Lucilla stood alone on her balcony, a marble statue of fury overlooking the courtyard that had, moments ago, been the stage for her public humiliation.
She was not weeping. She was not screaming. She was thinking. The wind whipped a loose strand of dark hair across her face, but she did not seem to notice. Her mind was a cold, silent forge, hammering out a new weapon from the pieces of her broken plan.
A handmaiden, a young girl named Livia, entered the chamber, trembling. "My lady? Will you be taking your evening meal?"
Lucilla turned from the balcony, and her face was once again a mask of perfect, unnerving serenity. She walked to a small pedestal that held a priceless porcelain vase from the far east, a gift from a Parthian diplomat years ago. It was a thing of impossible beauty and fragility.
With a single, fluid motion, she swept it from its stand.
It shattered on the marble floor with a sound like a cry of pain.
Livia flinched, stifling a scream.
Lucilla looked down at the glittering shards of blue and white, then at her terrified servant. A slow, chilling smile spread across her face. It did not touch her eyes.
"A direct assault failed," she said, her voice terrifyingly calm. "My brother was clever. He has made his pet a god."
She nudged a piece of the broken vase with the toe of her silk slipper. "Very well," she whispered to the wreckage. "A god needs believers. A god needs a high priestess to interpret her holy will."
She had found a new angle of attack. It was more subtle, more insidious, and far more cruel than simply destroying Marcia.
If you cannot kill a god, you control it.
An hour later, a secret summons was answered. Lycomedes, the hulking zealot who led the Cult of the Merciful, was ushered into Lucilla's private chambers. He moved with the stiff suspicion of a wolf entering a rival's den, his eyes darting around the luxurious room as if expecting a trap.
Lucilla greeted him not as a superior, but as a supplicant. She was dressed in a simple, modest gown of gray wool. Her hair was unbound. She looked penitent. Broken.
"Lycomedes," she said, her voice filled with a feigned, trembling awe. "Thank you for coming. I… I was blind. But now I see."
He grunted, unconvinced. "See what, my lady?"
"The truth," she whispered, taking a step closer, her eyes wide with manufactured reverence. "My brother is the God-Emperor. It is a truth my prideful heart was too weak to accept. I saw his divinity in the colonnade today. He spoke with the voice of Jupiter himself."
Lycomedes's fanatical eyes narrowed, searching her for any sign of deceit. He found none. She was a master performer.
She leaned in, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. "And the Lady Marcia… I see it now. She is his holy prophetess. His Oracle."
She let the words sink in, watching the zealot's expression shift from suspicion to a dawning, fervent belief. He wanted to believe this. It affirmed his entire worldview.
Lucilla planted the final, venomous seed. "But she is humble. She is gentle. And she is unprotected, surrounded by the vipers and blasphemers of this court. Even I was one of them." She gestured to the broken vase on the floor. "I have smashed my idols. I have seen the light. But others have not. They will whisper their poison in her ear. They will try to corrupt her."
Lycomedes's hands clenched into massive fists. A low growl rumbled in his chest.
"She must be protected," Lucilla said, her voice now firm, a divine command passed through a new convert. "She must be guarded. Venerated. Her every moment must be attended by the truly faithful. She is too precious, too holy, to be left alone with the faithless."
She was not giving him an order. She was guiding his fanaticism. She was aiming his devotion like a loaded catapult, and she had just handed him the firing lever.
She was building Marcia a prison of piety.
Marcia was in her chambers, the silence a suffocating blanket. The argument with Marcus echoed in her mind. You protected an asset. The words stung more than any public insult. He had won, but she had been the price of his victory, a pawn elevated to a queen, but a pawn nonetheless.
She felt utterly, terrifyingly alone.
A firm, authoritative knock rattled her door. Not the gentle tap of a servant. She opened it, expecting a Praetorian with a summons, or perhaps even Marcus, come to try and mend the chasm between them.
She was wrong.
Lycomedes stood in her doorway, flanked by a dozen of his most imposing followers. They were huge, bearded men, their eyes burning with a wild, unwavering light. They were not guards. They were zealots.
Before she could speak, they all dropped to one knee in a synchronized, crashing thump of leather and muscle on marble.
"Holy Oracle," Lycomedes boomed, his voice a tidal wave of devotion that washed over her. "We have come."
He rose, his sheer size blocking out the light from the corridor. His eyes were alight with a terrifying, ecstatic sincerity. "The God-Emperor's faithful will now be your shadow," he declared. "We will guard you from the snakes and whispers of this faithless court. We will be the shield that protects the divine word."
Marcia stared at them, her mind struggling to comprehend. This was not protection. This was a siege.
"No one," Lycomedes continued, his voice dropping with solemn finality, "will speak to you without our permission. No one will bring you food that we have not tasted for poison. No one will harm a single hair on your sacred head."
She looked past him. Down the long, torch-lit corridor, she saw a dozen more fanatics. They stood at silent, intimidating attention, blocking every exit.
The silver cage had been a warning. This was the real thing.
Lucilla had not imprisoned her body. She had imprisoned her life.
Miles away in his mind, Marcus was at war.
The war room was a storm of logistics. He stood before a massive map of the Eastern Empire, moving pieces on the board. He was surrounded by trade ministers, naval prefects, and quartermasters. The air was thick with the scent of parchment, wax, and the metallic tang of focused ambition.
He pushed the memory of his fight with Marcia down. Brutally. He compartmentalized it, locking it in a box labeled 'later.' The mission came first. The war came first. Rome's survival came first.
I'll make it right with her when this is done, he promised himself. When Rome is safe, I will fix it. He was choosing the Emperor over the man, and he was telling himself it was the only choice a true leader could make.
He was so deep in the complex web of smuggling routes and legionary payrolls that he didn't hear the commotion outside the door.
A Praetorian Centurion burst in, his armor clattering, his face pale and slick with sweat. He bypassed all protocol, striding directly to the strategy table.
"Caesar! An emergency dispatch from the agent Narcissus!" he gasped, fumbling with the seal on a leather scroll case. "He has done it. He has infiltrated Valerius Celsus's command tent. He found something."
The Centurion unrolled a crude, hastily-drawn copy of a map, spreading it over Marcus's pristine logistical charts.
Marcus stared. His blood ran cold.
It was not a map of troop formations in Germania. It wasn't a plan for an attack on the Rhine frontier.
It was a detailed topographical map of the Eastern Alps. It showed hidden mountain passes, river valleys, and ancient, forgotten goat trails. Routes that led from the northern forests, bypassing the bulk of the Roman legions, and debouching directly into the soft, unprotected heart of northern Italy.
The horrifying truth dawned on him, a physical blow that stole the air from his lungs. All his planning, all his focus on the frontier, had been a colossal mistake. He had been playing checkers while his enemy was playing a different game entirely.
He looked up from the map, his eyes wide with a new, personal kind of terror.
"He's not fighting a war on the frontier," he whispered, the words catching in his throat. "He's bypassing the legions entirely."
"He's coming for Rome."