Early 75 BC, the coast of the Iberian peninsula:
From the deck of her trireme, Stratonice stood wrapped in silence, staring out at the dull grey waters, and wondered how far her bloodline had truly fallen. The once mighty Seleucid dynasty, born in the fires of Alexander's conquests and Greek blood sweat and tears, rulers of an empire that once stretched from the Aegean coast to the far reaches of Bactria was now little more than a fading shadow. Two centuries of kings, of cities and victories, now reduced to scattered names in forgotten temples.
It hadn't fallen all at once. First, the Parthians carved away the eastern provinces. Then came the Romans chipping at what was left like scavengers pulling meat from bone. And now the final insult to Syria, her home, the land where she'd played as a child where she studied in palaces, wept in gardens was no longer theirs. It had been taken. Stolen. By that Armenian upstart, Tigranes "the Great," as he called himself, with no shame in the title. He'd marched in and claimed her father's throne and had the audacity to call himself Basileus of the Seleucid Empire, as if the name belonged to him, as if blood and legacy could be worn like a borrowed cloak.
In desperation, her family sent her away. Not to reclaim the throne. That dream had rotted years ago. No, they sent her to Hispania, Iberia, as her people still called it. A far cry from Antioch. Dry hills, foreign tongues, Roman banners everywhere. The Romans called it a province, but she knew it was just another front in their endless war. The whole Republic was tearing itself to pieces, men with too much pride and too many legions fighting their own people for control of a city that believed it ruled the world.
She was here for one of those men. Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus. Pompey. A general with blood on his hands and ambition in his eyes. An ally of Sulla, Rome's so-called dictator in the past and unlike Sulla and the senate he didn't wage war on her fellow hellenes so maybe he can be reasoned with. She didn't come to admire him. She came because he was cleaning up what was left of Sulla's enemies here, and once he finished, they said he'd be the one to decide who gets Rome's favor next.
And so here she was, drifting toward a Roman port like a ghost of a lost empire, hoping to plead with a man whose ancestors had once feared her people, whose armies now treated them like vassals. A hundred years ago, Rome had broken the Seleucid yoke and made them little more than a puppet state. And now she came to beg for help. It made her sick. She wanted to laugh, or scream, or spit into the sea.
But she stayed silent. Chin high. The daughter of kings, even in exile.
Finally, after nearly a month of waiting in his dusty, sun-bleached camp, she saw him.
Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus.
He came striding through the chaos of marching men and barking orders like a man born into command. Broad shouldered, not yet thirty, with dark, brown-black hair and that look she'd come to expect from Romans: a mix of amusement and disdain, like everything around him was either beneath him or about to be. His eyes flicked over her like she was something to be weighed, not greeted.
Then he spoke.
"Welcome, welcome," he said, voice smooth, practiced, just shy of mocking. "It's not every day I meet a princess. Even if she is a Graci, I welcome you as a representative of Rome."
The word Graci dripped from his mouth like spoiled wine. He meant hellen a man or woman from hellas but not the way her ancestors had meant it. He meant it like a stain.
She didn't flinch. She had learned long ago not to.
"Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus," she said with steady formality, "your name has travelled far. They say without you, Rome is without its sword. I've come with news from the East. My kingdom, your ally, your tributary, has been conquered. Taken by a man who calls himself king. Tigranes of Armenia."
He cut her off before she could say more, his smirk widening. "And what business is that of Rome?" he said, voice now colder, more real. "That some minor Hellenistic kingdom lost its throne? For all I care, the East can burn itself to ash. You Greeks have a saying, don't you? Ahh yes. 'The strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.' "
He leaned slightly closer, his tone hardening. "So do what you must. And suffer from it. Your tribute was never a promise of protection. It was payment for being allowed to exist."
For a moment, she could barely breathe. Her fingers twitched at her sides, her jaw clenched tight. It felt like her blood boiled under her skin.
But then something came to her like a flash in the dark.
"Mithridates," she said, almost spitting the name. "Tigranes has married his daughter. They're bound now. An alliance."
That got his attention. She saw his eyes sharpen, the cockiness pull back just a fraction.
"You know Mithridates," she pressed, voice cutting through the tent like a knife. "Your enemy. The one Sulla waged war against, the one Rome still fears. You think Tigranes just wants Armenia? He's building something bigger. Something that includes your enemies. You ignore this, and you'll have war again in the East. A war you are not ready for with your petty civil war raging on."
She let the words hang in the air. Let him stew in the weight of them. Behind her calm, her heart was beating faster than ever.
Pompey was silent for a moment, Then, slowly, a half smile formed not the mocking one from earlier, but something cooler. Measured.
"You came here to inform me of what I already know," he said. "Tigranes of Armenia married the daughter of Mithridates months ago. You're late, Princess."
Stratonice blinked. Her face didn't move, but she felt the shame sting under her skin. He kept speaking.
"Mithridates of Pontus is no stranger to Rome. We've broken him before, but he always slithers back. Now he hides behind Tigranes' throne and calls it an alliance." He looked her dead in the eyes. "This isn't your petty dynastic squabble anymore. It's a war between the Republic and kings who think they can challenge it."
He stepped closer, almost gently, as if explaining something to a stubborn child. "And Syria? Syria will be Roman. When this war ends and it will end soon there will be no Seleucid restoration. No ancient bloodlines crawling back from their graves. Rome doesn't protect kingdoms anymore. They become Rome."
Her voice was tighter now, the edge showing. "That throne belongs to my family. You call it petty, but it was Rome who demanded our tribute. Who acknowledged our kings."
Pompey gave a dry laugh. "We acknowledged what was useful to us. Your dynasty is finished. You're a name without a sword."
"Rome has no honor," she spat, her voice sharp and venomous. "You crawl through the mud, wearing crowns stolen from men who never had the courage to wear them! Your empire is built on bones… bones of those too weak to fight back. You and your Senate parasites. I should've let Tigranes take us and be done with it."
Pompey's smirk never wavered. His eyes glinted with something darker now, something colder. He took a slow step forward, his frame looming like a shadow over her.
"I think you need to remember your place, Princess," he said, his voice a low, dangerous hum. "Your bloodline may have ruled once, but you're nothing now. Nothing but a tool for Rome's expansion, a prize to be taken, used, and discarded."
Stratonice drew herself up, defiant, despite the fury trembling in her chest. "I'd rather die on my feet than kneel before a bastard like you."
Pompey's gaze darkened, and without another word, he reached for her arm, gripping it tightly, painfully. "You won't die. You'll serve. You'll learn your place, just like every other broken piece of your so-called kingdom."
Her heart pounded in her chest, but she didn't break. Not yet. "I'd rather see myself dead before I ever bow to you!"
Pompey's smirk shifted, a slow, cruel smile twisting at the corners of his mouth. He leaned in, his breath hot against her ear. "You'll learn, Princess. You'll learn soon enough."
With a brutal yank, he dragged her towards him, his grip like iron. The soldiers nearby didn't even glance up. To them, it was already settled.
Stratonice's pulse raced. Her body stiffened, her mind whirling as he pulled her through the camp and dragged her through his camp where once stood proud people of this land now there was ash and blood , now under the boot of Rome.
And as they reached the center of the camp, where the fires of the Roman legions burned bright, the tension in the air grew thick. She could feel the cruelty building in his grip, and the fear churned in her stomach like a slow poison.
Then, just before Pompey's next words just before everything that could break her began to fall and they were about to close the flap of the tent he pushed her to she still fought with the last of her strength, twisting in his grasp, screaming at the top of her lungs.
Later that same year:
Once, she had stood as the proud princess of a dynasty two centuries old, heir to a legacy of a broken but storied crown. Now she sat shackled aboard a Roman trireme, just another piece of plunder. A spoil of war. A slave.
She didn't even know where they were taking her. Somewhere in Italy, maybe. Pompey had muttered something about sending her to his wife, perhaps as a handmaid, or worse. She hadn't listened. It didn't matter. Nothing did.
Her wrists were raw from the iron. Her honor was gone. Pompey made sure of it when he defiled her. Her country, gone. Her family, scattered or in the grave. Whatever part of her had once burned with fury had long since gone cold.
She stared at the wooden planks above her, feeling every creak of the ship beneath her skin like a slow heartbeat. The sea air no longer felt like freedom. It was just salt and wind and silence.
Then after days came her chance.
Her slaveholder, tired and careless, pulled her up from the lower hold and onto the upper deck for some air. Maybe he thought it would keep her from dying too soon. Maybe he just didn't care.
The sky above was gray and endless. The sea rolled out around them like a flat grave.
She walked slowly to the edge, barefoot, bruised, her thin frame clinging to her in the wind. No one noticed. The Romans were too busy laughing, shouting orders, gambling away silver they'd stolen from the bones of her people.
She stood at the edge, toes over wood, hair whipping around her face.
For a moment, she hesitated. Not out of fear, but out of habit. That small, dying voice inside her asked: What if there's still something left?
But there wasn't. She knew that now. There was nothing left to save. Not within herself, nor in the world that had taken everything.
She stepped off the edge.
The cold swallowed her instantly. No screaming, no flailing. Just silence. Just the deep.
As she sank beneath the waves, she let herself hope for the first time in years not for life, not for vengeance, but for peace. For Elysium, or whatever lay beyond the cruelty of men.
Let the sea take her. Let the gods judge. She closed her eyes, and finally, there was quiet.
But Elysium never came.
No boatman waited in the dark to carry her across the black river. No celestial judges rose to weigh her soul. No warm fields of Elysium welcomed her into peace. Instead, there was cold, silence, and... light.
Stratonice opened her eyes underwater, expecting the searing burn of lungs desperate for air but it never came. She wasn't drowning. She was breathing.
Panic and awe gripped her in equal measure. Her limbs moved freely, her hair floating like seaweed around her face, her thin shift billowing softly. The ocean cradled her like a womb.
And then she saw him.
A figure in the murky blue slowly becoming clearer. A man. Tall, lean but strong, with skin bronzed by sun and salt, his hair black as midnight, his beard short and clean. But it was his eyes that rooted her in place eyes like emerald fire, sharper than any she'd ever seen. Greener even than hers.
He moved toward her without a ripple. As though the sea itself parted for him, even worshiped him. There was no fear in him, no hesitation. Just a strange intensity, as if he'd been waiting.
Her lips parted, trying to speak, but only a soft bubble escaped. He raised a hand and touched her wrist lightly, and warmth bloomed through her veins like sunlight in winter.
"You are not meant to die here," he said.
"Who are you?" she asked.
"I am called many things," he answered, voice calm as the current. "But for now, I am your guide."
She stared. "To where?"
His smile was faint, but it reached his eyes. "I do not know yet."
She wanted to protest. To scream that she wasn't needed at all. That her kingdom was gone, that she was nothing. But something about the way he held her gaze stilled her.
He reached out his hand again, palm up.
"Come," he said. "You are not done with this world." Against every instinct, she took it.
And when she awoke, sputtering on the deck of the Roman trireme, soaked and shivering under a stunned sky, she saw him standing above her, real, as flesh and blood. The crew had dragged her up, cursing in Latin, unsure how she had survived.
But he stood there among them, somehow unnoticed, his eyes only on her.
"You live," he said softly, kneeling beside her.
Her lips trembled. "Why?".
He gave no answer. Only tucked a loose strand of wet hair behind her ear, his hand lingering.
The days that followed passed in a strange haze.
Stratonice remained shackled below deck, packed in with the rest of the slaves—women, men, children, all bound for Roman markets. The air was heavy with the stink of sweat and fear. The ship rocked with the rhythm of misery.
But at night… he came.
No one ever saw him. No one ever spoke his name. To the others, he was a ghost, or perhaps a hallucination. But she knew he was real. The man from the sea—the one who had brought her back when she had given up everything.
He appeared out of nowhere after the guards changed shifts, stepping silently between the sleeping bodies. Sometimes he simply sat beside her, their shoulders touching, saying nothing at all. Other times, he brought her scraps of food or a damp cloth to soothe the sores on her wrists. Once, he even brought her a book, a small Greek volume on faded parchment and read aloud from it by lantern-light, the foreign syllables folding softly in the dark.
They spoke in whispers. About nothing, and everything.
His name, he told her one night, was Neptune. Not quite the Greek Poseidon, but he never explained the difference. She told him about Antioch. About the gardens she used to walk in barefoot, before the sun rose. About the weight of the diadem on her head as a child, and the first time her mother taught her how to bow without seeming weak.
He listened.
He told her about watching empires rise and fall. About how people changed names, gods, but the sea stayed the same. He did not speak like a man of her time. And sometimes, she caught him watching the waves like he could still hear something inside them.
Still, he made her feel human again. Not a trophy. Not a body.
A woman.
She stopped trying to understand how he came and went unnoticed. Whether he was real in the way others were real didn't matter anymore. What mattered was that she waited for him-and he came.
One night, as the ship neared the western coast of Italia, the moon hung low over the water, casting silver light through the cracks in the hull. The guards were drunk. The slaves were restless.
He came to her again.
Her wrists were bare that night he had slipped the cuffs loose days ago. He took her hand and led her, barefoot and silent, up through the belly of the ship. Past the snoring legionnaires, past the oil lamps swaying with the sea.
He embraced her. The night was cold, but she didn't care, he made her warm. The stars above were wide and sharp, and for the first time in weeks, she could feel the wind in her hair.
He turned to her after finally fixing what Pompey destroyed all that time ago, hands still holding hers.
"You're not broken," he said softly.
She laughed bitterly. "No. Just bent beyond repair."
But his gaze didn't waver. "Not to me." After a comfortable silence he spoke. "You've reached your destination. It's my time to leave you now before I draw unwanted attention to you." Just after he finished his sentence, he cupped her in his hands, kissed her, and told her to close her eyes. Soon after, there was light, and when she opened her eyes, he was gone. But, even while sad, she was happy, holding her belly, knowing her lover's final gift to her, a child.