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“That’s cruel,” Lucilla says, and it’s true; it is cruel, and it surprises her - her husband is a lot of things, but he isn’t cruel.
Not when he can avoid it at least, and she can count on fingers of one hand the amount of times circumstances led Acacius to atrocities. Yet, the slave believing that they can and will help rescue his deceased wife feels like an unnecessary act of malevolence.
Acacius presses a kiss to her palm.
“There is something about him,” he explains. “What, I do not know. But I couldn’t… I didn’t want to kill him. There had been enough blood. And he would have killed me otherwise.” She gasps at the information, and she isn’t ready for the sudden hatred she feels for the slave suddenly.
She loves her husband. She wants, for a moment, nothing more than to see Hanno chained to a post, a whip digging into his back for his insolence. How dare he attack her husband. How dare he attack a Roman. The General of Rome, no less.
“And I’m sure his broad shoulders and handsome face had nothing to do with it,” she teases and he smiles at her, bashful.
“Of course not,” he tells her, serious, but there is some spark in his eyes. The amusement clear. She loves him something crazy, she thinks.
“Very well, then,” she says. “Let’s keep him.”