Praetorian Series [4] All Roads Lead to Rome Read Online Free

damage.
    I couldn’t bring myself to watch, so I turned my attention to the woman standing at my left.
    “What happened?”  I asked her.
    There was no reply.
    “How are you not still bedridden?”
    The words were out of my mouth before I even knew I said them.  I was unable to think straight at the moment, which wasn’t something I was used to.  I’d lived my entire life in a stressful world filled with fear and apprehension, performing a job function that required hyper-diligence and razor-edged focus.  My associations with others had always been blunt, to the point, and pertinent to a particular inquiry.  I didn’t ask questions without thinking about them first, but too much had happened today.  My clarity of mind was gone.
    “How are you even walking?”  I tried.
    The woman still didn’t turn to me or answer my question, and I began to feel that patented Hunter anger bubbling up inside me.
    “ Helena! ”  I yelled.
    And finally, my exclamation had the desired the effect.  Helena, the beautiful sniper who had found her way into my brother’s heart, and who had more amazingly allowed Jacob into her own, whirled on me, her bright green eyes blazing. I took a step back, unprepared for her normally lovely face turning such a vehemently angry expression on me.
    “What?!”  She demanded.
    I almost crumbled completely under the harshness of her voice, but I was too curious to back down now.  Instead, I took a step forward.
    “What happened to you, Helena?”  I asked, taking yet another step and reaching out to grip Helena’s arm with my hand.
    Her green eyes softened and her expression shifted from rage to confusion in an instant.
    “What do you mean?”  She asked.
    I lifted my other hand so that I could hold her by her shoulders.  “Helena, you were pregnant.  You were sick.  There were complications and James… James…”
    I trailed off, finally remembering the morbid truth behind what laid upon the table, wrapped in rags.  But it didn’t seem to register with Helena.  There she stood, seemingly strong and healthy, although I knew she should still be recovering after the emergency C-section that had saved her life, but not the life of the son she and Jacob had conceived.
    Her eyes narrowed and her lips parted as she seemed to concentrate, her face angled toward the ground, but I could still see her eyes flitting left and right, searching the ground as though she would find her thoughts there.  Suddenly, she lifted her head so that she could look at me and as our eyes met, her lower lip started to quiver, and I knew she finally remembered.
    Together, we looked at the table that held her son, but before I had the chance to offer her any comfort, she dropped to her knees, bringing me down with her as her hands clung to my clothes.  And that’s when she started to wail, tears of horrendous pain and grief pouring from her eyes. She wrapped her arms around me and threatened to drag me down to the floor, but I used all my strength to keep her on her knees. I wasn’t sure if she thought of me as anything more than a stake in the ground for her to wrap herself around, but I pulled her in close as well as I could as she wept over the loss of her son.
    “Shhh… Helena,” I soothed as I rocked her.  “Everything’s going to be all right.”
    But I wasn’t sure everything was going to be all right at all.
    Jacob was gone.  Possessed by an ancient, evil power, he was being manipulated by a seductress with great ambition.  I didn’t think Helena knew anything about that yet, and I wasn’t sure how she would react when she did.  She’d already lost the boy who would become the most important man in her life, and I wasn’t sure how she would react when she learned that she had already lost the other.
    I wasn’t sure anything would ever be all right again.

Part One
     
     
     
     
    I
    Aftermath
     
    Central Britain
    March, 44 A.D.
    Diana Hunter
     
    The minutes that followed were full