He heard the footsteps before he saw her. Sura. Spartacus’s wife. She had been brought to the ludus as leverage, a beautiful ghost haunting the edges. She couldn't sleep. She wandered into the equipment shed, looking for water.

“You,” Batiatus spat. “You traitorous relic. You told the woman something. You poisoned her mind.”

Pelorus looked at his mutilated hand. “I believed the same once. That my skill, my fame, my will would shield the one I loved.” He paused. “They sent her to the mines when I lost. I never saw her face again.”

But that was the public tale. The truth, known only to a few, was different.

Pelorus watched her from the shadows. He saw the fear in her eyes—not the fear of death, but the hollow, gnawing fear of hope being tortured.

Pelorus smiled. It was a terrible thing, like a crack in a tomb. “No, Dominus. I told her the truth. That is the only poison you cannot buy an antidote for.”

But this story is not of them. It is of a ghost who walked among them.