"Brutus?" Freja repeated, her voice uncertain, almost hesitant.
The dimly lit room was heavy with tension. Shadows flickered across the cracked stone walls, cast by the lone oil lamp that hung from a crooked beam. The hidden house, buried beneath the outskirts of the city, had become their last refuge.
Once, it had only sheltered Crassus, his wife Tertulla, and their children—along with Pompey, whose presence was already risky enough. But after Johanna's discovery of the previous hideout, Freja, Elin, Servilia, Ameriah, and Auria had been brought here under the cover of night.
The place was large enough to hold them all for a few days—spacious by common standards, but suffocating with over ten souls crammed inside. Ten strangers bound by circumstance, their alliances uncertain, their silences full of unspoken distrust. Still, it was the only place Caesar's reach couldn't yet touch.
That night, Nathan had come.
