His attention to my ornate, gold-plated bridle instantly dragged my own to the coldness of it against my skin and the plate in my mouth pressing down on my tongue. The metal collar was wrapped around my throat, with the muzzle sculpting over my chin, jaw, and mouth.
The bridle had been specifically designed for me. Valerius had wanted one that was elegant but still completely covered my mouth. Thin golden chains anchored it over my head so that I could still wear my hair down the way he preferred. The mechanism locked at my nape beneath my hair. He kept the key in his bedchamber. Only he or his body slave had access to it. So he thought.
Valerius had paid a high price to the sculptor. Not only for thecrafting of it but also for the emeralds encrusted in a straight line where my mouth should be.
But I had no mouth in this house, no voice at all. Not even when the bridle was off.
I walked to the center of the room, my dark, wavy hair brushing my hips. The picture of caged beauty. I turned and faced them, my demeanor cool. My mind blank and my heart frozen. As always.
“That’s right,” said Quintus to the younger senator. “This is your first visit to Valerius’s lair, isn’t it?” He chuckled, but I refused to look at him. “You’ve never seen the pretty viper he keeps in his home.”
“What do you mean?” asked the stranger.
I kept my eyes straight while all of theirs were on me, looking their fill, gorging themselves on my state of torture.
Leto, a rotund man, chimed in while chewing on his roasted lamb. “She’s a witch.”
The stranger huffed in disbelief. “There’s no such thing.”
“How can you even say that?” snarled Quintus. “When your own general was beguiled by one. They say that Celtic witch caused mayhem for our armies until Julianus took over. Then he fell spellbound by her as well.”
“You witnessed Legatus Julianus’s downfall by that woman,” added Leto, narrowing his beady eyes on the younger senator. “You had to know she was a witch. Used her powers to make him betray the emperor, his ownblood.”
“Julianus was a treasonous fool,” added my master, watching me intently. “To kill another general, burn his corpse and half of Palatine Hill, then flee Rome. For a woman?” Valerius chuckled, plucking a plump peach from a bowl at his elbow. “Idiot.”
“Yes,” agreed the handsome stranger. “General Julianus was indeed ensnared, but she was no witch. Just a woman who seduced her master and made him into a traitor.”
I absorbed the story I’d heard more than once by now. The once famous Roman general known as the Coldhearted Conqueror, nephew to Caesar, who had shifted into his giant red dragon, killed and burned another Roman patrician who’d hurt his woman, then flew with her on his back away from Rome, somewhere across the ocean. I wished I’d seen it. The beautiful fantasy of it kept me awake some nights, a dream that would never come true for me.
Refocusing on my reality, I let the cold settle in again. It was dangerous to wish for more, to wish for escape. I’d tried. And it had gotten this golden muzzle on my face and made my master maniacal and obsessive of me.
“You never said why you still keep her after what she did,” added Quintus. His gaze always devoured me, but I refused to ever look him in the eye. The day I did, I would kill him.
“What did she do?” asked the stranger.
Valerius fingered the scar on his throat. The one I’d given him. “You may not believe that your general was charmed by a sorceress, but these witches do exist. You’re looking at one.”
His voice dropped deep, his eyes glinting an otherworldly green. His dragon loved to tell this story. The one where he nearly died at my hands and survived to cage me so well.
“Quintus didn’t know what she was either until after he’d sold Lela to me. One night, when I took her to my bed, she bit me so hard that I bled.”
I stared at my master, loving to hear how I almost regained my freedom. His eerie, glittering gaze bore into mine.
“I thought it strange when she sucked the blood from the bite mark. But then I felt it, the kind of magic I feel in transformation.”
The men were riveted by his story. So was I. It had been the first time I felt the magic surge up inside of me. My bunica—my grandmother—had always told me it would come, that I would knowwhen to use it. And I had. It was the first night Valerius forced me into his bed. And the mystical powers that lived in my blood instantly awoke, fed by my rage.
“What happened?” asked the younger one.
“She spoke and told me to pick up my dagger and slit my own throat.” Valerius grinned, his fangs extending. “And I immediately did as she ordered.” He laughed. “Thank the gods, my body slave Grigor stopped me, or I’d be dead.”
“She’s god-touched,” said the stranger with such awe, I turned my attention to him.
His eyes lit with something more than curiosity or wonder. It was almost like recognition. But that couldn’t be. We’d never met.
“A child of Minerva, it seems.” Valerius tilted his head, still staring at me while he ate his peach, the juice dribbling down his chin.
“That cunt of a goddess should never have defied her betters,” grunted Quintus, guzzling his goblet of wine.
