved purposefully between the tents, while camp followers and women carried baskets, fetched water or tended to the cooking fires. Smoke curled lazily into the afternoon sky, and for the first since leaving the forest, the sounds of ordinary life began to drown out the echoes of battle still ringing in my ears.
Before we had even reached the heart of the encampment, Quintus tugged gently on the reins and guided the horse toward a cluster of larger tents marked with bundles of dried herbs hanging from the entrance.
The scent reached me before anything else did. Vinegar, smoke, crushed rosemary and something bitter I could not quite place. It was unmistakable.
A place for the wounded.
He dismounted first before helping me down with surprising care, his hand steady beneath my elbow as my boots met the packed earth.
"Wait here," he murmured.
He had barely taken two steps before the flap of the largest tent was pulled aside by a woman in her middle years.
Her dark hair had been twisted into a practical knot beneath a linen covering, and her simple wool scarf was stained at the sleeves with old blood and herbs alike. Around her neck hung a small bronze charm dedicated to the healing gods, while a leather satchel rested against her hip, bulging with bandages and instruments.
She took one look at me before her sharp eyes flicked to one of Marcus's soldiers.
"So this is her."
Quintus inclined his head.
"The Imperator's wife."
The woman's expression softened only slightly.
She approached me without ceremony, lifting my chin with practiced fingers before her eyes drifted behind my head, examining the fading scar beneath my hairline. Her touch was confident, neither hesitant nor cruel, and I recognized it immediately.
The touch of someone accustomed to treating the injured. I couldn't help but be reminded of Dr.Madakwe. My heart ached, wondering when I could see him again.
Or Pippa, her father, my parents and the rest.
"You had a blow to the head," she muttered, parting the strands near my temple. "And someone has stitched this already."
Her brows rose in approval. "Not badly."
For the first time since arriving in this strange life, I found myself looking at another woman who understood wounds not as omens or punishments from the gods, but as problems to be treated.
She stepped aside and gestured toward the interior of the tent.
"Come inside," she said. "I am Livia. The army's medica. And from the look of you, you have survived enough for one lifetime, domina."
I was about to thank her and step inside when a horn sounded from the hills beyond the encampment, the very direction from which Quintus and I had come from.
My body turned before my mind could catch up.
My hands instinctively clasped over my middle, as though bracing myself for whatever sight awaited me.
Then I saw him.
Relief sweeping through me so suddenly that my knees nearly gave way.
Marcus rode at the head of the returning column, his horse picking its way steadily down the slope as Roman soldiers followed behind him. His cloak was torn, his armor streaked with dirt and soaked in blood, though from this distance I could not tell how much of it was his own.
He sat tall in the saddle regardless.
Victorious, commanding.
It struck me then that I had never truly seen him like this before.
Not as the man who had learned to navigate the modern world with the same calculated precision he once reserved for battlefields, but as the commander his soldiers knew him to be. The man they would follow into battle without hesitation.
His posture alone carried an authority that demanded obedience, every movement measured with the quiet confidence of someone born to lead.
Around him, weary legionaries straightened in their saddles, their armor catching the afternoon light as they crossed the field toward the encampment.
For the first time since we had fled the forest, I allowed myself to breathe.
Marcus's horse descended the final slope at a measured pace before entering the camp through the narrow lane left open by the sentries. Dust clung to the hem of his crimson cloak, and streaks of dried blood darkened the polished metal of his armor, but his posture never faltered.
The legionaries behind him slowed in unison.
He surveyed them once, then lifted a hand.
"Discredite. Arma deponite. Curate vulneratos. Requiescite."
The commands carried cleanly across the encampment.
"Dismissed. Lay down your arms. See to the wounded. Rest," Livia translated for me from the side, her hands crossed against her chest as she watched Marcus with pride.
At once, the formation dissolved into practiced order.
Men peeling away toward their respective tents, some supporting comrades too exhausted to walk unaided, others leading riderless horses whose saddles still bore fresh blood.
Marcus swung down from his horse without waiting for assistance.
A stable hand rushed over, bowing his head as Marcus wordlessly passed him the reins. The young man accepted them with both hands before leading the horse toward the lines where the cavalry mounts were being watered.
Only then did Marcus look for me.
Across the open space, between the medical tents and the command pavilion, our eyes met.
Every instinct in my body screamed at me to run, throw myself into his arms. Reassure myself that he was alive, that the blood staining his armor belonged to someone else.
That he was still here.
But my feet wouldn't move, as Gen's words echoed through my mind with unbearable clarity, right then and there.
If she bears a child...
My fingers curled unconsciously against my skirts.
What if Marcus looked at me differently now? What if, despite everything he had said before they rode into battle, the reality of it proved too heavy to bear?
The distance between us slowly disappeared as he crossed the camp.
He walked to me, his expression unreadable, the soldiers who passed instinctively stepping aside to clear his path. Blood stained one knuckle where his gauntlet had been removed, and a shallow cut traced the edge of his jaw, but otherwise he seemed untouched.
I swallowed.
Still, I did not move.
[1] This is Latin for 'lady' or 'mistress'.