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clarissa thinks there must be a name for men like him. not prince, not emperor’s son, not god, though rome keeps trying to carve divinity into the bones of cruel boys and pretend it has made something holy. no, there must be another word for a man who can stand above death and call it appetite. another word for a boy in purple who has mistaken the roar of a crowd for love. she feels the threat before she understands it. daughters. the word settles between them like a blade laid flat upon a table, not yet cutting and not yet lifted. only waiting for the hand that will choose where it falls. below, the sand drinks what rome gives it. cheers rise, bright and monstrous, and clarissa keeps her eyes on geta because she refuses to let him see her look away first. that would please him. she knows it would. he is the sort of spoiled creature who has been given everything except gentleness, and now he treats gentleness as something to conquer. [ in her mind she repeats : do not flinch. ] but her fingers tighten against the stone all the same. ❝ i was not hoping for anything from you. ❞ the lie is small, almost pretty. she lets it leave her mouth before it can become truth or prayer or whatever foolish thing lives inside the heart of a girl raised among soldiers. because perhaps, when she was younger and rome was still a city in stories, she had believed princes were made for better things. like mercy offered from a hand strong enough to spare. ❝ you are wrong if you think feeding the beast makes you its master. ❞ she looks back at him then, dark eyes steady, almost tender in their accusation. ❝ it only teaches it to expect your hand. ❞ her eyes search his face, and for a moment her composure turns cruel too. something born from being cornered and still refusing to kneel. ❝ i only wonder what will be left of you when rome is finished eating. ❞

all she thinks about is the sound of the arena before blood, before the doors open, before men become bodies & the crowd remembers how much it loves death. there are two sides of rome, her rome. one side is marble, gold, her father’s voice telling her to stand straight in the halls of men who would rather see her kneel. the other is sand. red sand. sand that sticks to sandals, to hems, to the palms of men dragged away before the emperor finishes smiling. clarissa follows the curve of the balcony with one hand against the stone. below her, the city roars. she can see the games beginning to gather themselves into something monstrous. banners snapping in the wind. guards moving like dark beetles along the walls. the lions restless behind their iron mouths, and her father’s soldiers, the few who still look at her like she belongs to something honorable, keep their eyes forward. she wonders if geta knows that is what frightens her most. not the blood, not the screaming, not even him. it is how easily honor can be made to bow. ❝ my father says the games are a mercy, ❞ she says, voice soft enough that only he might hear it beneath the crowd. ❝ he says rome must be given its spectacle or it will make one of us instead. ❞ her eyes lift to his. ❝ is that what you believe? ❞ below them, a gate shudders open. the crowd rises like a storm. clarissa does not look away from geta. ❝ or do you only enjoy watching men prove they would die for you? ❞ @saintgods

Geta had been born above the arena. Not in truth, perhaps, but close enough that the distinction no longer mattered. He had been born into marble halls that trembled with the sound of Rome wanting. Wanting bread, wanting conquest, wanting blood, wanting a prince to lift his hand and tell them their hunger had a shape. He understood the crowd better than most men understood their mothers. Clarissa spoke of mercy as though it were a clean thing. As though mercy did not often arrive dressed in cruelty first. As though her father, with all his honor and all his practiced restraint, had never sent men to die beneath prettier banners than these. She was too composed. That was the first offense. The city thundered beneath them, lions snarled below, steel waited to be made useful, and still Acacius’s daughter stood beside him with her chin lifted as if she had not been fashioned in a world that devoured gentle things. There was something insolent in her steadiness, something expensive, something he wanted to ruin simply to see if she would remain beautiful afterward. A slow smile touched his mouth. “Your father says many noble things.” His gaze drifted at last toward the sand, where the gate yawned open and a man stepped out to meet whatever Rome had prepared for him. The crowd rose in waves. Geta watched them with the mild interest of a boy watching servants arrange his table. “Men like him build cages out of such words and call them virtues.” The prince leaned against the balcony, rings glinting on his fingers, purple cloth shifting at his shoulders. He did not need to raise his voice. “But yes,” he continued, almost lazily. “I believe Rome must be fed. It is a beast with a thousand mouths. Deny it spectacle, and it will turn its teeth upon palaces, temples, generals…” His eyes returned to her. “Daughters.” There it was, offered with the softness of a threat and the sweetness of concern. The roar swelled until the stone beneath them seemed to pulse with it. He let it fill the silence, let her feel what the city sounded like when it agreed with him. Then, with all the careless cruelty of someone who had never been denied anything for long, he tilted his head. “Does that disappoint you, Clarissa?” His voice softened around her name, making a possession of it without permission. “Were you hoping to find a better man beneath the purple?”

easy to forget but book jon snow is great actually. he gets so drunk he cries in his first chapter. he's 16 years old and laser focused on loan negotiation. he keeps getting promoted against his will. he's the chosen fantasy protagonist with the worst genre awareness ever. he implements pro immigration social reforms. he has a giant albino pet wolf. he cuts a guy's head off. he thinks he invented cunnilingus. he's been dead for 15 years.

say some nice things in the tags about the person you reblogged this from.

The question strikes him first, not the words, but the tone. It's not hungry, not afraid, and not pleading. Defiant. Always defiant. Geta stands beneath the marble colonnade, the light spilling in long, cold ribbons through the arches. Rome gleams around them, a monument to conquest and cruelty both. And yet, in the fading light, all he can see is her. The princess who will not bow. The girl whose silence weighs heavier than a legion’s roar. He studies her, eyes tracing the sharp line of her jaw, the quiet tremor of her breath, the way the foreign silk clings to her arms like chains. She looks like something carved from marble and moonlight, too proud to break, too beautiful to spare. ❝ Frighten you? ❞ he repeats, and there’s something like amusement ( soft and dangerous) curling at the edge of his voice. He steps closer until the shadow of his cloak swallows hers, the scent of iron and incense closing the space between them. ❝ If I wanted to frighten you, Clarissa, you’d know it. ❞ He pauses then, searching her face, and for a moment, the mask slips. The emperor fades, and the man beneath looks almost unsure. ❝ You think I don’t know what this place does to you, ❞ he says quietly. ❝ You think I don’t see how Rome devours the things it covets.❞ The fountain murmurs again behind her, a sound too soft for the sharpness in his tone. ❝ I could’ve left you there,❞ he continues, voice low, almost confessional. ❝ Let the siege finish what it began. But I didn’t. I took you from Alexandria because, ❞ He cuts himself short. The words catch on something he doesn’t name. Something raw. His gloved hand reaches out, hesitates, then settles lightly against her cheek, not in command, but in disbelief that she’s real, somehow alive. Still looking at him with that same fierce loathing that feels too much like worship turned inside out. ❝ You say you’re not hungry, ❞ he murmurs, thumb brushing her jaw, ❝ but I think you are. For a world that no longer exists. ❞ His gaze darkens. ❝ I destroyed that world, Clarissa. Do not ask me to give it back. ❞ He leans closer, the words softer now, dangerous in their quietness, lethal in their tone. ❝ But here, in my world, you will not starve. ❞

her lips part, then close again. what words could she give him? the court is still humming with the ghost of her scream, her blood still wet against her cheek. she feels every stare of the senators, the weight of their silence pressing into her skin. rome did not miss her. rome stole her. [ and she has not forgiven it. ] she forces her breath to steady, though her ribs ache with the tremor she cannot quite master. and in the silence, memory betrays her. the nile at dusk. her brothers’ laughter drifting over the river. the sound of her mother’s bracelets, gold chiming against gold. a now home, distant, untouchable. [ what has rome ever given her but iron chains dressed as jewels, cruelty softened into vows? ] her gaze lifts to him then, looking at geta. his face is still pale with shock, his hands trembling as if the act of holding her might erase the wound. but his eyes burn too bright, too fevered, too sure. horror, devotion, and something darker knotted into one. he has always been the empire’s child: forged in his father’s shadow, crowned in the ash of cities he cannot name, the senate’s scorn carved into his skin. he is rome. and she, somehow she was a fool to think she could stand before rome without breaking. her voice comes at last, soft and frayed but steady enough to carry. somewhere between his ragged shudders she can make out what he says, broken through tight lips. ❝ you cannot keep what you destroy. you — you could have killed me. ❞ the words fall heavy, bitter, tasting of defiance she barely feels. [ she knows he will twist even this into proof that she belongs to him, that her resistance is only another tether. ] her cheek burns where the blade kissed her. her heart burns worse, knowing he will ask her to bleed again. and when his arms close around her, desperate, unyielding, trembling with something too close to love : she does not know which terrifies her more: his cruelty, or his need.

                     𝐎𝐍𝐂𝐄 𝐏𝐑𝐈𝐍𝐂𝐄𝐒𝐒 𝐅𝐎𝐑𝐓𝐔𝐍𝐀,      with honeyed eyes that narrow at his words,       whispers :       ❛    you wish to be adored,      yet you rule through fear.     ❜       the people on the streets strave but instead geta has adorned yet another circus for them to attend,      &      though he’s draped it in gilded promises for the greatness of rome,   for the sanctity of its empire  —   all fortuna could think is that he sounds foolish to sing his songs as she,   the hostage,   stands against the column.      ❛     you know the people bow to you out of fear.     not out of love.      ❜       —      &      as she turns away from him,      the faint scent of his wine stronger than his conviction,   fortuna curls her fingers       &      her mind ablaze at why he’d care for her opinion as if it mattered at all to him.            ❛      —   you’re a fool to think otherwise.   ❜       @goldengeta

The years grow old — the feasts of his war come to fruit. A grape pressed to his lips, fingers squeezing the juice out of it as he laughs. He can remember years ago. She, the pharaoh's daughter, young and full of wonder when the Roman ships came to Alexandria. A night he doesn't forget, sent alongside his brother in a facade of diplomacy when their father had already made the decree days ago. She had worn red, bloody maroon that painted her soft features with a glow. Deadly. That night, Geta had told Caracalla they had seen a prophetess in the flesh. The prophetess that belonged in Rome. ❛     Why should I listen to the lectures of a hostage?  ❜    He dismissed her, throwing her a half smile before walking closer, stopping her before she could leave. ❛      I only waited conversation. Your company. Yet you wound me so. I who saved your life? Your cruelty knows no bounds my princess.  ❜