Bunica had told me and my sisters the story of Medusa and her own sisters, who’d been given special gifts by the goddess Minerva. I’d never believed it until the night I’d almost killed Valerius, the night I felt the magic surging inside me.
“Fascinating,” said the stranger, his expression pinched with concern.
“But why keep her?” demanded Quintus. “Now that you know she’s so deadly. She’s a coiled serpent, waiting to strike. Look at her. Even now, she stares as if she’s plotting against us. Her pulse is steady, her heart as cold as ice.”
Valerius’s grin widened. “Oh, she can get hot enough.”
Quintus chuckled. “I bet she can.”
Valerius tossed the half-eaten peach on the platter and wiped his fingers on a fold of his green toga. “Besides, I like the reminder tobe wary. When death lives in your home, you never let down your guard.”
His eyes glinted with menace and a promise that he would never give me a second chance to kill him. In that first fit of rage, I’d ruined my opportunity. Rather than plan it out and find the right moment, I’d reacted to the fear and dread of being raped. I’d given my heart and body and soul to Jardani and couldn’t allow another man to take what wasn’t his. I’d reacted like a free woman, not the slave I’d become.
And so now, it was hopeless. This was my life, unless I ended it.
I longed for the coolness of the temple in the back of Valerius’s home. My only place of solace. For when I was within its quiet, chilled walls, I could imagine that I was in fact in my own crypt. I welcomed the stillness like death.
“Good thing you don’t need her mouth to make good use of her,” added Quintus.
They all laughed, except for the younger senator. His blue eyes flared bright for a fleeting second.
“Beware, Consul Valerius.”
His voice had dropped deep, his dragon present. A prickle of power skated across my skin, raising gooseflesh. The other three stopped laughing and looked at him.
“Death lurks everywhere in Rome. We should all heed caution. None of us suspected Legatus Julianus of being a traitor and yet he was. Legatus Ciprian didn’t suspect him, and now he’s dead. Julianus even fooled me, his own second-in-command. Best be mindful, senators, or death will find you sooner than you think.”
The handsome senator in blue of the House of Sapphirus spoke in a low, rumbling timbre, his dominance radiating across the room, pressing these smaller men down with only a few words. Again, mypulse quickened and not out of fear for once. But because I knew there was a power greater than my master, greater than my misery.
“You’re quite right, Trajan,” conceded Valerius, clearing his throat nervously.
Trajan.
I let the name sift through my mind as the man himself picked up his own cup and drank, his gaze flicking to me, the piercing blue of his dragon brightening before he looked away again.
With a warning that put my master and his foul comrades in their place, Trajan had given me something I never dared dream to let flicker inside my heart again… hope.
With a wave of his hand, Valerius cleared his throat and said, “Dance, Roza. Give us something pretty to look at.”
Quintus chuckled, his lecherous stare returning to Roza. Without hesitation, I moved to the side of the atrium, deeper into the shadows of a column.
Quintus was right about one thing. My heart was cold, and I did often dream about ways I could kill them all. But after my punishment last time—chained to Valerius’s bed for a week, suffering the whippings with his leather crop and the violent violations of my body, all proving he was my master—I never dared step out of line.
Survival was my goal now. To outlive this monster and hope to be sold to a better master. That was no true hope at all. But it was all I could manage to realistically imagine.
They laughed at something I hadn’t heard. I was no longer listening, though I did watch the senator named Trajan. He’d served under the infamous general, nephew to the emperor, who’d defied his uncle and killed a fellow patrician for his slave woman.
Why couldn’t that have been my fate? Why did the gods abandon me for this miserable existence?
I needed the temple and the relief I could find only there.
Andreas entered with another carafe of wine. He wore the silky green tunic that was no more than a short skirt and a thin sash crossing one shoulder, leaving his shoulders and most of his chest bare. Andreas was a beautiful man, a sandy-haired Greek taken into slavery when he was a boy. He’d been in this household since he was twelve, serving Valerius’s varied sexual appetites since he was little more than a child.
When I fell too far into despair, I’d remind myself that Andreas had been here his entire adult life, and though his body was not his own, his soul was whole, beautiful and bright. Perhaps it was worse for me because I had known freedom and love. I understood what I’d lost the night those Romans in half-skin had killed my family, my Jardani, and had stolen me away.
At least Malina had escaped, I reminded myself. I hoped she did anyway. Papa had yelled for her to run, and I’d seen her flee into the woods. None of the Romans had followed. I hoped and prayed many times since that night that my wild sister had escaped across the world, far away from Rome. If she had escaped to live a better life, then I could withstand anything.
As Andreas refilled Leto’s wine goblet, he met my gaze across the room, giving me a subtle smile. Always checking on me. I wouldn’t have survived this madhouse if it weren’t for him.
