“I forgot,” I mumbled.
“Forgot what?” asked Trajan, dragging me back from the poignant memory.
“Nothing.” I shook my head. “Let’s say I will help you. What would you require me to do?”
His gaze remained pensive, but his brows rose as he realized I might actually be willing to help.
“As I said”—he shrugged—“I’m not sure yet. But I know the gods are guiding us.”
“How do you know?” I asked.
“Because the first night I met you, I felt compelled to follow the lovely sound of your singing. And when I did, you reached out to me. I felt your magic and then you said, ‘You are going to protect me.’ I’d thought you were simply asking me to protect you. But now I know it was a command from a higher power. A premonition. The fates have tied us together, Lela. We must listen.”
I didn’t want to agree with him or believe him. But I remained still, eating our meal in silence. Because he was right. Bunica had told me long before the Romans had invaded our village on my wedding night and ruined my entire world. She knew. All along, I’d thought my gift nothing more than a curse.
I’d tried to use that first time against Valerius, and it had cost me dearly. I’d retreated inside myself, allowing the abuse to continue thinking I’d had no choice.
Then one night, this Roman tribune before me showed up in my prison and he’d changed everything. He’d changed me, even if I couldn’t admit it to myself at first. And certainly not to him now.
So I did nothing but nod and finish the meal in silence, wondering what the gods had in store for me next.
XIITRAJAN
“Should I wash your bedding today, dominus?” Alba asked as I was leaving the house.
“No, Alba. Not today.”
She nodded and bowed her head, though her expression of frustration was apparent. During my parents’ time, Alba had kept an immaculate house. But I’d always been a peculiar bachelor; even whenI visited this home, I’d been a private person. It was nothing new for me to keep her out of my bedchamber.
I did have documents from Julian and even my grandfather that were damning, but I always hid them. And sometimes I had maps of the empire out when I was tracking the movements of certain generals, marking their possible return and dates we needed to note.
It wasn’t that I thought Alba would’ve reported me if she found a map laid out with names and dates. She couldn’t read, but she might wonder why I was looking at maps when I was no longer in the legion. She likely wouldn’t find that suspicious. I kept her and the rest of the household all out of my private quarters because they were all servants under my parents. And though there was no proof that any of them had betrayed my father’s failure to Caesar, I thought it most probable the information came from inside this house.
The same way I’d sent Koska to gain information about Fausta was likely how it happened for my father. Someone in the house informed Caesar of his gambling debts and his thievery from the treasury was discovered. Then he was dead, and so was my mother. I didn’t blame Alba or any other slave for my parents’ actions, but I didn’t trust anyone either.
Julian was the one who consoled me after their deaths. It wasn’t long after that we left for our campaign into Carthage and we had a soul-shaking conversation about changing our world.
As I left through the back courtyard, I glanced up at the balcony that wrapped from my bedchamber to the side of the house.
This was the third day I left with Lela hiding there, and each time, my gut twisted. What if Alba disobeyed me and decided to clean the bedchamber regardless of her master’s peculiar behaviors? Then she’d find Lela, and then what? Suspecting one of them likely reported my father—intentionally or unintentionally—I couldn’t allow them to walk free with that information.
Time wasn’t on my side. I hoped Koska brought good news to me today. I had a feeling about Fausta, but I couldn’t take the chance in approaching her unless I was certain.
The streets were unusually empty this morning as I walked the most direct route to the senate house, planning to cut across the forum rather than take the street around it. When I drew closer, the roar of a crowd echoed through the empty streets. It wasn’t the usual buzz of excitement over something the praeco announced. Something was happening.
The street leading into the forum grew thick with people. I followed the crowd, keeping close to the stone wall of the buildings. I nudged a man in a blacksmith’s apron.
“What’s going on?”
“Caesar has made an appearance at the Temple of Vesta. He’s making a sacrifice to the goddess. His soothsayer is with him.”
I pushed my way to the front. Caesar was anxious to be making a public appearance at the Temple of Vesta. I managed to slide through the crowd until I had a good view of the front of the temple.
The Temple of Vesta was devoted to the virgin goddess of its name. No man, including Caesar, could enter the temple where the vestal virgin priestesses lived and kept Vesta’s eternal fire aflame. However, Caesar had done so once before.
When he first came into power many years ago, he marched into that very temple and kidnapped his own sister Camilla. She was a Vicus dragon, a white dragon, which were always female. And always devoted themselves as priestesses. Camilla had been living in this Temple of Vesta since she was fifteen.
But Caesar wanted her. I’d been told by a praetorian guard who I’d known when he was a centurion in our army that Igniculus himself carried Camilla over his shoulder all the way back to the palace. He’d taken her to his bedchamber, closed the door, and violated his own sister. Repeatedly.
