Lucilla's smile was a more terrifying weapon than any sword. It was calm, precise, and held the chilling certainty of a predator that had its prey cornered.
"I was merely seeing to the palace stores, my lady," Marcia said, her voice steady. Her heart was a frantic drum against her ribs, but she would not let it show. She could not.
"Of course you were," Lucilla purred, stepping closer. The scent of jasmine and something cold, like winter stone, wafted from her. She circled Marcia slowly, her eyes missing nothing. "You have become quite the fixture in my brother's court. More than a concubine. Almost… an advisor."
Each word was a carefully placed stone, building a wall around Marcia, trapping her.
"The Emperor is under great strain," Marcia replied, meeting Lucilla's gaze. "I offer what little comfort I can."
Lucilla stopped directly in front of her. The smile vanished. "My brother is unwell. He sees ghosts where there are none and trusts whispers from pretty mouths. It is a dangerous affliction."
She reached out, her fingers cold as they brushed a stray lock of hair from Marcia's face. It was a gesture that was almost intimate, and utterly menacing.
"Be careful, little songbird," Lucilla whispered, her voice a silken threat. "Sometimes the cages we fly into are of our own making. Make sure that pretty mouth of yours doesn't get you into trouble you cannot sing your way out of."
Marcia didn't flinch. She held Lucilla's gaze, a flicker of defiance in her eyes. "The Emperor's health is my only concern, my lady. As is the health of the Empire."
For a moment, something hard and hateful flashed in Lucilla's eyes. It was a glimpse of the true serpent beneath the calm exterior. Then, just as quickly, the serene mask was back in place.
"As it should be," Lucilla said smoothly. She stepped aside, clearing the path. "Do carry on with your… duties."
Marcia walked away, her back straight, her steps measured. She did not run. But she could feel Lucilla's eyes on her back like a physical weight, a promise of future violence. She was no longer just a servant in the palace. She was a piece on the board, a target. And she had just shown a queen that she knew how to play the game.
Her discovery burned in her mind, a secret too vital to keep. She bypassed the servant's stairs and ascended the main marble staircase, her simple sandals silent on the stone. Protocol be damned. The Empire was at stake.
She found Marcus where she had left him, a solitary figure in the cavernous war room. He hadn't moved. He was still staring at the map, trapped in a silent, internal war. The lamplight cast his face in harsh relief, making him look like a Roman funeral mask.
She didn't wait for permission to speak. She didn't announce herself.
"His name is Celsus," she said.
The words cut through the silence. Marcus turned slowly, his eyes unfocused, as if waking from a trance. "What?"
"The man in the north," she said, her voice clear and strong, gathering momentum with every word. She walked toward the map table, her fear from the encounter with Lucilla transmuting into fierce resolve. "His name is Valerius Celsus. He was a student of Galen's. A prodigy, expelled for practicing alchemy."
Marcus stared at her, his expression shifting from confusion to disbelief, and then to an electric, dangerous focus.
She laid out the story exactly as she had heard it. The obsession with fringe science. The experiments to create an "impervious fire." And the key—the strange mineral from the northern mountains.
"They called it mountain flax," she finished, her voice ringing with certainty. "A rock that can be woven like wool, that will not burn."
The pieces clicked into place in Marcus's mind with the force of a physical blow. The impossible engineering. The advanced metallurgy. The applied chemistry. It wasn't a time traveler. It wasn't a demon.
It was a homegrown genius. A Roman Leonardo da Vinci, scorned and cast out by the very people he could have saved.
He turned his head slightly, his eyes looking at something far away, something only he could see.
JARVIS, he commanded, his mind a steel trap. Cross-reference the Roman encyclopedist Aulus Cornelius Celsus. Search for any mention of mineralogy. Specifically, asbestos.
The laptop was miles away in its secret tomb, but the fragment of the AI embedded in his brain went to work. Data flooded his consciousness, a silent, lightning-fast torrent of information.
MATCH FOUND.
The AI's voice was a whisper of pure logic inside his skull.
Aulus Cornelius Celsus documented the fire-resistant properties of asbestos in his encyclopedia 'De Medicina.' He theorized its application in textiles for funeral rites. Later, fragmented records indicate his unpublished works on alchemy and applied sciences were suppressed. Senate decree from 65 AD. Ordered destroyed as 'dangerous and unnatural philosophy.'
It was all there. A ghost, born not from the future, but from Rome's own buried past. Valerius wasn't using alien technology. He was using lost Roman technology. Knowledge that the conservative, superstitious, terrified Senate had tried to erase from the world.
Rome's greatest enemy wasn't a barbarian from the forest. He was a product of its own fear and ignorance.
Marcus let out a slow breath. The suffocating weight of the unknown lifted, replaced by the cold, sharp clarity of a defined problem. He knew his enemy now. Not just his weapons, but his mind. His history.
He looked at Marcia, and for the first time in days, the cold, distant emperor receded. He truly saw her. Her face was pale in the lamplight, her eyes wide with the adrenaline of her discovery and her confrontation with Lucilla. She had walked into the viper's den for him. She had brought him the key that his god-machine could never have found on its own.
He reached across the map of the world that separated them and took her hand.
This time, he didn't flinch. Her hand was warm, real. An anchor.
"JARVIS has every book ever written," he said, his voice quiet, filled with a raw awe that was purely Marcus Holt. "It has all the data in the world. But it couldn't have found this." He squeezed her hand gently. "Only you could have."
The chasm between them, carved by stress and secrets, was bridged. Not with an apology, but with a shared truth. In his eyes, she saw not just an emperor's gratitude, but a man's profound, desperate reliance.
The moment was shattered by the sharp rap of a spear butt on the chamber door.
A Praetorian guard entered, his helmet tucked under his arm. "Caesar, the physician Galen has arrived. He is waiting in the atrium."
The guard hesitated, then added with a nervous glance, "Sir… he was quite insistent. He demanded to know if you were… lucid."
A smile touched Marcus's lips. It wasn't Commodus's cruel sneer or Holt's weary sigh. It was something new. A predator's smile, sharp with intelligence and purpose. He finally had a plan. He knew who his enemy was. He knew his enemy's greatest weakness—the pride of a genius who had been scorned. And he knew exactly who he needed to help him hunt this ghost.
He released Marcia's hand and stood to his full height, the weight of the purple robes settling on him not as a burden, but as a mantle of absolute power.
"Good," he said, his voice resonating with newfound confidence. "Let him wait a moment longer. The mad emperor needs to prepare for his guest."
He turned and strode towards the door, his purpose a palpable force in the room. He wasn't going to be examined by Galen. He wasn't going to be judged.
He was going to recruit him.
He paused at the threshold and looked back at Marcia, his eyes burning with a fierce, cold light.
He had a monster in the north to fight, and he was about to set a genius to catch a genius.