"Where did you learn?" she asks.
Rome, I think.From a drunk named Titus who taught me to palm coins in exchange for half my daily take.But that’s not exactly a conversation I’m ready to have.
"Here and there," I say instead. "You pick things up when you need to survive."
She nods as if this makes perfect sense, then gets up and moves to the small kitchen area, restless, trying to process everything. The fruit bowl gets repositioned exactly two inches to the left. A dishtowel gets refolded.
"I've never had anyone in here before," she says without looking at me. "I mean, except for staff who occasionally clean or bring supplies. But never… anyone."
"This is your private space."
"My sanctuary." She abandons the honey jar and moves to the bookshelf in the living area, running her fingers along the spines. "I come here when the main house gets too overwhelming. When I need to think or just… breathe."
The main house. Right. Through the trees, I caught glimpses of what looked like a mansion. "You live… alone?"
"With my parents." She pulls a book from the shelf—poetry, from what I can see—then slides it back in place. "But it's a big house. We don't… interact much."
"You don’t have to be nervous," I tell her. "I meant what I said—I’m not going to hurt you."
"I’m not nervous about that." She stops moving and looks at me directly.
Suddenly she’s close. Close enough that I can smell the lavender on her skin, and every part of me wants to close the distance. The air between us feels charged.
The gladiator in me calculates distance, leverage, escape routes. The man I’ve become forces a different discipline — restraint.
Control used to mean survival. Now it means not touching her until she asks. But holding back sharpens everything—her scent, her breath, the way her presence pulls at me.
It suddenly sneaks up on me—how beautiful she is. Petite, maybe 5'2" in her expensive flats.
Her platinum blonde hair catches the dim light streaming through the cottage windows, so pale it's almost silver, falling straight and smooth past her shoulders. But it's her eyes that get me—pale blue, almost silver in certain light, like winter sky. Porcelain skin that probably never sees the sun, delicate features that belong in some Renaissance painting.
But then I notice the rest.
Her shoulders have more strength than softness. Her arms look like they know work—real work, the kind you do with your hands. And her chin is set with a determination that doesn’t match the fragile packaging.
She looks breakable at a glance, but she isn’t.
"I’m nervous because I don’t know what I’m supposed to do now." She answers the question I’d forgotten I asked. "There’s no protocol for this situation."
"Protocol?"
"I’ve been… sheltered," she says simply. "Very sheltered. Homeschooled. My parents… they worry about everything. Every possible danger, every risk, every way the world might hurt me." She laughs, but there’s no humor in it. "They’d have a heart attack if they knew I was here with you right now."
She turns toward the window, looking out toward the main house, and her shoulders look tight as concrete.
Something ancient stirs in me — the old instinct to read bodies the way I once read an arena crowd. Not for weakness. For danger. For what might be coming.
She isn’t prey, and this isn’t a fight, but my mind still catalogs every tension in her frame, every flicker of fear she tries to hide. Two thousand years, and the training doesn’t fade.
She’s fragile in some ways, but the curve of her shoulders and the strength in her arms say she’s worked for something. That hidden steel pulls at me harder than her porcelain-doll face ever could.
"They sound protective," I say carefully.
"They’re terrified." She turns back to me. "After… after they lost someone important, they became obsessed with keeping me safe. Sometimes I think they’d put me in a bubble if they could."
Lost someone. The careful way she says it tells me everything—death, probably sudden, probably traumatic enough to turn her parents into overprotective guardians.
"That must be lonely," I say.
