I was marched through the Imperial palace to the Empress' apartments. Her private reception room was full of women in familiar gray veils, so many of them, that Victor was almost lost in their midst. He was naked and wrapped in far too many chains to restrain him. Maybe this was an orgy after all? Then his head rolled to the right, and I saw an indigo mess of smashed flesh and blood covering half his face, my mangled nose and mouth. My short-lived hope evaporated.

This was exactly what I had feared I would find at that palace: a botched assassination attempt.

I even guessed how Victor might have failed. Alas, I couldn't ask him to confirm my deductions, because Messalina Augusta emerged from the adjacent bedroom, glaring daggers at me. The second flock of veiled women glided in her wake.

"He knows nothing. I swear!" Victor lied as clearly as his split lip and broken teeth permitted.

"Silence!" Messalina Augusta ordered.

Everyone obeyed so well, I could hear her ragged breathing from a few feet away, where I was made to kneel. It wasn't enough. One of the bodyguards pressed her sword to my throat for a good measure, cold tip pricking my skin.

"Your protégé had tried to kill me, Maximus." Messalina Augusta cocked her head to one shoulder. "Do you know why?"

I licked my lips, gathering my thoughts.

"Where is Rufius Fulgentius?" I asked to buy some time. Was he too pathetic to be accused of treason? For the first time in my life, I hoped the worm appeared to others as he did to me.

"You're not the one asking questions here," she snapped.

Victor, naturally, interrupted. "He doesn't know who I am! He knew nothing."

One of the gray bodyguards yanked the chain across his neck to stifle his words, nearly garroting him. For months, it had pissed me whenever he repeated himself, but now I choked down a growl. Nobody noticed it, because Victor thrashed against his restraints so hard, every woman in the room had to grab the chains' ends to keep him in the corner, away from their Empress.

His eyes popped out of their orbits but implored me to abandon him to his fate and get it over with. Mithras' bull, he believed I would do such a thing when he could be crucified, hanged from the hooks off the wall, broken on the wheel. When Messalina Augusta could invent something extra-tortuous to end his life, because she was an ingenious woman with a love for pain and sport.

I whipped my head to her, letting the bodyguard's sword scratch my skin. A hot drop of blood trickled down my neck, and she licked her lips at the sight of it. "Have you put him up to killing me, your Empress? I could hardly expect a barbarian to conceive something so... Fidelis."

"Killing you?" I gasped. "Never. But I dreamt of killing him after you had chosen him over me."

With the chain choking him, the most Victor could produce was a gurgle. He made even that sound like a protest, which raised my ire to the max. If he only listened to me, accepted me as his lover, abandoned his pride, we wouldn't be here! Honestly, my purported desire to kill him wasn't that far from what I was feeling.

"Is that so?" Messalina Augusta walked over to me and lifted my chin with a dagger she removed from a secret sheath. I had a sword to my throat and a dagger under my chin. Add a spearpoint aimed at my heart—and I would die if I heaved too deep of a sigh.

"You chose someone else over me in the past, as I recall," she said, tilting her head to one shoulder, green sparkling under the veil of her golden eyelashes. "You gave into your sexual affliction."

Messalina Augusta treated the women in the room like they were furniture, so I followed her suit. If it helped Victor, I would fight a dozen lovers' quarrels in public, I'd lie through my teeth, and abase myself. Next to the high treason I'd already committed for his sake, it was nothing. I softened my voice to a low, bedroom cadence. "It was long ago, and I paid for my mistake, Alina. When you chose Victor over me... no pain had ever hurt worse."

Her blade shook, nicking my chin. Another drop of blood trickled down my neck, chasing the first. "His name isn't Victor."

I swayed on my feet and gritted my teeth. "You... you named him that."

"His name is Inimicus, despite my darling husband boasting left and right he had crucified him. Now I understand why he didn't drag him to Fidelium in chains. He let the enemy of the Empire slip through his fingers."

Victor, you proud fool! Knowing him, he probably announced his identity while trying to strangle her. I hoped my frustration with him looked like rage.

"Let me kill him in the arena in your name," I growled. "Let me kill him for you and for the Fidus Empire!"

My exclamation earned me another cut. More blood ran down my strained neck. For a split moment, I worried I had overacted the outrage, but I was desperate.

As a public enemy, Victor no longer belonged to Rufius Fulgentius, he belonged to the Empire. Fighting him no longer broke the rules of the arena. I could make his death quick, the only thing I could do for him now, and Messalina Augusta wanted to see us fight in a deathmatch.

"What if he kills you, my brave Maximus? He was very impressive all season long," she said, stroking my chest with her blade. Messalina Augusta was getting everything she wanted, and she still couldn't resist a jab.

"He won't," I promised.

"Why?" she wanted to know.

I hoped my smirk was as insolent as I imagined it to be. "You know why."

A responding smile spread on her features, showing off her even, white teeth. It made me think her bodyguard broke Victor's teeth on her order, since ugly men don't solicit compassion as much as the handsome ones do, and because he was my lover.

After staring into my eyes for what felt like years, Messalina Augusta removed her dagger.

"Release him. Keep the barbarian under lock and key, but make sure he's in a fighting shape. We shall celebrate my husband's return with the Grand Final of the Great Games that Fidelium shall never forget and the execution of the Enemy who slipped through his grasp! It's my duty as a good wife to help my husband after all."

Yes, she scored a colossal win over Claudius Caesar capturing the man he claimed to have killed a year ago. Obviously, she'd have to omit exact details of Victor's arrest, but it wouldn't be hard. She was the winner here, and the winners get to spin the tale any way they want.

The bodyguards who held the chains shoved Victor out into the hall. Messalina Augusta waved the remaining women away. Unlike Victor, I knew that many more of them hid in the walls to guarantee the safety of their Empress, always. They were fiercely loyal, so I didn't hesitate to catch Messalina's hands into mine, then press them to my lips, one and another, again and again.

"Thank Jupiter you're alive, Alina! I can't wait to kill the barbarian scum!" I murmured between kisses.

Her gold-red hair swung in time with her throaty laughter. "If I knew that a trifle assassination attempt would bring you to my side, I would have staged it a long time ago."

I carried her to the bedroom. She was light, because titles weigh little. I played with her hair, tried to drown in her green eyes...

Memories seeped through reality, despite my determination to forget my first lover and remember that I was laying with the Empress of the Fidus Empire, a tryst far more dangerous than any other I had in my life. My thoughts drifted to the nights at the Senator's villa, the water splashing against the docks, the whispered promises and foolish kisses.

Her nails pierced my back for attention.

"You were his pet project, nothing more," she said. We both knew whom she meant, and it wasn't Victor.

I dry-swallowed. "I understand it now. I didn't back then."

"But I told you." She pouted. "I told you that manhood was wasted on my brother! I told you that Aurelius Titus' pursuit of lofty ideals, his tirades about equality, his prattling about how he alone understood our people's destiny woke only when he spotted a handsome stable boy. I warned you not to throw your freedom away for him. I explained everything to you!"

Yes, she did. In short, simple words, like I was a besotted fool... which I was. Mithras' bull, maybe she told me the truth, but it hurt to hear it from her! Not because I still loved Aurelius Titus—I didn't. He dazzled me; he taught me many lessons, but I didn't love him any longer.

It hurt, because I argued with her back then, at her father's villa.

I said she was wrong about her brother. She was only fourteen, so I dismissed her warning as silly jealousy. I ignored that she grew up steeped in political intrigues, that she knew her brother far longer than I did, and that she had cunning. All I saw was a slip of a girl who was infatuated like kids get infatuated, while I pursued a serious, grown men's love affair...

That's the kind of haughty fool I was, but no longer. I wouldn't let Victor pay for my hubris.

"You were absolutely right," I told Messina Augusta. "You were right about everything. Aurelius Tutus, my affliction, my obstinacy... everything."

The nails raking my back changed to gentle stroking.

"Aurelius Titus doesn't know what it means to be a man," she purred. "So he can't appreciate you for being one. I wouldn't have abandoned you like he did, if you chose me."

This nearly made me laugh, but I held it back. "You wouldn't have left me?"

"Never!" Her nostrils flared in denial of how awkward she used to be, as powerless under their father's thumb as Aurelius Titus. Claudius Caesar uplifted her to the position where she could grab everything she reached for, including the gladiator lovers when her husband was away from Fidelium. Sometimes even when he was around, so long as she was discreet, and he was busy.

"It took me years to realize you were the one... the one..." I couldn't say it, so I let my confession trail off. Her heart would fill in the gaps with whatever words she wanted.

I committed another high treason by thrusting inside what should have been the Emperor's private sanctuary. It didn't matter that I wasn't the first one to cuckold Claudius, it mattered that I did.

Messalina Augusta moaned, grinding against me. "It was worth waiting for... worth everything."

Morbid curiosity moved my tongue. First, I plunged it deeper into her mouth, then pulled out, to brush her lips with a dangerous question. "Even Julia Junilla and Sossia Octavia?"

She slapped me, then grabbed my face between her palms so tight, it was more painful than the slap.

"They were bad, wicked, immoral women, Maximus." Her hot breath puffed against cheek. "Sossia cared for nothing but parties and wine, she was slovenly and idle. She was a parasite! And Julia was so vain, so uppity! Their punishment befitted their crimes against the Empire."

It was useless to ask her if she knew the difference between the Empire and the Empress. Plus, she was done taking.

Her hands pulled my head down, really hard for an even harder kiss. It wasn't just her lips that cleaved to mine. Her entire being pressed into me so tight, sucked me in so deep, it was difficult to move. She was suffocating me in her coils and didn't know. Or she did, and that was her intention, to better grind into me, sweaty and breathing loudly between the cries of pleasure. The friction produced a response one could expect from a man who stayed chased for a bit.

I nudged her neck apologetically and tried to back out in time, but her arms and legs wrapped around me like ropes, her voice calling my name hoarsely, until it was too late. I compounded my state treason by coming to inside her.

"Alina," I whispered in a panic, finally free of her embrace enough to push up to my elbows. "If your womb quickens with my seed..."

She flicked a finger across my lips with an enigmatic smile. "Babies are born early all the time, Maximus. People are used to it, but they'd never believe that a child could be born over nine months after a man dies."

I collapsed on the sheets next to her, gasping for air, her words swirling through my head. She sidled up to me to whisper into my ear. "My sons are old enough to live into adulthood, but too young to rule. The time is now."

Was she tired of being discreet? Was Claudius Caesar neglecting to stay busy enough, often enough?

I kissed Messalina Augusta instead of asking these pointless questions. She had made her choices.

All I wanted was to regain my breath and my calm, and get away from this woman. But my thoughts scattered, anchoring me to her side.

If there was a child, would she transfer these twisted feelings she had for me to him? What would she do to the other princes, Claudius' sons? The boys who would grow up faster than our hypothetical offspring and demand the right to rule in their own name. Would she find a reason to dispose of them, like she found reasons to punish an innocent and ditzy Sossia Octavia?

She was nibbling my ear. The words poured inside it, warm with exertion, laced with poison.

"Choose right this time, Maximus. Stay with me, and I'll make you into the man you were meant to be. What Aurelius Titus could never see in you or give you. Choose right, and you will see your flesh and blood rule the Nanciscor."

Humans are made simply. Whether in joy, grief or throes of passion, we cry. So, I cried and let Messalina Augusta think it was joy or passion or whatever she wanted to stir in my heart that brought tears to my eyes. I cried as helpless as a newborn abandoned in the night, with darkness, and cold, and the monsters he couldn't yet comprehend closing in.