Devon did not hang around long after he’d eaten his fill, but left Tina to her own devices and a table still overladen with treats both sweet and salty and savory.

“I can’t possibly eat another thing,” she confessed to the last dining room attendant, a tallish but thin man with a prominent nose dominating his narrow face. “What happens to the food that’s left over?”

Other than the consul and a few muscular characters they’d come across most of the population of twelfth-century Constantinople, including those serving her and Devon seemed distinctly underfed.

“What is not perishable will be sold, mistress,” the man whose name was Basil of all things, told her. “The rest would be shared between the servants and the beasts of the stables.”

That made Tina feel a bit less guilty about leaving the half-loaded table. It didn’t sound like any of it would go to waste.

To work off her full to bursting belly, she wandered the halls of the quiet and seeming near-empty palace for a while, finally returning to her rooms to find her servant woman, Cassia, waiting for her on one of the divans, rising as she crossed back over the threshold into her suite.

“Do you wish another bath?” Cassia, her servant asked. “Perhaps a massage with scented oils to ease your tired muscles?”

Tired muscles? She’s barely had any exercise to warrant such a luxury.

“No, not right now,” she told the woman. “But a bath in the morning would be welcome. First light?”

The woman nodded.

“I will go and ensure it will be prepared,” the woman told her, started heading out, then looked back, as if in question.

“You can go,” Tina told her, torn between enjoying being pampered and guilt for enjoying it so much. Then she settled down on a chair on the balcony, to look out over the byzantine city at night. It was quiet, but for distant noises, barking, roosters crowing, cries, maybe a scream, she couldn’t tell, nor if it was the good kind of scream or the bad kind.

And she thought about the day, what she’d seen, all that she’d learned from Devon. And what it might feel like standing in that arena, a mini conflagration in her hand, ready to fight, win, or get literally burned.

If she wasn’t looking over a Constantinople a thousand years before she was borne, she could have easily dismissed all that talk of her being here for a reason, chosen by a hammer, named Lola of all things, to fight for it’s... what? Where was Thor when you needed him. Well, maybe he had more important things to do. Besides, he already had a hammer, he didn’t need another one, least of all named Lola.

Tina couldn’t help giggling at that again.

But did she not want to win, even a hammer?

Did she just want to hand out in this place until she could go back to Toronto. Or did she want to do something, accomplish something amazing? Something that would, in the real world, earn her a million fans on Instagram or any other site like that, standing on a podium, holding a magic hammer high over her head.

It had been some time since she’d played a real match, or any kind of playoffs or championship game, one with serious stakes, and against a truly scary opponent who would be worth smashing in the face.

Sadly, she didn’t have her phone in this time to capture such things for posterity. Damn time travel rules!

“Now you're admitting that you’ve wanted this all along,” there little voice said.

Tina let out a sigh.

“Okay, maybe a little,” she agreed.

Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad.

Maybe she wouldn’t get herself killed or even burned. There had to be some way to protect herself in the arena. Armor? Some kind of gel-like stuntpeople used in the movies?

She was even more motivated when she got up in the morning, having spent all night allowing herself to be convinced. Cleaned up after bath and dressed in a fresh stola, Tina sought out the dwarf.

She found him at the breakfast table another sumptuous feast made for an Emperor laid out before him.

“Are you going to eat all that?” she asked.

He looked up from the plate he was eating from.

“Something different about you this morning?” he asked.

“I had a good night’s rest,” she admitted. “And I did some thinking.”

He pushed his plate away from him.

“Really,” he said. “What about?”

“About this championship game of yours,” she told him. “We didn’t get to talk much about it yesterday. And maybe it isn’t so bad as the first impression I got.”

“Are you sure,” he offered in a suspicious tone. “You seemed rather sure of yourself last night that having a match with the lioness was the very last thing you wanted to do.”

Now with reverse psychology? Tina smirked at him.

“Are we going to the arena or do we sit here for the next week?” she asked.