The Centurion's Woman

Chapter 1

        He watched her, but she didn't move. Her bottom lip was tucked between her teeth, as whenever she was thinking, with her gaze fixed on his face. He could see thoughts flicking behind her dark brown eyes, but she voiced none of them.

        "I do not know how to say the words," she finally said. She was speaking and answering nothing. Again. He scrubbed his hands over his face.

        "Try the truth," he suggested. "A whole truth, from start to finish."

        "What do you want to know?" she asked, her voice small.

        "Who taught you this medicine?"

        "Her name is Mikayla Wyss, she is a..." Alex paused, thinking hard. "When a man is hurt very bad, she cuts inside to fix the hurt. I do not know the word. She fixes hurts in the bone and the muscle and the," she paused, thinking again, and then pointed at her own stomach.

        He scoffed and shook his head, not able to look at her. She actually believed what she was saying, or – his greater fear – she was improving at lying the longer she was among men. He had seen surgeries done, and few men that had them lived. What Alex had done with Verus's wound, though, that hadn't been a surgery. He scrubbed his hand over his face and then glared down at her. She was still lying to him, giving half-truths and bits of facts that didn't tie together into anything.

        "A whole truth, Alexandria," he said. Ixillius hated how his voice pleaded worse the heavier the weight in his chest became. Her stare never changed, but a single tear slid down her cheek.

        "I do not know the words," she whispered. "I can draw," she blurted, spinning toward the table and clearing a place big enough for a blank page.

        He couldn't do this anymore. His body ached with the need to reach out and pull her close, but he couldn't stop thinking. She'd arrived in his life when he wanted marriage, claimed to want a child, had hidden who her father was for no reason, and still demanded he keep her a slave in spite of training many of the Legionnaires in the weeks before she was taken. It looks as though she is fitting into her skin, Verus had said when watching how she woke the first time he saw her doing so, and Ixillius hadn't been able to erase the nagging thought that his commander was right.

        He knocked her hand away when she reached for the charcoal, causing another tear on her cheek. Then she backed out of his reach, her gaze hardening as her own anger started to rise.

        "I cannot say words I do not know," she stated. "You want a whole truth? Learn to speak my mother's words."

        He didn't trust his voice, so made no reply. She picked up and threw at him the empty alcohol skein, which he caught by reflex.

        "Go get more," she ordered.

        "By the gods, Alex, just tell me one truth! One whole truth!" She met his glare with her own, then sighed and slowly shook her head, her anger dissipating quickly.

        "I cannot say words that I do not know. Get more of the bad drink. We will clean the wound again in four hours."

        Alex watched her husband storm out. He was suspicious and angry and no matter what she said he would take everything as some kind of lie. She didn't have the Latin vocabulary to explain Mikayla, a trauma surgeon turned emergency responder, and he didn't have the patience to listen to her tonight anyway. They were both too tired from the events of the day, and too worried and uncertain to speak well to each other. She needed to figure out how to talk to him, and she wasn't going to be able to do that until she wasn't worried about Verus.