Nimue saw Tacitus stiffen at her words, and nerves tangled low in her stomach. She gripped her fingers together and waited for him to say something. Anything. But he remained utterly still, as if he had turned to stone, and the nerves multiplied, filling her stomach and heart and closing her throat.
Nothing had gone as she had imagined. When Tacitus had appeared, she’d thought it was a sign he’d forgiven her. She thought she would be able to persuade him into granting her a measure of freedom—dependent upon him accompanying her.
That was of utmost importance. That he accompany her when she left the fortification. Hadn’t Arianrhod, through her brother god Gwydion, bestowed her blessing on her wish that Tacitus be spared from the coming devastation?
But even the most beloved Goddess gave nothing easily. And so she’d had no choice but to share her most sacred of secrets. The secret she’d intended to tell him when they were safe in the enclave.
Finally he turned to face her. Any small hope she’d harbored that he’d greet her news with pleasure withered. Horror etched his features as though she’d just admitted to murdering his precious Emperor.
“How can you be—?” He choked, unable to even say the word. His glance slid to her belly as if seeking confirmation. “I used protection.”
She dug her fingernails into the palms of her hands and focused on that pain in the vain hope it would help diminish the pain eating through her heart. “It seems Arianrhod had other ideas.”
He exhaled, and appeared riveted to the spot. “How can you be sure? It’s too soon to know for certain. You’re mistaken.”
Even though every word pierced her with the knowledge of how deeply he wanted nothing to do with their child, one thing shone through the darkness. He hadn’t questioned her on her certainty that he was the father.
“I know, Tacitus.” She pressed one hand against her belly and a part of her died at the way Tacitus flinched at her action. “I’m an acolyte of the Moon Goddess herself. How could I be mistaken in something like this?”
“My child.” His tortured gaze clashed with hers. “Conceived on a slave.”
Another time his words would have stoked her fury, burned her pride. But the look of anguish in his eyes, the self-disgust in his voice, caused only a deep sense of grief in the core of her soul.
“I don’t have to be a slave,” she whispered, to be yours, but those words remained locked tight in her heart.
“Fuck.” He paced the room, as if Belatucadros, god of destruction, rained fire at his heels. “If you’d agreed to my request, you would already be my concubine.” He swung around and faced her. “I swore on my mother’s heritage I would never force a child on an unwilling woman.”
Doubt whispered in the back of Nimue’s mind at his words. They weren’t the words she’d expected from him. Was his horror at the situation not because the thought of siring a child with her repelled him, but because he thought she must hate the circumstances?
“Tacitus.” Once again she reached for him but he stiffened as though her touch was unwelcome. She hesitated for a moment, then gripped his arm regardless. He didn’t jerk away. “I wasn’t unwilling.”
He looked as if her confession shredded his soul. It didn’t make sense. What else could she say to make him understand that she no longer loathed the thought of having his child?
“How the gods delight in exacting their vengeance.” His words were bitter, and although he looked at her, Nimue had the feeling he didn’t see her at all. “The blood of Rome triumphs once again.”
Unease snaked through her at the wild look in his eyes. “I don’t know what you mean.”
He didn’t seem to hear her. “How I despised my father for what he did to my mother. What choice did she have? Yet now I find I’m no better, despite my lofty pledges.”
Self-disgust dripped from every word and Nimue stared at him as disjointed fragments of all their conversations tumbled through her mind.
She’d jumped to conclusions at his disclosure that he possessed two mothers. Tacitus had never truly clarified what he’d meant. Now she thought about it, his reaction to her assumption had been oddly…muted.
Her stomach churned as another possibility reared its unsavory head. Surely not. Tacitus belonged to the upper echelons of Roman society. She didn’t know a great deal about the patrician class but she knew enough. Romans didn’t embrace those they considered their inferiors into their jealously guarded noble ranks.
Yet the thought plagued her mind as Tacitus’ tortured gaze scorched her face.
My mother is Greek. When he’d told her that, she had imagined his mother to be a high-ranking Greek lady, related somehow to Tacitus’ Roman-born mother.
What choice did she have?
Skeletal fingers raked over her flesh as she saw beyond his words to the anguish beneath. To the underlying reasons why he was so conflicted whenever he mentioned his parentage to her.
“Your mother,” she whispered. “Your Greek mother, Tacitus. Why did she not have a choice?”
He gripped her arms and jerked her toward him. “Slaves don’t have the choice to say no, do they, Nimue?” His words were savage but despair filled his eyes. “They’re at the mercy of their masters’ whims. They don’t even have the right to keep their child if their master decrees otherwise.”
Pain engulfed her heart as finally she understood. His birth mother hadn’t given him up at all. He had been taken from her and given to his father’s Roman wife. “I’m so sorry.” It was hard to speak through the lump that choked her throat and the words were muffled. But he heard her and looked at her, as though he didn’t understand; as if she spoke a barbaric tongue that he had never before encountered.
“I would have done anything to prevent this outcome.” He sounded so wretched her heart squeezed with pain.
He’d misunderstood her words.
“No, Tacitus.” It was important he realized that, unlike his mother, she did have a choice. That she had knowingly made a choice. “I could have prevented this. But I chose not to take my womb cleansing tea. Arianrhod intervened—but only because she knew how much I wanted this.”
How surreal that she said such things to him, a Roman. And how humbling for her Druid pride to know that she meant every word.
He looked at her as though he couldn’t process the depth of her confession. “I’ve dishonored my mother and my sisters. I swore on their names a child of mine would never be stigmatized in such a way.”
Nimue pulled free of his grip and grasped his jaw in one hand, forcing him to look at her instead of looking through her. “No child of mine will ever be stigmatized, either.” Did he think she would allow their child to be thought of as a slave by all of Rome? “You aren’t, after all.”
He gave a bitter laugh, but instead of thrusting her aside, he covered her hand with his, and pressed her palm against the roughness of his jaw. “My father was desperate to sire a son. I have seventeen older half-sisters, all conceived with various slaves. In their eighth month he granted their manumission, in the hope the child would be a boy. He had no intention of his only son being born into slavery.”
“Your father took all the babies away from their birth mothers?” She tried to keep the horror from her voice because she didn’t want Tacitus to think she judged him. But the tortured look that flashed across his face made it clear that she hadn’t succeeded.
“He had no interest in daughters, Nimue. They may have been born free but he didn’t acknowledge them as his own. They’re merely the bastards of his freedwomen. But they’re still my sisters.”
Repressed anger vibrated through every word and she stared at him, transfixed. His culture placed little value on females. Yet despite the actions of his father, she knew Tacitus would never turn his back on his child, simply because it wasn’t a son.
Hadn’t the commander said he would never abandon the child of the woman he loved? Why did she think of her father now? Was it because she knew, in her heart, that her mother had seen the same noble qualities in her Roman officer that Nimue saw in Tacitus?
“The Emperor granted permission for my father to adopt me. I lived in luxury while my sisters toiled as servants. My father could never understand why I insisted on recognizing our blood link.”
She had the savage urge to plunge her dagger through Tacitus’ father’s arrogant heart. “It’s clear you don’t take after your father at all in such matters.”
Not only did she mean the words with every fiber of her being, she meant them to comfort Tacitus. But he jerked back from her, as if her words scalded, and a wild light gleamed in his eyes.
“You’re wrong.” His gazed raked over her, burning her skin. “We’re more alike than I ever imagined. You’ll only stay if you’re not allowed to leave. What choice is that, Nimue?”
Before she could even fully process his caustic question he snatched up his cloak, swung it around his shoulders and marched from the room.