What are you most afraid I’ll see and turn away from?
What do you need me to know about the boy you were?
My pen hesitates there, then underlines the last question.
These aren’t interview questions. They’re the things you ask someone when you’re trying to understand the shape of their heart, not the structure of their trauma.
Rome has always been, for me, a collection of texts and artifacts and reconstructed models. This morning, watching him move in the sand, it became something else.
It became him.
If I’m going to stand beside him—through this complaint, through whatever comes after—I want to understand the world that forged him. Not as a scholar. As the woman who loves him.
I close the notebook gently, palm resting over the cover for a moment.
Outside, somewhere across the grounds, I can almost feel the echo of wooden swords striking, bodies moving through old patterns in new light.
On my desk, my notebook waits with its new sentence:I love him.
I open the notebook and touch my fingertips to the ink, as if that will help it sink in.
For the first time, it doesn’t feel like a distraction from the life I’m building.
It feels like part of the truth I’m finally refusing to abandon.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Flavius
Sophia waits for me on the low stone wall near the herb beds, knees drawn up, arms wrapped around them—not curled in, not protecting herself.
Thinking.
Sorting.
The sky behind her is washed pale by evening, cicadas rising like heat. She looks up when I approach, and something opens in her expression—wariness and welcome both.
“Something is on your mind,” I say gently. “You have been carrying it all day.”
She nods. “Funny how you know me so well. I think… I need to understand where you came from. Not the academic version. Not the outline in the file.” I swallow. “You said once that humor saved you. I didn’t fully understand what that meant.”
My throat goes tight—the way it did in the arena when a blow landed under my guard. Silent. Stunning. Impossible to hide.
There are memories I have learned to hold at a distance.
I sit beside her. Space between us, but not much. Her knee almost touches mine when she shifts toward me.
“You want truth,” I say. “Not the Jester’s story.”
“Yes,” she whispers.
