Reader note: This chapter contains brief NSFW moments. If that's not your preference, you can skip ahead.
Livia's rooms held their heat—amber lamps, oil and spice, the last trace of her perfume riding the air. They were almost naked when the talk about Numidius burned out, heat turning into a different kind. She traced scars like lines on a map.
"Every mark a story," she said, eyes on the fresh bruises. "Today you wrote one in blood."
"Stories belong to the hand that changes an ending," he said, drawing her in, one palm at her waist, the other at the nape. The kiss had nothing of Rome's manners. She met it with a sound and nails.
The knock cut through them. Lucius turned instinctively—stillness, then coil.
"Domina—my apologies," came a careful voice. "The Cornelii celebration. The senator asks if you are preparing."
"By the gods," Livia breathed, irritation coloring the words. "Marcus Cornelius's rites. I forgot." Louder, to the door: "In an hour."
When they were alone again, the angle of her mouth changed from promise to plan. "Come with me."
"A gladiator among their sons?" Lucius asked.
"That's why." She stepped close, fingers along his jaw. "Rome already whispers what you did. Let them see the man behind the whisper."
He weighed it—names, faces, doors to mark for later. "Pain fades," he said to her glance at the bruises. "Placement lasts."
She clapped. "Helena—his bath. And the ambassador's garments." To Lucius, softer: "They play at power. You wear it."
An hour later, the sand and blood were gone from view. Dark blue silk with a pale silver edge. Cloak draped clean. Hair tamed into something Roman at a distance and foreign from up close.
Livia's eyes widened before she remembered who she was. Sapphire silk, jewels that didn't need to shout. She bit her lip without meaning to, then reached to adjust the line of his cloak. "They'll argue about which sunrise you walked out of," she murmured. "Not whether you belong."
"And tonight's story?" he asked.
"A prince from beyond our frontiers," she said, pleased. "A guest of the Cassii, tasting Rome."
The carriage was the house's best: four white horses, guards who could be mistaken for marble at ten paces. Inside, silk curtains turned the city into a soft blur of torchlight.
Lucius closed the distance as he always did—deciding and then doing. His mouth found the warm line under her ear; his hand found warmer skin beneath silk.
"We have a party," she whispered, already angling her hips for him.
"We have time," he said, voice a low line. His fingers found what he sought. "And I want you arriving remembering who writes your ending tonight."
A breath hitched. "Lie back," he told her, and she did. Silk fell. He set himself between her knees. "Do you know how to use your mouth?" he asked, holding her gaze.
She nodded, licking her lips. He freed himself; she took him with no shyness, hands finding him the way practiced hands do. He kept a fist in her hair to steer; the city's stones made the carriage add a broken rhythm. His other hand kept working her until her whispers turned into caught breath. He slapped the curve of her hip—one, two—red blooming under pale.
When the edge came, he held her where he wanted her. Release arrived measured. "Swallow," he said, quiet, absolute.
She did, eyes never leaving his, defiance and submission braided together. He drew her up, set silk back in place, pressed her to his chest, the proof of restraint still hard against her through cloth. "We stop here," he said at her ear. "Finish later." Teeth grazed her earlobe. Her body said yes before her mouth did.
The carriage slowed. Music and laughter climbed through the curtains. Livia straightened herself in two practiced breaths. "Remember your mask," she said. "Look more than speak. Let them impress you with their small worlds."
"And us?" he asked, meaning public lines.
"You are my guest," she said, a predator's smile touching her mouth. "My newest acquisition. Let them write stories. They buy me favors."
He nodded, set his face to distant curiosity and quiet dignity, and offered her his arm. The door opened; Rome's light and noise took them in.
The Cornelii had dressed the night for envy—lanterns like caged stars along the portico, a pool in the atrium seeded with petals and firelight. Youths in new togas practiced confidence; their fathers stood in deeper rooms and did the real thing.
Livia cleared space with glances. "Marcus Cornelius," she said, and the boy of the hour bowed a shade too low. "Prince Lucius, from our far East."
"The honor is mine," Lucius said, giving the inch that looks like polish. Not servility.
Questions came in practiced arcs. "From Parthia?" a blond youth asked, tasting a textbook.
"Farther," Lucius said. It landed like a line drawn in sand.
They tried on opinions they'd borrowed at home. "Dacia will fall in two summers," one said. "Domitian will finish what Nero could not," another offered, proud to use the emperor's name like a token. Lucius let them display, pressed just enough to learn. "Which roads do your quartermasters trust when winter closes the passes?" "How does Rome feed iron that far inland?" "Who pays when a year turns into two?" He watched their answers, and how they wore them.
A Cornelius uncle with a smooth smile drifted over. "How do your kings keep peace among so many tribes, Prince?" he asked. "Gold? Marriage? Steel?"
"Stories," Lucius said. The man lifted a brow. "Tell a man the right story about himself and he will guard your house for free. If it fails, steel."
"You may find friends in this city," the uncle said, amused and alert at once.
Livia ghosted in and out, adjusting lines, feeding rumors. Men watched her watching him and tried to read it.
Wine came. Music shifted. Handsome boys became careless. A girl with dark eyes and a mind behind them tested him with a curve of a question. "Do men always settle problems with blood where you come from, Prince?"
"Men use what the room gives them," he said. "Rome is famous for that."
She smiled, understanding more than most.
A wave of attention crested at the door—Marcus Cassius entering earlier than expected. Air sharpened. Livia's chin lifted a fraction. Cassius's gaze took in Lucius at a distance: the cloak, the quiet, the orbiting youths. Approval and arithmetic.
Later, in an alcove with a fresco of Mars fading to soft reds, Livia caught him. "You're doing well," she said, pleased and hungry.
"Your Gallo's ring paid a debt this morning," he said, mild. "At the baths near the Tiber gate."
Her eyes thinned, then smoothed. "Be careful with that name," she said.
"I am," he said. "He is with mine."
A blond voice, drunk on both wine and nerve, broke the pocket of quiet. "Prince," he called just loud enough, "is it true you killed a man with your hands?"
Sound thinned around them. Livia didn't move.
"I ended a problem," Lucius said. "What matters is that my domina walked away unworried."
The words landed exactly where they should: honor, protection, the house above all. Livia's eyes flashed; the youth nodded as if he'd understood something larger than the sentence.
Gifts were paraded. Verses recited—mercifully short. Men measured each other in the gaps, in glances that lasted one heartbeat too long, in smiles that didn't reach eyes.
By the time the carriage door closed on the way back, Livia's hand had already found his wrist. "That was perfect," she said, breath warm with wine and victory.
"It was a room," he said. "You showed me the walls."
"Finish what you started," she whispered, and he did, the city's stones lending the same broken rhythm to this as to the ride out. When the house swallowed them again, she refit herself into the daughter of a senator in less time than it took to exhale.
"Tomorrow," she said at the threshold, satisfaction and command braided, "be boring in the yard."
"I can be," he said.
"Liar," she smiled, and was gone.
In his rooms, the oil lamps smelled of cedar. The ache of the day had settled into its usual places. He stood a moment at the window and listened to the garden breathe. Somewhere in the dark, a watcher decided not to move. Good.
Different arena, same work: smile, listen, count, file. Spend nothing you can save. Hold what matters until showing it buys more than it costs.
He slept with silk in his nose and stone under his feet. Tomorrow would be rope and sand again. Tonight he had walked through a hall of knives without showing his throat.