#geta x reader

You sat alone on the narrow stone balcony of your family's modest farmhouse. The rough-hewn ledge cool beneath your palms as the countryside stretched before you in a vast, shadowed quilt of rolling hills, and contours softened by the deepening twilight.

Far to the south, the distant lights of Rome shimmered like a scattering of gold coins on the horizon. It’s unreachable flames that spoke of power and splendor. You had only heard through stories and riding soldiers' worlds away from the quiet and peaceful life you knew.

The sky above was moonless, yet alive with stars in a vast, glittering canopy that seemed to press down gently upon the earth. The last sliver of sun had slipped below the hills, leaving only a faint rose glow at the edge of the world.

A soft breeze stirred the air, carrying the earthy scent of turned soil, the sharp tang of olive leaves, and the warm, musky odor of grazing animals. From the nearby pastures came the low, rhythmic bleating of sheep in their gentle, familiar sounds that rose and fell like a lullaby.

Your five brothers moved through the fields, their silhouettes dark against the fading light as they checked the fences and herded the last stragglers toward the stone enclosures.

Torches flickered to life around the farmhouse made up of simple clay lamps and open fires that painted the walls of your home in warm, dancing gold. The structure itself was humble. Thick walls of local stone and sun-baked clay, roofed with thatch, its windows small and shuttered against the night.

And a single muddy track that led from the yard, winding through green meadows and toward the ancient Roman road, paved centuries ago by emperors whose names you barely remembered.

Inside, your mother hummed softly as she mended a tunic by the hearth, the needle flashing in the firelight. Your father, weary from the day's labor, sat sharpening his crook.

The air inside carried the comforting smells of baking bread, woodsmoke, and the faint lanolin of wool from the fleeces piled in the corner from your own hands, and set reminders of the simple rhythm that had defined your days since childhood.

You drew your shawl tighter against the growing chill, gazing out over the land that had cradled your family for generations. Shepherds, seamstresses, and simple humble farmers.

Your world was small, but it was yours, perfect and settle enough for you. Yet tonight, something felt chilling, and it wasn’t the air that made you think so. No, it was restlessness and stirred in your chest, as though the wind whispered in your ear of coming change.

Unbeknownst to you, that change was already riding toward your home, with torches blazing along the imperial road, horses' hooves pounding the stones, soldiers and couriers bearing the Emperor's seal without notice.

The counsel had decreed, that the twins who ruled Rome, Geta and Caracalla, needed an heir to secure the throne. Each should find a wife of their own, from their free choice.

Naturally, Caracalla had thrown a fit that he had no desire to marry nor bed a wife, at least for now. So, it was left to Geta to go about finding himself a new empress despite his fury in doing so.

And so far, not one noble daughter had pleased Geta's discerning eye; no princess had stirred his cold heart. Some had thought he only did it on purpose to delay his marriage. Seeking that his power over the people didn’t need tender caring of show, because his presence of rule should be enough.

Now, in desperation, they sought further afield—simple women from the provinces, women like you. Which meant with every square mile of Rome, they would take all the first born daughters to the capital to have prepared like a meal in front of starving hyenas.

The night was quiet, save for the animals and the wind. But soon, the silence would shatter both the tiny village and your world.

And after some time you all decided to retire, you had kissed your mother’s weathered cheek, felt the familiar scratch of your father’s beard against your lips, and murmured blessings to each of your five brothers, who would rise before dawn to tend the flocks.

They answered with soft grunts and tired smiles, the same ritual that had ended every day since you could remember. You climbed the narrow ladder to the loft where your pallet waited, the wool-stuffed mattress still warm from the day’s heat trapped in the thatch above.

You pulled the heavy blanket over your shoulders, the scent of lanolin woven into its fibers, and snuffed the single tallow candle with a pinch of your thumb and forefinger. Darkness folded around you like a second skin while sleep found you quickly.

It was torn away just before first light anyway. A sudden, brutal chorus that eerily shattered the stillness due to baying hounds, and iron-shod hooves striking the muddy earth as men bellowed orders in clipped Latin.

The village woke in terror. Mothers screamed from open doorways; children wailed; fathers shouted useless defiance. Torchlight bled through the cracks in the shutters, creating angry orange streaks that danced across the clay walls.

Your family was already on their feet when the first heavy fist pounded on the door in three deliberate, thunderous knocks that rattled the wooden frame.

Your father reached it first, unlatching it with steady hands even as your mother clutched the youngest brother to her side. The door swung inward before your father could even open it properly and a Roman soldier filled the threshold. Helmet gleaming dully in the torchlight outside, his scarlet cloak mud-spattered and his face carved from stone.

He stepped inside without permission, boots tracking mud across the swept floor. His gaze swept the room to find five sons ranged protectively in front of their parents, your mother nervous but upright, while you peeked down through the planks to watch discreetly.

The soldier’s eyes narrowed before he seized your father by the collar of his rough tunic, yanked him forward, and drew his gladius in one fluid motion until the blade kissed the skin beneath your father’s jaw.

“All I see is sons,” the soldier said, voice low and dangerous. “But you must have daughters. No?”

Your father’s throat worked dryly. “I have only sons.”

A rough shake and the sword pressed harder; a thin line of blood welled. “You lie. We were told two women live here.” His stare cut to your mother. “There’s one. Where is the other?”

“Please—” Your second-eldest brother stepped forward, hands raised.

Another soldier moved inside like a ghost, sword flashing free and leveled at the boy’s chest. “Speak, old man, or you’ll have one less son.”

“Stop.” The word left your lips before you could think.

You stood at the top of the loft, shawl slipping from your shoulders, hair loose and wild from sleep. Every eye turned to you. Your mother cried out in a broken sound.

Your oldest brother lunged to block the ladder, but you pushed past him gently, firmly descending the rungs with deliberate steps. You walked straight to the soldier holding your father, chin high, eyes blazing in the torchlight.

“Leave them,” you said. “I’m their only daughter. It’s me you want.”

A moment of silence stretched, heavy as were their gaze. The two soldiers exchanged a long, wordless glance. Then the one gripping your father nodded once. They released him so abruptly he staggered.

Rough hands seized your upper arms, with iron-hard fingers digging into your flesh. You were hauled forward, feet dragging for a heartbeat before you found your balance.

Your mother surged after you, voice splintering into sobs, “No, no, my girl, please—” but your brothers caught her, held her back as she fought them with desperate strength.

Their faces were masks of pure grief, fury, and utter helplessness. Outside, the night felt dead in its wake. More girls were being dragged from neighboring houses, their cries mingling with the barking of hounds and the harsh commands of centurions.

Horses stamped and snorted, breath steaming in the pre-dawn chill. One rounded toward you both and the soldier lifted you onto the back of a cavalry mount as though you weighed nothing.

You sat astride behind a broad-shouldered soldier, his armor cold against your thin shift, his arm banding around your waist to keep you in place. The horse sidestepped, eager to move. You twisted once, just once, to look back.

Your family stood clustered in the doorway, silhouetted against the firelight within as you took one, last, hard look at them. Your mother’s hands reached uselessly toward you while she sobbed.

Your father’s shoulders slumped as though the weight of Rome itself had settled there. And your brothers stood like deadbeats, fists clenched, eyes shining with unshed tears and rage.

You lifted your hand in a small, steady gesture and shaped the words with your lips so they could see, “I love you.”

The soldier spurred the horse and the village fell away behind you in a blur of torchlight and tears. Other riders flanked you, each carrying another young woman, some weeping openly, some staring ahead in stunned silence.

The imperial road stretched south toward Rome, straight and merciless under the fading stars. You kept your gaze on your home until the last flicker of firelight vanished behind the hills. Then you turned your face forward, into the dark road and whatever waited at its end.

And so, the Emperor Geta had demanded a bride from the people and the people had answered. Unwillingly.

Two weeks had passed since the night the soldiers tore you from your family's arms. Fourteen days that blurred into a haze of endless gardens and marble halls, echoing city noise beyond the walls, and the ceaseless murmur of other women in waiting.

You were one of dozens now, plucked from farms, villages, and distant provinces, all herded into the imperial women's quarters like prized livestock readied for auction.

The air here smelled of rosewater, myrrh, and the faint heated oils, that were nothing like the clean earth and lanolin of home. The attendants, were older women with sharp eyes and practiced hands that treated your arrival as a project.

You had worked the fields, tended sheep, stitched wool for years by firelight; to them, that marked you unclean, your skin roughened by sun and labor.

So they bathed you repeatedly, not once but three, four times a day at first, in steaming pools scented with lavender and costly cinnamon. They scrubbed you with pumice and barley meal until your arms and legs stung, then anointed you with olive oil infused with saffron and frankincense until your skin gleamed like new and polished.

They plucked every stray hair and then some all from your body with sharpened bronze tweezers, leaving your flesh smooth and vulnerable to the cool drafts of the open air palace.

Nails were filed short and neat, then buffed to a soft sheen; your cuticles were pushed back with ivory sticks and glossed over by rich oils until your hands looked like they had never known a needle or a crook.

You submitted to it all with quiet discomfort. The pampering felt foreign, indulgent, almost intrusive. The soft horse-hair brushes gliding over your scalp to suit your needs.

The perfumed creams were massaged into your shoulders and pulse points, until the attendants' murmured approvals when your skin finally took on the shine and unblemished glow so prized in Rome.

A clean, blemish free complexion was the beauty itself here. It was flawless and in their terms pleasing to the gods to be as close to godliness as one could. That just spoke of leisure and mattered more with high birth.

As for you, you thought it to be yet another society complication they pressured young women to believe. To think, you could only be found attractive if you followed the new trend of the hour or be shunned from the public for not being beautiful enough.

You had never sought such perfection; the sun had kissed your skin freely, and you welcomed blemishes as they were natural and you had worn it without shame.

To be imperfect, is to be human.

When the day came for dressing, the attendants led you to a chamber lit by oil lamps that cast long, flickering shadows. They stripped you bare before a circle of watchful eyes of matrons, seamstresses, and a stern-faced overseer.

All in which inspecting you as one might appraise a horse. Turning you slowly, noting the curve of your waist, the line of your spine, your backside and the modest swell of your breasts or not. No one spoke of modesty; this was preparation for an emperor's gaze. And you felt sick.

They laid out fabrics across a low table. Silks imported from the East, in shades of cream, pale rose, and the deepest indigo. All finer than anything you or your mother had ever woven.

The overseer, in her gray-haired, authoritative stance, chose for you after a long, appraising look. "Geta favors simplicity in form, but richness in movement," she said, almost to herself. "Something that flows, that reveals without vulgarity."

What they draped over you was a stola of gossamer silk, the undertunic beneath it a whisper thin subucula of the same luminous white. The stola itself was sleeveless, its folds caught at the shoulders with golden fibulae shaped like laurel leaves.

It fell in soft pleats to your ankles, but the fabric was so sheer in the lamplight that it clung and shifted like mist over water, hinting at the contours beneath, and leaving everything up to the wandering gaze.

A deep neckline plunged low across your chest, exposing the graceful hollow of your throat, the delicate ridge of your collarbones, the smooth expanse of your shoulders and upper back.

The silk grazed your skin with every breath, cool as alive, the hem brushing your calves like a lover's touch. A slender golden cord—thin as a serpent, cinched at your waist, gathering the fabric and accentuating the natural dip and flare of your body.

They wove delicate threads of gold into your hair, pinning it accordingly to match the frame of your face rather than the towering, elaborate piles favored by some of the noblewomen, and it made you look ever more stunning.

A single armlet of hammered gold coiled around your upper arm like a vine, cool against your skin. Sandals of soft leather laced high on your calves, their straps adorned with tiny gold studs, but the unfamiliar height made each step precarious, the rough inner edges already promising blisters by day's end.

Your face they left lighter than most. No thick layer of ceruse . . . the poisonous white lead paste that gave other women the ghostly pallor of statues.

Instead, a subtle dusting to even your tone, a faint gold and rose stain on your cheeks from crushed madder root. For your eyes, only kohl of black lines drawn with a fine stick of soot and galena, extending the almond shape to make them appear larger, brighter, more arresting against your skin.

The contrast was striking. Your gaze seemed deeper, more luminous in the flickering light. You were grateful for the restraint; the other women wore heavier masks of white powder caked thick, lips reddened with cinnabar, cheeks rouged to an almost feverish bloom.

Some of the gowns around you were bolder too. Vibrant crimsons, deep purples, beautiful emerald greens that caught the eye like spilled wine or fresh blood.

Whispers rippled through the waiting women, so garish, so bold for the emperor's taste. Yet the dressers (take from yours) insisted that Geta, they said, delighted in vivid color, in the drama of it, perhaps because it echoed the gore he had seen on battlefields and in the arena.

You wore white, simple and luminous, a quiet contrast despite the spectacle, and it made you relieved. One on knowing you liked simple, and the other knowing he’d go for one of the more vibrant choices then.

Not all the women bore their transformation with grace though. Some wept openly, ruining the careful kohl with tears until attendants disciplined them with sharp slaps or cold compresses, forcing composure.

Others preened, thrilled at the luxury, eyes bright with ambition to capture the heart of the young emperor. You stood neutral, neither eager nor broken. There were too many here, you reasoned.

Dozens upon dozens, each more polished than the last. You were only one face in the crowd. Surely the emperor would choose elsewhere, and you would be sent home with a purse of coin and a story no one would quite believe. Why waste tears on a fate that might never claim you? So you waited.

Each day, groups of women were summoned to the imperial audience chamber. Pleasant, perfumed girls with doe-like eyes and practiced smiles. You were not yet called.

In the hours between, you wandered the permitted corridors under the watchful eyes of guards whose own eyes lingered on you a second too long.

The palace was a labyrinth of white marble veined with gold, columns rising like petrified trees to ceilings painted with gods and countless triumphs.

Your stola flowed behind you like smoke, the silk whispering against the stone floor with every step. You trailed your fingers along cool pillars, feeling the chill seep into your skin, marveling at the scale of it all.

Rome. The city your father had described in half-warnings and half-wonders. He had spoken of its dangers of the crowds, the countless thieves, and the men who looked too long at the girls.

"Not for you," he would say, kissing your forehead before setting out with your brothers to sell wool and cheese at the markets. "Rome devours the innocent."

He had shielded you from it, from the lustful stares, from the city's hunger. Now you walked its very heart, dressed like a goddess, yet feeling more exposed than ever in your life.

The corridors stretched on, endless and beautiful, but cold. Somewhere deeper in the palace, the twin emperors held court. Geta and Caracalla, brothers bound by blood and divided by everything else. You had never seen them, not even from afar. But the waiting carried its own weight, heavy as the gold at your throat.

You told yourself it was only a matter of time before they sent you back to the hills, to the sheep, to the hearth where your mother waited with unspent tears. But the palace had its own rhythm, slow and inexorable. And Rome, as your father knew, did not easily release what it had claimed, if only you knew.

You stepped through an arched colonnade into the open peristyle garden, where a vast number of plant life you’d never seen before resided. Stone and marble framed it all, admitting the full, unfiltered light of the sun as it began its slow rise.

The garden itself was a quiet miracle to you amid the palace's relentless grandeur. With its endless manicured box hedges, climbing roses trained against white marble trellises, and beds of lilies and irises whose perfume hung heavy in the still air.

At the center stood the fountain in a broad, shallow basin of polished travertine fed by hidden aqueducts. Rising from its middle was a larger-than-life marble statue of an earlier emperor, perhaps Trajan or Hadrian, armored and laureled, one hand raised in eternal command.

Water cascaded in soft sheets from the basin's rim, rippling outward in concentric rings that caught the light like molten gold. You approached the fountain's edge and settled onto the wide marble rim as though it were an ordinary bench.

The stone was cold, yet smooth beneath your palms. You arranged the folds of your stola with care, drawing the silk modestly across your chest so the deep neckline revealed nothing untoward. You drew your knee up toward your chin, leaning forward slightly, the posture more country girl than court lady.

The gentle fall of water was calm to your aching skin. It murmured steadily, drowning the distant and more or less constant buzz of the palace.

You reached toward a nearby rose bush and deftly snapped a single petal free. Between thumb and forefinger, you twirled it, then dipped it to the water's surface, watching tiny ripples spread outward.

The hour had turned golden. The light shortly after sunrise had softened to that perfect, honeyed glow that painters chased and poets praised. It bathed everything in warmth.

The marble gleamed like old ivory, the roses deepened to blood-red, and your white silk caught fire in a translucent way where it clung and luminous where it drifted. Gold threads woven into your hair shimmered; the armlet on your upper arm flashed like ember.

You were deeply lost in thought, circling the petal through the water. Not noticing the distant heavy footsteps nearby that seemingly broke the stillness. Emperor Geta stormed from the direction of the western court, his crimson cloak snapping behind him.

Fury etched every line of his face while his jaw clenched, brows drawn tight, the vivid patterns of gold embroidery on his tunic flashing with each angry stride.

Whatever audience or argument had just ended had left him white with pure anger; his hands flexed at his sides as though still itching for a sword. He meant only to pass through the garden on his way to cooler chambers, but something, like a flash of white and gold, caught the corner of his eye.

He began to slow as his eyes drifted slightly before they stopped on you. You sat haloed by the rising light, the sun at your back transforming you into something almost unearthly.

The silk of your stola seemed to drink the gold hour and give it back brighter; your skin glowed as though dusted with the same precious metal. You still faced away minding the petal, drifting it in lazy circles on the water's surface, unaware.

He came to a full stop then, and simply stared. Servants did not wear silk like that. Servants did not sit with such careless elegance beside an imperial fountain. Curiosity and something a bit more irritated pricked him. He stepped forward, sandals ringing on the stone path, until he stood only a few paces away.

“You there,” he said, voice low and edged with command. “By whose leave do you wear such finery, servant?”

You had turned at the sound of him calling out, but in hopes he meant another. The movement was slow, unhurried. Yet, when your gaze lifted to meet his, the full force of the golden hour struck him like a blow.

The light framed you in a radiant corona, gilding the curve of your cheek, the line of your throat, the dark sweep of kohl that made your eyes seem sharp and impossibly vivid.

They were like that of deep pools under sunlight—electric. Just alive, and utterly unafraid of his presence. The sheer silk clung and shifted with your breath, revealing the elegant architecture of collarbone, shoulder, and the subtle rise of your breasts beneath the fabric.

Yet there was nothing vulgar in it; the dress was simple, almost severe in its purity, and that restraint only sharpened its effect. Geta forgot to breathe for but a moment too long.

He had seen beauty before no doubt. Polished, way too over calculated, offered up by ambitious families and trembling princesses. He had rejected them all. But this . . . this was different.

You were no statue carved for display; you were alive, breathing, seated on imperial marble as though it belonged to you. The white silk against your skin, the glints of gold in your hair and at your waist, the way the light worshipped you.

It struck some buried chord in him. Gold had always been his weakness, the color of triumph and their symbol, of blood craved in torchlight, of coin and crown.

It was simply him and his brother expressing the irregular looks they had, to contrast their ghastly yet oddly captivating beauty. But this here, white with gold was something he favored deeply. and it truly beheld you.

You rose smoothly to your feet, the stola whispering around your ankles again. The movement pulled the silk taut across your form for one devastating instant, and Geta’s mouth went dry, then flooded with sudden, unwelcome want. He swallowed once, hard.

He wore his own opulence like armor, crimson wool shot through with thick gold thread, heavy rings on his fingers, a torque of twisted metal at his throat.

He and Caracalla had always favored excess, the better to shock and dazzle, to mask whatever lay beneath. Yet here you stood in luminous restraint without trying, and it humbled every vibrant excess he had ever donned.

For the first time in years, Geta felt something stir that was not anger, not calculation, nor something out of boredom. He felt wonder. You said nothing at first, only regarded him with those steady, luminous eyes. The petal still floating like a boar adrift on the water beside you.

While in that suspended moment, with nothing but flowing water and the sound of your beating heart, the Emperor Geta, who had refused every daughter of Rome, found himself utterly, irrevocably captivated by a girl who had never asked to be seen.

“I am no servant,” you said, voice calm despite the sudden knot in your chest.

The words cut between you, sharp enough to snap him from his trance. You stood taller upon eye contact, refusing to cower under that intense gaze, though your heart almost hammered out of your chest.

He blinked once, twice, as if emerging from a dream. His brow furrowed deeply, carving lines of confusion across his chiseled features.

“Then who are you?” he demanded, intrigued yet bewildered. “One of the magistrate’s daughters, perhaps? Come to curry favor in my gardens?”

You hesitated, lips parting but no sound escaping. His presence was overwhelming, like a beast contained in human form, radiating heat and authority that pressed against you like a midday sun.

The golden light still framed him while he directly faced the rising sun. Catching the intricate embroidery on his tunic, but it was his eyes that held you just the same. Dark, piercing pools of golden brown, that stirred something within, you couldn’t name.

He stepped closer, closing the distance until only a breath separated you. The scent of him enveloped you, rich honeyed wine mingled with sharp citrus oils, underlaid by the faint musk of sweat from whatever fury had driven him here. It was intoxicating, heady, and entirely too intimate for a stranger.

“Answer me,” he commanded, his voice dropping to a low rumble that vibrated through the space between you.

There was no mistaking the imperial edge to it, the expectation of instant obedience.

“I’m not,” you replied, the words clipped with a hint of defiance.

You lifted your chin, meeting his stare head-on, even as your fingers twisted nervously in the folds of your stola. Who was this man to interrogate you like a criminal? Dressed in finery, yes, but the palace was full of arrogant courtiers it seemed.

He tilted his head, a slow smile curling at the corners of his mouth, not kind, but predatory, and amused. “Not a servant, not a magistrate’s whelp. Then why are you here, in my court garden?”

He emphasized the word my, letting it hang like a boast, his chest puffing slightly as he gestured expansively to the marble and roses around you.

“By what authority do you wander these paths, plucking flowers like some woodland nymph? Do you know whose ground you tread upon, girl? This is the heart of Rome—my Rome.”

His tone was teasing now, laced with that boastful authority, as if he delighted in wielding it like a toy. He circled you slowly, sandals scraping softly on the stone, his cloak brushing the edge of the fountain.

The movement forced you to turn, keeping him in sight, and you felt the heat of his gaze tracing the lines of your silk-clad form. It felt like being back on the farm, as a sheep while a rabid wolf stalked you like prey.

It was infuriating. His arrogance, his assumption that you should quiver before him. Your temper flared, a hidden trait made up from the fields where you’d argued with brothers and bartered with traders.

“And who are you to question me like this?” you shot back, a slight edge creeping into your voice even if you were playing a dangerous game. “Some lordling playing at power? The gardens are open to those waiting on the emperors’ presence. Or have I missed a sign barring simple folk from the fountains?”

He froze mid-step, eyes widening for a fraction of a second before narrowing in delight at you not knowing him. A low chuckle escaped him, rich with unexpected and it sent a shiver down your spine.

He liked it. The bite in your words, the refusal to bend and the odd pleasure of knowing that you knew not who he was. It thrilled him, oh yes, you could see it in the way his posture shifted, from interrogator to hunter savoring the chase.

“Oh, you have fire. I am amused,” he murmured, stepping closer again, so near now that you could see the faint stubble shadowing his jaw, the pulse beating at his throat.

“Most women brought here simper and bow, ready to give me pleasure. But you . . . you snap like a wild thing, don’t you? Tell me, does that tongue of yours ever command still? Or does it work like that at all hours?”

A new tension filled the air between you, charged with something electric and shuttering. His gaze dropped briefly to your lips, then back to your eyes, and you felt a heat rise to your core and bloom throughout your body.

Yet you held your ground, refusing to look away. “It stills when I want it to,” you retorted, though your voice softened just a touch, laced with the growing awareness of how close he stood.

The golden hour’s light played across his face, highlighting the sharp angles, his full mouth curved in that maddening smile, and then you finally notice.

Perched atop his gold curls, half-hidden by the play of shadows that blended so well until now sat a circlet of hammered gold to match, wrought with laurel leaves and imperial eagles. A crown. Not the ostentatious wreath of a festival, but the subtle, undeniable mark of absolute power.

Your breath caught at the realization. One of the two emperors, twins, in fact. Geta and Caracalla, rulers of Rome. He was one of them. You couldn’t tell which brother he was, given the whispers of their temperament of being so, volatile, brilliant, and cruel when crossed.

Your attitude faltered, the realization crashing over you like the fountain’s cascade. You had bitten back at an emperor. He noticed the shift immediately, the widening of your eyes, the subtle retreat in your stance. That predatory smile widened, but there was no malice in it now, only a deeper intrigue, and a spark of genuine pleasure.

“Ah,” he said softly, reaching out to trace his fingers along your jaw, his fingers lingering just a moment too long against your skin.

The touch felt electric and hot, sending a jolt through you. “Now you see. Emperor Geta, here to serve—or rather, you at mine.”

You swallowed hard, the attitude draining away into a mix of awe and lingering defiance. But even as you dipped your head in a belated show of respect, your eyes flicked up to meet his again.

“Forgive me, Emperor Geta,” you murmured, though there was still a hint of challenge in the words. “I didn’t know.”

He laughed outright then, a genuine sound that echoed off the stone corners. It was rather warm and disarming. “Hm, I prefer the fire.”

He leaned in closer, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper, breath warm against your ear and neck. “It makes the chase so much more . . . thrilling.”

The tension coiled tighter, a palpable heat building in the scant space between you. His hand dropped to your arm, fingers tracing the golden armlet lightly, possessively.

You didn’t pull away. Instead, you felt a strange pull toward him, this man who ruled the world, yet looked at you as though you were the only thing in it worth conquering.

“But tell me truly now,” he continued, his tone gentler, though the tease lingered. “You are one of the daughters sent from the farther provinces, are you not?” He gestured vaguely toward the palace wings. “You’ve strayed farther than allowed, haven’t you? The attendants will be searching.”

You nodded slowly, finding your voice again. “I am. From the hills beyond the Tiber. They brought me . . . for you, or your brother. To choose from.”

His expression shifted into that of anger then at the mention of his brother getting you instead of him. It also surprised him to know you weren’t a high-born considering your raw beauty.

Surprise, followed by a slow, satisfied gleam. “For me,” he echoed, as if tasting the words.

He stepped back slightly, but not far, his hand still on your arm. “Then perhaps the gods have smiled today. Come, walk with me. These gardens are vast, and I would hear more of this fire from the provinces.”

You hesitated only a moment, the weight of his crown and his touch warring with the girl you’d been two weeks ago. But there was no refusing an emperor and, if you were honest, looking at him you had no desire to. The thrill mirrored his own, a dangerous, unknown wanting igniting in your chest.

As you fell into step beside him, the golden light fading into blue, the palace gardens seemed suddenly smaller, more intimate with you two. The whisk of your silk, his divine robes and footsteps mingled with the fountain’s song, and the air hummed with the city noise again.

Deeper into the peristyle he led you, asking you many questions to which you answer honestly. Past alcoves where statues of forgotten gods watched with marble eyes.

You had both lingered in the garden far longer than either of you realized. The conversation stretching on and lengthening time and space at Getas will.

Hours that slipped away in quiet exchanges, his teasing questions about your ways, your sharp retorts that drew that rare, genuine laugh from him, the way his fingers brushed yours once, twice, until they entwined. You had been simply intriguing, and exotic to him, to the point he wanted to taste it all.

Then the bright day turned into the pale hours of the evening, stars lightly pricking the oculus dome overhead like scattered jewels. His guards found you first in a phalanx of blazing torches and boots pounding the paths in disciplined urgency.

They burst into the peristyle with drawn swords, faces pale with fear of the consequences if the emperor had come to harm. Geta rose smoothly, waving them off with an irritated flick of his hand.

“Stand down,” he commanded, voice calm but edged with steel. “I am unharmed. Escort the lady back to the women’s quarters. Tell the attendants to ask of her no questions. Her whereabouts are my concern alone.”

The soldiers bowed low, one stepping forward to offer you his arm. You glanced at Geta once more; his eyes held yours in the torchlight, dark and unreadable. Then you turned, silk whispering, and followed the escort through the labyrinthine corridors.

Your personal overseer awaited you at the entrance to the quarters, her sharp gaze missed nothing. She took in your shy demeanor, the faint disarray of the gold smeared on your arms, stroked by his thumb.

Her lips curved in a knowing half-smile, but she said nothing, only inclined her head. “You are late,” was all she murmured, and the glint in her eye spoke volumes that she knew.

Two weeks had passed since your secret and accidental meeting with Geta. A full month since the soldiers had dragged you from your father’s doorway. The number of women dwindled steadily, once dozens, now only thirteen remained.

The others had been dismissed in waves. Some with a purse of silver and a carriage home, others with nothing but tear-streaked faces and the sting of rejection.

Geta had seen them one by one in private audiences, and found them overbearing. Whispers circulated that he had grown impatient, cruel in his dismissals, sending some away mid-sentence or even mid-pleasure.

No one knew of your encounter in the garden. You had kept quiet about it, burning the memories quietly beneath your skin, just like he’d hoped. But ever since that evening, your thoughts had circled back to him relentlessly.

In the way his scowl had softened into amusement when you bit back. The way the heat of his breath against the pulse of your neck, and the possessive trace of his fingers along your skin felt so good.

It angered you, how much you longed to see him again, even as guilt twisted in your gut. You did not want this life, never thought about this life, the palace, the silks, the endless waiting.

You wanted the hills, the sheep bleating at dawn, your mother’s hearth. Yet the memory of his gaze—hungry, and so undone, as though you had unraveled something in him, it all had begun to haunt you.

The luxury grated now. Trays of exotic fruits such as pomegranates from Carthage, dates dripping honey, arrived daily, untouched. Jewel boxes spilled open with necklaces of pearls and emeralds; you left them where they fell. The silks felt heavier each day, confining rather than caressing.

You lounged in the tepidarium annex of the women’s baths. A spacious, colonnaded chamber the attendants called the solarium, where the remaining girls gathered in the afternoons to bask in their glow and laughter.

Sunlight poured through high clerestory windows, warming the mosaic floors patterned with nymphs and grapevines. Low couches draped in fine linens lined the walls; servants fanned the air with peacock feathers, stirring the scent of rose oil and incense.

Here, the women reclined, gossiped, practiced their poses and lustful eye contact for the emperor’s gaze. Some laughed too brightly; others stared into the distance, hollow-eyed.

Today, your overseers had summoned you all with new instructions. “The emperor has narrowed his favor,” one announced, voice carrying across the chamber. “Only thirteen remain in consideration for marriage to Emperor Geta. Each of you will now receive a personal task, a demonstration of worth, of suitability as imperial consort. Prepare yourselves. The summons will come soon.”

Instant squeals and murmurs rippled through the room. The others had met him already, in private audiences of the throne room or private chambers, where they had curtsied, smiled, or offered song.

You had not, which came off weird to the rest of the young women. It had also bothered you. And with the realization of still being one that remained, it settled like cold lead in your stomach and bitter on your tongue.

He still kept though, even though he didn't see you like the others. So, what then? Would he choose you now? After all this time? Would he even consider you, his empress. . .Bound to Rome, to him, forever.

Your family would fade into memory if that happened; the farm, the muddy tracks, your brothers’ laughter—all distant. Marriage was expected of women, a duty to leave home for husband and new hearth. But this was no simple union, no, this was elevation to a throne stained with blood.

The twins’ rule had been whispered about even in your distant hills and beyond. You were no fool. Your father and brothers spoke of it in low voices when the wine flowed late.

How Septimius Severus’s sons had inherited an empire forged in war, only to tear it apart with their hatred. They had ruled jointly after their father’s death, dividing the palace itself, each commanding separate courts, separate guards. It was all a mess awaiting a downfall.

The brothers’ shared reign had been marked as devastating in other domains, where they claimed new territory under General Acacius. It caused division, and sudden, shocking violence to a prelude of sole tyranny. But it granted citizenship to all free men only to tax them harder, while their armies grew fat on plunder and terror.

Geta, they said, had been the quieter one. Administrative, less openly cruel. Yet he shared the throne with a monster, and the empire suffered for it. Evil, your father had called them both. Terror in every conquered domain.

You hated that you still wanted him. Hated the way your pulse quickened at the memory of his touch, the citrus-and-honey scent of him, the way his eyes had darkened with raw desire when the sun gilded your skin.

No man had ever looked at you like that. Hungry and completely destroyed, as though you alone could sate something feral in him. Your parents would have been ashamed. Their simple daughter craving the touch of a man whose hands were stained with blood and only met once.

Yet the little game you had played in the garden thrilled you in ways you could not name. His teasing authority, your defiant snaps, the sexual tension that had built until the air itself felt charged enough as it is.

It was new, intoxicating. For once, someone wanted to please you, not the other way around. Desire bubbled beneath your skin, corrupting you, who had always put others first. It began with his gaze, that lustful, glare of hunger and now it spread, a slow fire inside your veins you could neither quench nor ignore.

You reclined on your couch, staring at the mosaic ceiling where Bacchus lounged amid vines, and wondered if the next summons would be yours. Part of you prayed it would not. The greater part, the part that had tasted his attention and craved more, hoped it would.

It was a mental and eventual physical battle between yourself. And in the quiet of the solarium, with the other women whispering of virtues, you felt the corruption take deeper root in its slow, inevitable surrender to wanting something, someone, for yourself for once.

The night was warm and still, the kind of Roman summer darkness that clung to the skin like damp fabric. You had been pulled from sleep without warning, the overseer’s hand firm on your shoulder, a single finger pressed to her lips for silence.

Beside her stood a soldier. His helmet, scarlet cloak and presence alone was command enough. They led you wordlessly through the mixed corridors, past flickering oil lamps that cast long, wavering fingers across the marble.

On the terrace they stopped. Moonlight silvered the balustrade and turned the distant city lights into a faint, scattered constellation far below.

The overseer placed a long, soft scroll into your hands, that was made up of fine goatskin, supple and pale, tied with a simple cord of braided rope.

“Read this,” she said quietly. “Out loud. Here. Until I return for you.” No explanation was given, nor questions permitted.

The soldier took up position at the far end of the terrace, back turned, giving the illusion of privacy as she just vanished into the palace shadows. You settled onto the low, cushioned sofa they had prepared.

Deep indigo cushions piled against the balustrade; a wool throw draped over the arm. The night air carried the faint perfume of jasmine from the gardens below and the distant murmur of the Tiber. You untied the cord, unfurled the scroll, and felt your breath catch.

It was poetry. Not the stiff legal documents or imperial decrees you had half-expected, but elegant verses, flowing script inked in deep black with occasional flourishes of red for emphasis.

You recognized that the hand was careful, deliberate, and the work of a skilled scribe. And you knew the poem almost at once, a pastoral idyll, one you had spoken of fondly to the overseer weeks earlier, in a rare moment when she asked what comforted you in the endless waiting.

Literacy among Roman women, especially those of your station, was rare, almost suspect. Noble matrons might read letters or household accounts, but full fluency in poetry, the ability to parse meter and savor metaphor, belonged to men of high status such as senators, philosophers, and soldiers who quoted Virgil on campaign to steady their nerves.

Your father had taught you in secret, tracing letters in the dust of the barn floor when the brothers were out with the flocks. Later, your eldest brother had slipped you scraps of parchment, proud and amused by your quick mind.

You had devoured what little came your way. Fragments of Catullus, nights of Ovid, and when the loneliness of the hills pressed too close, you had written your own lines in quiet moments, scratching them onto broken pottery shards before hiding them beneath the dirt.

To read aloud now, under the open sky, felt like a small rebellion. You drew a steadying breath and began. The poem told of a boy that was wandering. He was rootless, cast out from the clamor of cities, until he stepped into a wild valley where the world remade itself.

Rivers sang over stones; olive groves whispered in the wind; a single cypress stood towering against the sky. Beauty crept in slowly, not with fanfare but with the patient insistence of dawn to make the boy’s anger soften, his steps slowed, until he knelt in the grass and understood that the earth had been waiting for him all along. Its beauty calling.

Your voice was soft at first, hesitant in the vastness of the night, but it found its rhythm. The words flowed like the waterfall that cascaded into the lower garden before you.

Below with gentleness, and ceaseless to carry you with them, you traced the lines with a fingertip as you read. The goatskin warm from your palm, the ink faintly raised beneath your touch.

You did not see him, but Geta had been there from the beginning. He stood behind the slender column that flanked the waterfall’s source, half-hidden where the spray misted the air and moonlight fractured into rainbows.

His back pressed to the cool marble, head tipped back against the stone, eyes lifted to the wheeling skies above, speckled with bright stars. But he was not watching the sky. He was listening.

Your voice reached him in waves so clear, so unadorned, carrying the faint lilt of the countryside even through the polished Latin. No artifice, shrill in your voice, and no per formative lilt like the court poets who declaimed for coin. Just the quiet certainty of someone who had loved these words long before they were summoned to a palace.

His heartbeat too fast which was a traitor beneath the crimson tunic. He had orchestrated this after your overseer told him everything about you so far.

When he had discovered your love for poetry, it made him think about how soothing your voice would be if you read to him like his mother did.

He chose the exact story you mentioned, having the author write your own personal copy. He had you summoned for this starry midnight, outside his chambers terrace, chosen for its seclusion and its acoustics.

He had wanted to hear you without the weight of his crown between you. Without the posturing, the fear, the temptations that over shadowed his most vulnerable side. He had originally told himself it was curiosity, nothing more. Just a whim.

It was not a whim. He had not stopped thinking of you since the moment he laid eyes on you. You were the most beautiful thing he had ever beheld. Rather, too pure and innocent as he could see for his lustful eyes, this he knew.

He tried pushing it away, the longing to see you again. He had seen the other girls, tried seducing them into his bed, but couldn’t finish the work he had started when all he could see as he closed his eyes were your own. And the feel of skin that was cold and not your soft warmth.

And now, just like you had back in the garden with him, every line you read struck him like a quiet arrow. The boy in the poem could have been him, lost in the blood and ambition of Rome, searching for something the throne could not give.

And there you sat, bathed in moonlight. Looking like a goddess, just like the first time he saw when the sunlight did the same. Simply reading the very story that had once steadied him through nights when Caracalla’s insanity grew closer, when the palace walls felt like a tomb crumbling down on him at any moment.

He closed his eyes, letting your voice wash over him. The waterfall’s murmur wove beneath it, a counterpoint; the night insects added their soft chorus.

You reached the passage where the boy first touches the earth, fingers sinking into soil, feeling the pulse of roots beneath, and Geta’s breath hitched as he imagines it was him but with you.

He had never told anyone this poem was his favorite. Not his mother, not the tutors, not even the brother he had once loved before hatred consumed him. Yet you read it as though you understood.

When you finished the final lines, the boy lying beneath the cypress, at peace, the world no longer enemy but home, you let the scroll rest against your lap. Silence settled, broken only by the water and the distant city hum.

You exhaled, a small, private sound of contentment. Geta stepped from behind the pillar. The movement was deliberate, unhurried. Moonlight caught the gold circlet in his hair, the gleam of the rings on his fingers. He crossed the terrace slowly, sandals silent on the stone, until he stood before you.

You startled, scroll crinkling in your grip, eyes wide. He said nothing at first. Only looked at you, the way he had that first evening in the garden, as though memorizing every line of your face but this time with tears threatening to spill.

“You read it better than I ever could.” His voice was rough, stripped of its usual imperial edge. Vulnerable, almost. The confession hanging between you.

You rose slowly, scroll clutched to your chest like a shield. “You . . . were listening.”

“I arranged it,” he admitted. No boast this time, no teasing authority. Just truth. “I wanted to hear you. Alone. Without the eyes of the court.”

You searched his face, those dark eyes dressed in charcoal, the faint scar at his temple, the tension in his jaw that spoke of battles fought long before you arrived. “Why?”

He stepped closer. The scent of citrus and honey reached you again, warmer now in the night air making your heart flutter. “Because you see things the rest of Rome has forgotten. What I’ve seem to forgotten.” he said softly. “Beauty in the small. Peace in the quiet. I thought . . . perhaps you could remind me what it feels like.”

The words landed heavier than any command he had ever given he thought. And you felt the pull again, that dangerous, corrupting thread of desire, but softer this time, mixed with something of deeper need and recognition.

He reached out, slowly, and brushed a knuckle along the edge of the scroll. “Keep it,” he murmured. “It was made for you. Read it when the hour grows too heavy. And when you do . . . think of me.”

You swallowed. “And if I don’t wish to think of emperors?”

A ghost of his old smile flickered, wry, and boyish. “Then think of the boy in the poem. Lost. Until he found something worth staying for.”

He lingered a moment longer, gaze tracing your lips, your throat, the way moonlight silvered the silk at your shoulders. Then he turned, cloak swirling, and vanished back into the shadows of the palace.

You stood alone on the terrace, scroll warm against your heart, the waterfall singing on. And for the first time since the soldiers came for you, the silence did not feel empty. It felt full. For both the man who ruled an empire yet for the boy who came to you in in vulnerability.

Each night passing had become a quiet ritual of stolen intimacy since. Every evening, as the palace settled into hush, the overseer would appear at your chamber door with another scroll.

Sometimes a familiar work of Virgil or Propertius, sometimes verses no scribe had copied before and random poems without an author's signature.

Eventually, you had come to recognize Geta's hand in the latter. The slight flourish on certain letters, the way the ink pressed harder when emotion overtook his precision.

Those were his own poems, written in the small hours when sleep eluded him. They spoke of a woman seen through sunlight and moonlight, of gold shining over her, of a voice that could quiet the clamor of an empire. Romantic as almost reverent. Nothing like the man Rome feared.

It felt like courtship, though no one would have named it so. For thirteen days you watched the remaining women depart one by one after being summoned to accompany him on inspections of the legions or audiences with senators, processions through the Forum.

Each returned changed, some glowing with favor, others pale with dismissal. You received no such summons. Instead, the gifts arrived in silence.

Scrolls of Catullus left on your pillow by himself, along with a small posy of white roses tucked beneath it, a single almond cake dusted with cinnamon, otherwise known as his favorite, and never shared with another soul.

Once, he came to the women’s court in person. The chamber fell silent as he entered, crimson cloak sweeping the mosaic floor. The others surged forward, curtsying, offering practiced smiles and excited notes.

He acknowledged them with polite nods, a broad imperial smile that never quite reached his eyes. His hands remained clasped behind his back in a formal, distant way, until his gaze found yours across the room.

Then the smile softened, becoming private. A small inclination of his head, a flicker of warmth meant only for you. The other women noticed nothing; you felt the look like his soft touch.

One by one they vanished. Until only you remained. You stood on the high balcony of the women’s quarters that final morning, palms braced on the warm marble rail, staring down at the sprawling city below.

Smoke rose from a thousand hearths; the Tiber gleamed like molten bronze in the dawn. A disbelieving smile curved your lips; you pressed a hand to your mouth to stifle the soft laugh that escaped.

You already knew. He knew. The waiting had been his gift to you, time to choose freely, without the pressure of command. And still he delayed the inevitable, because he was preparing something sweeter.

That evening an attendant came for you again. No scroll this time. She dressed you carefully in a stola of luminous white silk, the same pale shade you had worn the night he first saw you.

It was adorned only with the delicate golden armlet, the thin cord at your waist, the simple fibulae at your shoulders. No heavy jewels, no overdone hairstyle. Just you, as he had first beheld you.

Your heart thundered as she led you through corridors you had never walked through before. You past guards who bowed low without meeting your eyes.

Massive bronze doors loomed ahead, flanked by Praetorians in gleaming lorica segmentata. The attendant brought you to the overseer who paused, squeezed your hand once reassuringly, bowed, then stepped aside.

The doors swung inward.

You froze.

Your family stood in the center of the grand triclinium. Your father, weathered and proud, eyes shining; your mother, hands clasped tight to keep them from trembling.

Your five brothers, scrubbed cleaner than you'd ever seen and awkward in borrowed tunics, grinning like boys caught stealing figs. They looked exactly as you remembered—sun-browned, sturdy, and home.

And among them stood Geta. He wore no crown tonight, only a simple tunic and matching robe of deep purple edged in gold, yet the authority clung to him strongly as ever. When your gaze met his, his expression softened into something loving.

The small smile that threatened to break across his face was the same one he had given you in the garden weeks ago. Your family rushed forward before you could speak.

Arms enveloped you, your mother’s fierce, tear-soaked embrace, your father’s steady grip on your shoulders, your brothers’ laughter and clumsy pats.

“Look at you,” your mother whispered, tracing the silk at your collarbone. “Our beautiful girl.”

Your father’s voice cracked when he said your name. They marveled at the changes, the glow of your skin, the quiet confidence in your stride, yet they still smelled of earth and wool. Which made your stomach drop homesick.

Geta had invited them for a private feast, he explained quietly when the first rush of reunion ebbed. No senators, no spectacle. Only family, and the man who wished to make you his.

The meal passed in a warm blur, platters of roast, nuts, seafood delicacies, fruits and honey, wine from his own personal estates. Geta sat at the head of the table, quiet but attentive, answering your brothers’ hesitant questions about the legions and listening to your father’s stories of the hills with genuine interest of his people.

When Caracalla appeared, it was late. He was imperious, and his presence felt like a heavy wet blanket. He offered curt greetings before retiring early, leaving the room lighter in his absence.

Afterward, as the tables cleared and your family was led to guest chambers prepared for them, Geta rose. He crossed to you without flourish, simply extended his arm. You slipped your hand through it, feeling the steady warmth of him, but also the faint tremor beneath his calm.

He led you back to the peristyle garden where it had all begun. Moonlight silvered the fountain, turned the roses ghostly white. The waterfall sang its endless song.

He was unusually silent as you walked, brow furrowed in thought, jaw tight. The man who commanded anything it seemed, for once, was nervous and uncertain.

“What bothers you?” you asked softly.

He stopped beneath the cypress that overhung the path, turning to face you fully. Moonlight carved sharp planes across his features.

His dark eyes searched yours. As he slowly lifted a hand to cup your cheek, thumb tracing the curve of your cheekbone with such gentleness it stole your breath.

“I have fought this,” he said, voice low, rough with emotion. “Every day since that first evening. I told myself it was infatuation, a distraction. I refused the consul’s urgings, sent away every candidate they paraded before me. I thought distance would kill it.” His thumb brushed your lower lip. “It only grew.”

He took your hand in his free one and pressed it to his chest, over the steady, frantic beat beneath the fabric. “You must feel that? It has not rested since I first heard your voice reading in the dark. No—Since the moment I saw you at this fountain where we stand.”

Your own breath caught. His heart raced at a pace that was concerning beneath your palm.

“I’ve fallen in love with you,” he whispered, the confession sounding almost like a wound. A crime. “Completely. Irrevocably. You have undone me, and I find I do not wish to be mended.”

Tears stung your eyes. His brows drew tighter, pain etching lines around his mouth.

“Please,” he said, voice breaking on the word. “End this torment.”

He lifted your hand to his lips and kissed the knuckles slowly, reverently, then each fingertip, lingering as though memorizing the taste of your skin. “Be my wife.”

The plea stunned you. This was no command from an emperor. This was a man stripped bare, offering his heart without armor, terrified you might refuse.

“Be mine,” he murmured again, lips brushing the sensitive skin of your wrist, then your palm. Hot tears escaped him, falling onto your hand one after the other.

You drew your hand back gently. He froze, eyes wide with the certainty of rejection, shoulders bracing for the fall. Instead you reached up, cradled his face between your palms, and kissed him.

Softly as tentative, tasting salt and the faint sweetness of wine. His eyes fluttered closed; a shudder ran through him. Then he answered, arms encircling you, drawing you close until there was no space left between your bodies.

The kiss deepened, with a slow ach, tears mingling on your lips, his hands trembling where they cradled your waist. When you parted just enough to breathe, he searched your face with desperate intensity, as though afraid the moment would vanish.

You shook your head once, a small smile breaking through your own tears, and kissed him again. This time he melted into you, completely, holding you as though you were the only thing he had.

Beneath the watchful gaze of the full moon, in the garden where the golden hour had first brought you both together, you stood wrapped in one another’s arms. Emperor and a simple country girl. Conqueror and a quiet reader of poetry.

The most unlikely of pairs, yet in that suspended heartbeat, the most inevitable. Rome would come to know this love story in time and in forums, sung by poets, carved in marble. And Geta once the cruel would turn and go down as noble and just.

As the sun cast its golden glow upon the Colosseum, Geta and his wife, you, found yourselves surrounded by a roaring crowd, eagerly awaiting the sensation that unfolded before you. 

Gladiator games.

The air was thick with anticipation and the scent of sweat mixed with the metallic smell of blood. 

While Geta enjoyed the brutality of the games, you struggled to moderate your own emotions with the darkness of said games.

Amidst the clamour and the rising heat, you felt a wave of sickness washing over you. You were sitting beside Geta, his brother watching from his own chair.

The sight of blood and the overbearing atmosphere became too much for your heart to bear. 

Your face paled, and your breathing grew shallow. 

As if sensing your distress, Geta turned to you.

With a concerned look, Geta gently took your shaking hand in his own. 

He led you away from the frenzy, finding comfort in a secluded corner where the noise of the Colosseum was muted and it was a bit colder. 

His voice, soft and soothing, whispered words of comfort and love into her ear. 

"My Darling. It is probably way too hot for you, and also the blood. I know how much you dislike it."

"Geta. I'm sorry." you whispered as you finally felt like you could breathe.

"No need for it. I only wished for you to share the same love for the games as I do. But I see it now, this really is not for you." 

"I'm truly sorry." Moved by his tenderness, you looked into his eyes, realizing the depth of his affection. 

At that moment, Geta sealed his devotion with a tender kiss on your forehead.

It was a gesture that spoke volumes, an affirmation of his love for you.

As the night arrived in Rome, Geta and you retired to your chambers after dinner. 

The flickering candlelight danced upon your faces, illuminating the room with a warm glow. 

It all filled your heart with such happiness.

You believed, that in this room, you were only a wife and a husband, nothing less, nothing more.

No Rome, no power, no titles.

Just a man and a woman.

Geta, captivated by the beauty and kindness in you, watched you as you peacefully slept. 

The Emperor rolled onto his side watched your face in the candlelight as you faced him.

Overwhelmed by the depth of his emotions, he was awestruck by the fortunate turn of fate that had brought you together. 

Even if it wasn't fate. It was all him.

His selfish nature declared you as his wife the moment your eyes met his.

But in that moment, he realized that his love for you had transformed him. Softening the edges of his bloodthirsty nature and revealing a gentler side.

With a heart full of appreciation, Geta whispered silent words of adoration into the night. 

He vowed to cherish you, to protect you from the darkness that lurked beyond the chambers. 

And so, your love story continued to unfold, defying the expectations of a bloodthirsty emperor and his gentle wife. 

It was the kind of love that exceeded history.

People the upcoming centuries learned about the brutal Emperor Geta and his beloved wife.

Truly a love story worth learning about.

Taglist: 

@castellandiangelo @imagines-by-a-typical-fangirl @manduse @jacalineiscomingforyou 

@mandoloriancookie @deliciousfestsalad @lilliumrorum @asgards-princess-of-mischief 

@fallout-girl219 @dracaryxzs @snowtargaryen 

~Masterlist~

ˇAO3ˇ

“Why not?” you challenge, always so girlishly gentle in your stubbornness. “Everyone will be at the feast, Marcus— No one will see us, I’m sure of it.”

Your eyes flit between his kissed mouth and dark-eyed gaze. Universes shine in your irises despite the shadows of the labyrinthine tomb. Marcus feels a white-hot knife twisting in his chest as he resists the urge to hold you.

“It’s the world we live in now, petal. There is little use in questioning it.”

“But why?” you question, anyway. “Why must we live in this world, hm? The war is over— We could make our own, somewhere far away from the city. Somewhere no one could ever find us—”

You create heavens with your naivety.

Marcus burns them down with words.

“The Emperors would not stand for losing their general. For them, the war is never finished,” the General interjects in a sorrowful deadpan, aching when your face twists with grief. “And if they misplaced you? They… They would burn cities to the ground in their hunt… They would set the world aflame before they stopped searching for you.”

Marcus knows this because he knows himself — every star in the sky would burn out before he stopped looking for you. He knows this, too, because he knows the Emperors. Perhaps better than anyone else in the entire world. 

Geta and Caracalla were born with the belief that they possessed ownership over everything they touched. Anyone stealing from their Empire would meet a swift and tortuous demise. They were merciless gods who dangled life and death on their fingertips. Only those who kissed the ring would make it out of their rule alive.

And you knew it, too. 

That was the worst part of it all: you knew it.

Tomorrow comes and passes like rolling summer clouds, slow and heavy and suffocating. You watch from the royal garden as the sky turns from a glittering sapphire to milky shades of peach and lavender. Another day gone by that you’ve spent grieving on your own. 

Though time marches mercilessly on, threatening to untie unbreakable bonds, it changes little of how much you and Marcus have grown together. Like cherry trees kissed with the promise of spring, with your roots tangled gracelessly together. It’s a knot that cannot be undone, not even by the promise of death. 

And for that, you figure you must be grateful.

Because as you sit on the stone steps of an artificial lake, twirling your fingers in the warm water of the koi pond, you wonder how dreadful it must be for the multi-colored carp. To swim in circles your whole life, to think the world is only as big as the bricks holding you hostage. 

At least you know what it means to grow up in the rolling green of an infinite countryside. At least now you have gardens to roam in the greatest city in the world. At least now you get to live.

A breeze sweeps suddenly through the garden, rippling the crystalline water and rustling the bright green leaves over your head. It carries the soft sound of footsteps scraping the stone trail. Your ears perk, your heart stops, and your head whips over your shoulder. You hope to see Marcus standing at the steps below you.

Your chest tightens and deflates all at once at the sight of Emperor Geta.

He’s adorned in his white-gold cloak, with his laurels sat atop his strawberry-blonde curls, and carrying a jeweled ring on each finger. The sunlight paints the man in flaxen rays of light. The rainbow-colored flowers seem to bloom with every one of his steps. All you can think is how beautiful he is — much too pretty to be so cruel.

“I did not mean to frighten you,” the Emperor concedes, eyes wide and palms splayed in surrender. His sandals scuff the cobbles with each hesitant stride.

“No, of course not,” you blurt with a rapid shake of your head, a quickness sure to give away your choked-back terror. “I just… I only thought you’d be at the dining hall with the rest of the court.”

“I was. Until the handmaidens notified me of your absence.”

You meet his wide-eyed expression with a narrowed gaze, lips curling into an unsure smile. “How can I be absent from a place I do not belong, Your Majesty?” you quip, though your voice threatens to shake.

Geta’s brows furrow. His ringed fingers twitch at his sides. “Belong?” he echoes.

“The feast is for nobility, and I grew up in a brothel,” you answer, giggling quietly under your breath. “I am certainly the farthest thing from royalty.”

You flash him a gentle smile and playful gaze, but the Emperor only frowns. 

He can hardly stomach the thought of it — of his most precious thing living in the countryside, surrounded by filth, touched by unworthy hands. He’s glad you’re now, where only he can touch you. Where he can make you clean.

“There is a place for you there, nonetheless,” Geta tells you and takes another step closer. He stands at the bottom of the stone steps and tilts his chin to his chest. His chocolate eyes harden as he presses more firmly, “And I will see that you attend.”

His sudden glacial disposition makes your stomach wrench. You’ve grown so used to him now, learned all the ways to keep him satisfied, that you’ve forgotten how quickly angered he can be. You don’t want to remember his wrath. 

You nod at the invitation with a wavering smile, knowing you aren’t at liberty to turn him down, and rise from your spot by the pool.

You hold your gown in both hands as you descend the stairs, flinching slightly when Geta rushes to help you. Sometimes, you think he can sense your worry, or that he regrets snapping at you the way he does. Either way, his efforts to pivot the situation are apparent to you — like he never learned how to apologize, so he’s forced to improvise in the matter.

His warm, petaled hand engulfs you to ease you down the tricky cobbles. 

“I only mean that… it is strange. Being without there… Or anywhere, really,” he admits, talking slowly like each word is foreign to him. His gaze darts from yours to the vacant path ahead. “I find that I am looking for you in places I knew you could not be. It’s foolish, I know.”

His gentleness is perhaps more striking than his rage.

“It isn’t foolish, Your Majesty,” you insist as you reach the bottom of the staircase. You peer at him through your lashes and fake another smile. “I just didn’t know you were such a poet.”

Geta doesn’t understand your meaning. Where was the poetry in his words? How did such burdensome feelings of tenderness make him a poet? 

“Neither did I,” he muses, guiding you out of the garden with his hand in yours.

Though still riddled with feelings of uncertainty, Geta is strangely moved by how you’re looking at him now — with the sun sparkling in your softened gaze, more gentle than anyone deserves to be looked at. So he figures he can be a poet for you, if he must.

You bathe again in the rosehip oil Geta always insists you wear, and dress yourself in the fine silk gown you know he prefers. The pale blue fabric drapes off your shoulders and flows to your ankles, cinched at the waist with a jewel-encrusted belt of gold. Your skin and body are adorned, in this moment alone, with perhaps more money than you’ve ever seen in your life. 

The thought makes your head swim as you amble to the dining hall. 

The silent guards at your side make no effort to rush you for fear of the Emperors’ wrath. Still, though, the notion that they are commissioned to ensure your attendance is not lost on you. Any attempt to flee will surely be met with force — if not from the knights, then from Geta himself.

The feasting is long done by the time you arrive. Mingling bodies flit around the crowded manor in a blur. Live music swells distantly as rose petals fall from thin air to decorate the marble floor. You wring your hands nervously together as you weave through the bustling court, gravitating to the large open window at the back of the hall — where you know the Emperors rest on their plush, velvet chaises.

Caracalla notices you first.

The boy rises from his lounged position — laurels crooked on his blonde head and robe shifting up his pale thighs — and smiles at you with all his crooked teeth. His lone golden tooth glints in the sunlight. 

“You showed,” he announces to no one in particular, just before his wild head swivels to his brother on the other side of the couch. “See, brother? I told you there was naught to worry about. Did I not?”

Geta does not appear happy to see you. His features remain in an emotionless scowl while his smokey eyes rake over your form. “You did,” he responds distantly, if only to appease his younger brother.

Caracalla doesn’t seem to notice the tension caging him on both sides as he flashes you another toothy grin. “He threatened to send the Praetorians after you,” he lilts like it’s some kind of silly secret. 

The Emperors’ bodyguards line the wall behind them, as well as all the entrances and nearly every window. They were like your Marcus — military veterans, strong and sharp and ruthless — though you imagine the only soft side you’ll ever see of them is a fist. They are certainly not the kind of people you want sent after you.

“Well, you were right, Your Majesty,” you grin. “There was naught to worry about. I was simply making myself presentable for the court.”

Caracalla holds his ringed hand out for you as you near him. You bend at the waist to kiss the emerald on his ring finger. The motion is muscle memory to you now. “You look beautiful,” he slurs like a child. “Like a fairy, almost.” 

“You flatter me, Your Majesty,” you nod politely and rise to full height again. 

You feel his ocean eyes on your body as you pass him by, glassy and sparkling with a boyish sort of wonder. A stark contrast to the way his brother glares daggers at you. 

“You certainly took your time,” Geta monotones in place of a greeting.

You stand obediently at his side and twist your clammy hands into knots. “I was only getting dressed, Your Majesty. I wanted to look pretty for you—”

“Nonsense,” the Emperor spits and turns away. You’re always pretty, he’d say if he could get the words out. Instead, he softens his suddenly hardened edges and flashes you a gentler glance. “I thought you’d defied me,” he confesses, as though in lieu of an apology for his fleeting hysterics.

“I couldn’t,” you murmur with a quiet smile.

Not wouldn’t, he notices. Not shouldn’t.

But couldn’t. Like your body was fated to listen to his command.

A funny feeling sparkles like gold in his chest. It makes him fidget uncomfortably on the couch. “Sit down,” he instructs with a wave of his ringed hand before slouching back in his seat, pale arms splayed along the edge of it. His brows pinch when you descend onto the empty spot beside him. “Not there.”

You freeze in place. Your eyes widen and dart to his thighs, spread out and hidden beneath the skirt of his robe. You look to Geta once more and cower beneath his expectant look. You sink hesitantly onto his lap, feeling like your heart’s in your throat as you lean into his chest. 

Your unsure hands curl around his shoulders. His curls brush your cheek. He smells overwhelmingly of musk and wine and cinnamon. Something about it makes you dizzy.

You survey the room from your position in Geta’s lap. Most people aren’t looking, you find, too busy talking and flirting and dancing together. A few noblemen across the way leer incredulously at you, though, like they’re trying to gauge if they know you from somewhere. You presume you likely slept with one or more of their sons during the war, most of which are likely dead now.

A few women crowd behind the chaise — all dressed in muted shades of silk, all dripped in jewels and gold. They’re pretty, effortlessly so, as they talk into their goblets full of wine. Some looked relieved to have the Emperors’ attention off of them. Others sneer at you for it, having no idea you’d switch places with them in a heartbeat if you could.

Your eyes dart across the dining hall, almost instinctually so. They lock immediately with Marcus the moment he enters the room. 

The General wears his black-gold armor and a faraway look in his eye as he leads a group of foreign gladiators into the manor. A hush lulls over the crowd, which parts for him without thinking. Marcus navigates through it with an absentminded sternness, like every step is muscle memory. 

He softens only when his gaze meets yours. 

His puffed-out chest deflates with a wavering exhale at the sight of you, a lamb on the lap of a man who holds a knife to your throat. He blames himself for it most of all, knowing he’s the one that brought you to slaughter. 

“Finally!” Caracalla shouts into the silence, voice ringing through the hushed court. “Where have you all been— In the showers together?” 

A bout of laughter rolls over the crowd as the blonde boy leans over to you. You try not to grimace at the bitter smell of wine on his breath. “Who nearly missed the games, little dove,” he croons too close to your ear. 

The nickname makes you tense. You muster a smile, anyway, and remind yourself to breathe. “What a shame that would’ve been,” you lilt in response.

“The armor is tricky, Your Majesty,” Acacius confesses, voice deep like a cathedral organ. “Especially for those who have not donned it before. Such as yourself.”

There is a bite to his words despite their monotoned delivery. Caracalla pays it no mind as he lounges back on the couch, wine sloshing in the chalice he holds in a limp hand. “Get it out with it, then,” he slurs.

Each gladiator faces the other. One is tall and sturdy, like an oak tree. The other is shorter and lankier, much too young and far too pretty to fight in such gruesome battles. As Marcus’ voice booms throughout the quiet dining hall to introduce them — The Barbarian versus The Might Vincenzo — Geta presses his mouth to your ear. 

“Which one shall we bet on, little dove?” he whispers to you as his hand curls tighter around your waist. His other idles over your skirt, pale and jeweled and warm, though his long fingers threaten to dip between your thighs.

You blink hard to keep your head from swimming. “Hm?”

“Which one of these imbeciles do you think will win?” Geta repeats.

“Oh, um, I— I don’t know, Your Majesty,” you stammer in response. It’s hard to think about anything other than how close Marcus is to you now. How pretty and wartorn he looks. How desperately you wish to hold him.

“Just guess,” the Emperor presses, squeezing softly at your hip. “It’s only for entertainment, anyway.”

How could certain death possibly entertain you? your mind races as your mouth blurts, “The little one, then.”

“Really?” Geta hums in amusement. His dark eyes, smudged with brown liner, squint softly at your glossy profile. They flit across your features like he’s seeing you for the very first time, though you aren’t looking back at him to notice. “Hm. I would’ve picked the oaf.”

“Well, it is the most obvious choice, Your Majesty. Though, I find it’s often the smaller ones that surprise you—” 

You turn your head to look at him. Your breath catches audibly in your throat when you find the Emperor much closer than expected. He’s so close your eyes nearly cross to meet his gaze. So close, that the tip of his large nose threatens to brush the bridge of yours. So close, you get drunk on the alcohol tainting his breath.

Geta’s wine-stained mouth curls upwards in a cynical smile. “They do, indeed,” he croons quietly, raspberry breath fanning warm over your jaw. 

Chills pebble along your skin accordingly. It takes great strength from you to break his magnetic chocolate gaze. You turn away from the Emperor and focus instead on the gladiators circling one another. Vincenzo moves in seemingly practiced motions, unfazed by the brutality of such duels. The nameless Barbarian houses a great sadness in his young eyes — a hardened look of regret, perhaps, for what he knows he must do. 

“Let’s not entertain them for our amusement, brother,” the Barbarian mutters lowly to his opponent, blade hanging limp at his side.

The larger man charges like a rhino. A deep roar sounds in his throat as he thrusts his knife towards the younger boy’s neck. The Barbarian dodges the swing with ease, possessing all the swiftness of a snake as he ducks past his opponent and slices his muscular bicep with one fell swoop.

The crowd gasps in a mixture of horror and amusement as Vincenzo’s blood drips onto the floor like deep red wine. It stains the marble in fat droplets, blending with the rose petals littered at the gladiators’ feet.

You flinch at the sight. Your breath hitches as you turn away — eyes squeezed shut, brows tightly furrowed. Geta chuckles with merriment. You feel it rumbling in his chest as he murmurs, “Don’t be frightened, little dove. It’s only a game.”

Something in you aches when the Emperor reaches for the jeweled goblet at his side. Your fearful eyes remain fixed on his face while the hall erupts in a symphony of violence — of battle cries and laughter, of dropped blades and dull smacks. 

“Here,” Geta offers with the wine in hand. “Drink. It will calm your nerves.”

He presses the rim of the chalice to your mouth. His gaze never waves from your lips as they part to welcome the bittersweet raspberry. The wine pools like blood on your tongue. It tastes like guilt going down.

Dusk falls over the city like a wounded swan. The velvet darkness outside your window makes shadows of everything it touches, only partially diminished by blinking stars and waning silver moonlight. The crescent shape of the bright white orb would fit just perfectly beneath Marcus’ jaw, you think to yourself. 

The thought alone sends a warm, melancholic feeling down your spine — with such an intensity only the tenderness of twilight could elicit.

You slide from the crimson satin of your mattress with a tight chest. You migrate towards the entrance — bare feet padding faintly along the floor, thin cotton nightgown trailing behind you. You stand before your bedroom door and rap your knuckles rhythmically against the wood. 

Twice, once, three times. 

And then you wait.

“It’s me,” you hear Marcus murmur from the other side.

Your heart swells like sunshine in your throat. You smile wide despite yourself, with no one else around to see it. “It’s been Romulus for nearly a fortnight,” you tell him, panting slightly from where you’d held your breath in anticipation. “I was starting to think you’d been banished from your post here forever.”

“You know the Emperor likes to torture me,” he quips, though his usual monotone never wavers. 

It might’ve been easier on you both, if Geta had shipped him off to lead another meaningless campaign. At least then Marcus could miss you from leagues away. Instead, he has to guard your bedroom door and miss you from the other side of it. Torture is an understatement.

“Well, I quite like it when you’re here,” you confess quietly, tracing shapes onto the doorframe with an absentminded hand. “Makes me feel safe.”

You wait patiently for a response.

“Good,” is all the General can think to reply.

Your face pinches with concern. Your chest does, too. “Are you angry with me?”

“Why should I be angry with you?”

“I don’t know… Our conversations together have grown so short— I worry you do not wish to speak with me at all.”

Though you cannot see him, Marcus flinches at your words. He stands like a statue outside your door, in the middle of the dim corridor, and glares over his shoulder into nothingness. “It isn’t true,”  he insists, voice low but honeyed still. “I wish to speak with you always.”

“Then why do you not?”

“Because it isn’t safe,” he repeats, though you never seem to hear him.

“Will it ever be?”

Marcus goes silent as he ponders for a moment. Quiet engulfs the bedroom all over again, filled only by crackling candles. “No,” he answers after a few long moments. “Not for a long while.”

You feel like he’s stabbed you with a freshly sharpened blade, right between your ribcage and into your bleeding heart. It would hurt less, anyway.  “Why?” you wonder aloud in a pained whimper, knowing the answer will do nothing more than twist the knife.

The answer sits ready on Marcus’ tongue, as though the question of why has plagued him long before you asked it.

“Because I… I ruined you. By bringing you here.”

“You saved me,” you correct.

“I destroyed you,” he retorts, voice heavy with choked-back emotion.

“I would be dead if it weren’t for you,” you remind him of the blatant reality, which threatens to consume you every time you see his face. You wish you were holding it now, cradling Marcus’ bearded cheeks in your supple palms, so that he might understand the weight of your words. “I would’ve lost everything if you hadn’t taken me with you. I would’ve been tortured, probably killed. But now I get to—”

The word gets caught in your throat. You swallow hard and fake a smile at nothingness. The pretending comes naturally to you now.

“Now I get to live. Both of us do.”

There is a brief moment of knowing silence. This isn’t what living is supposed to feel like — fleeting touches in dark crypts and whispered conversations through bedroom doors. Both of you know it, but it’s a truth too brutal to admit out loud.

“Marcus?”

“Yes?”

“You know… We aren’t unspectacular things, Marcus,” you speak slowly and with a strangled intention. “We’ve already come so far. We’ve survived so much— We can survive a little more, can’t we? Until it’s safe again?”

“I don’t presume we have any other choice.”

“We don’t,” you sigh. “Because I love you.”

“I know,”  Marcus nods, with an air of surrender in his words. “Because I love you, too.”

You fall into the heavy wooden door as though it were your lover’s body. You did not need to see him to feel held by him. He hadn’t touched you, and he didn’t need to. His presence alone affects you in such a way that it feels like he has been caressing you for a long, long time.

Marcus’ heavy armor clunks faintly on the other side of the door as he stands up straighter. Emperor Geta enters his line of sight, a shadow slinking down the candlelight corridor. He clears his throat. “Your Majesty—” the General announces, for you and you alone.

He hears your feet pad against the floor as you scurry from the entrance.

“Dog,”the Emperor greets in a cynical deadpan. 

His sandals scuff the cobbles when he stands before the taller man. The torches hanging on the walls bathe Geta’s face in flickering amber hues, highlighting his tired features where the makeup had worn throughout the day. He seems weighed down by a certain kind of grief. The kind that makes Acacius feel ten feet tall.

“Have you been guarding my Empress like a good little hound?”

Marcus nods politely, though the term of endearment catches him momentarily off guard. To be the Emperor’s whore was one thing, but it was entirely another to be referred to in such high regard. The General tries to contemplate what that must mean as he answers, “Of course, Your Majesty.”

Geta grins despite his visible fatigue. “Good boy.”

You’re already back in bed by the time the door swings open. You lounge along the expensive satin sheets and pretend you’ve done nothing but wait obediently for the Emperor, while simultaneously swallowing down any remaining feelings of longing and heartache.

Geta enters the room like a rolling storm cloud. He wears all the chaos of the day in his mussed blonde curls, smudged makeup, and wrinkled garb — a palpable sort of disarray. You scramble on the mattress to greet him, like you often do, until he dismisses you with a wave of his hand.

“No. Don’t,” he commands. “Stay there. Don’t get up.”

You obey, freezing partially upright, with your elbows holding most of your weight. Your face swirls with concern at his look of annoyance. Your heart drops to your stomach in fear.

“Are you alright?” you ask him, though the Emperor pays you little mind as he migrates to the table by the window. 

He pours himself a chalice of wine. The glugging flagon fills the heavy silence. You swallow hard and stare timidly at the back of him. “Are you angry with me?” you repeat once more — a question that seems to accompany womanhood, especially when bound by the innate violence of man.

“I couldn’t be,” Geta answers like it’s obvious, sparing you a fleeting glance over his shoulder. He turns away to down the full goblet in three lengthy gulps, then wipes his stained mouth with the back of his hand. “It’s only my brother,” he confesses through labored breaths. 

Your worry lessens, but only slightly.

“Is he alright?”

“He’s acting like a child,” Geta spits, angered all over again, as he pours himself another cup. “More so than usual.”

“Has something happened?” 

“Nothing that should concern you.”

“Well, it’s certainly bothering you, Your Majesty,” you coo in slow and calculated measures as you rise from the many cushioned pillows. “So, forgive me, but it cannot help but concern me as well.”

Geta is unaccustomed to such tenderness. He tenses beneath it, glances hesitantly over his shoulder like he plans to find a ghost sitting in your place — as though he’d only heard the words in the wind and not from your mouth. A foreign feeling swirls again in his hollow chest, like a blizzard of snow or a flurry of rose petals.

“He’s jealous of me. Just as he always has been,” the Emperor tells you as he stalks toward the bed. He gestures mindlessly with his hands, and the wine sloshes over the rim of the gold chalice until it hits the stone floor. He raises it to his mouth, tips his head back, and down the bittersweet pomegranate.

His neck is long and milky white. His protruding adam’s apple bobs with each languid swallow. A drop of deep red trails from his mouth and down his chin once he’s finished. He rubs it away with a fist. You forget to stop staring.

“Lay down,” he commands, chest heaving. 

Your body obeys without a second thought. You lie back on the velvet cushions, docile and willing, in a way that comes naturally to you now. You’ve been Geta’s thing for so long that a part of you has grown used to it. Needy for it. 

The mattress dips beneath the Emperor’s wait as he kneels beside you. Your mind starts to reel. 

Your brain seemingly anticipates an inevitable pleasure, which comes to you like clockwork most nights. It makes your mouth water like a drooling hound that knows when it’s feeding time. A funny feeling stirs in the pit of your belly and pools like honey in your undergarments. Your thighs clench together when a subtle throbbing begins to pound between them.

You should be grateful when Geta crawls beneath the sheets only to rest his head on your chest.

You’re shocked, most of all, by such a foreign act of tenderness.

Your breath catches when his cheek presses to your breast. He nods gently to rub his burning skin over the smooth cotton. A deep exhale fans from his nose as he rests his body weight against you. 

You cradle him with hesitant hands and remind yourself to breathe. Your fingers scratch lightly over his clothed shoulder while your others comb through his strawberry-blonde locks. It’s a warmth so foreign to the two of you that it threatens to bring you both to tears.

“He says he wants someone like you— my brother,” Geta admits after a few moments of long silence.

“A whore?”

“A paramour,” the Emperor corrects, face twisted in irritation at your use of the term. He focuses on the muffled sound of your heartbeat when anger threatens to consume him. A heavy sigh deflates his chest. His anxious fingers twist in your nightgown. “I told him he could have his pick— Between us, we have plenty of women to go around, but… He insists his mind is stuck on you.”

Your bated breaths come to you in trembling inhale-exhales. You hope he doesn’t sense how frightful his words have made you. 

Geta is cruel, yes, but he is at most times predictable. Though Caracalla may be kind, he is most of all volatile. And there is nothing more dangerous than an erratic, easily excitable ruler.

“And what did you tell him?” you wonder with a feigned sense of curiosity.

“That you were mine, of course,” Geta blurts like it’s obvious. “He offered to share, to which I told him that he should be grateful that I’m sharing the throne alone with him… And now he’s off with his monkey, crying like a child…”

You feel strangely comforted by his words. You breathe a sigh of relief through your nose and rake your fingers through his blonde-brunette curls. “Your brother is a fragile thing, Your Majesty,” you advise in gentle murmurs. “You must be gentle with him.”

“I don’t know how to be gentle with anything,” Geta confesses, half-muffled into your chest. “Least of all, with someone like him.”

“Shall I speak with him? Perhaps I can calm him— make him understand?”

“It’s my burden alone.”

“It is mine as well, Your Majesty. So that mustn’t be true.”

Geta turns slowly to face you, with all the hesitance of someone unused to such kindness. His chin rests on your clothed sternum and bobs with each word. “You shouldn’t have to carry it,” he whispers into the honeyed silence of the candlelit bedroom.

You muster a small smile. “I know. But I will, anyway,” you shrug. “When you care for someone, your brain has little say in the matter.”

Geta falters at your admission. A foreign emotion swims in his chocolate button eyes. He’d rather blame it on the flickering flames strewn around the room. “Is that what this is?” he mutters, almost to himself, when he finds the breath to say the words.

Your fingers in his hair slow to a stop. “What do you mean, Your Majesty?”

“This… This tenderness,”  the Emperor answers, spitting the word like it’s the first time he’s ever tasted it. His face scrunches distantly, as if it were sour on his tongue. “Sometimes it overwhelms to the point of tears. It’s a… a blinding radiance, like… a knife— lodged somewhere deep in the body…”

You cup Geta’s freshly shaven face between two, gentle hands. He swears he sees the sun.

“Why do you speak of love like it hurts you, Your Majesty?”

He swallows hard. “Because it does,” he confesses before rising from your body. 

You mourn his warmth as he swings his legs over the side of the mattress. He sits with his back facing you. His dove white robe hangs off one pale shoulder when he bows his head.

“I never believed in it as a child— the permanence of it all, of… love. And yet, I… I find myself longing for it anyway. Like a fool.”

You rise on one elbow and resist the urge to touch him. “Wanting to be understood by someone doesn’t make you a fool, Your Majesty.”

“I know that I… That I haven’t been the most gentle with you at times. But I am… I am sorry for it,” Geta tells you in near inaudible murmurs, flashing you a sheepish glance over his freckled shoulder. “I understand it must be difficult for you.”

“What, Your Majesty?”

“To be caught between all that was. And all that must be.”

Your stomach wrenches at his words. Your chest tightens beneath the weight of them until you have to fight for every wavering breath. You take a trembling inhale and rise so you’re sitting at his side, taking careful calculation in the following words you speak.

“We cannot… We cannot choose who we love, Your Majesty. We can fight ceaselessly against it, perhaps, but it doesn’t change fate.” 

You reach out for him with one tremoring hand. You rake a rogue curl behind his ear and hope he doesn’t know Marcus’ face is the one stained permanently behind your eyelids. 

“We love who we love, Your Majesty. And the rest stay ghosts.”

Geta’s eyes glitter with an emotion you’ve not seen from him before. His dark eyes flit between both of yours, as though searching for something in your gaze — sincerity, perhaps, or maybe an equal sense of longing. 

You blink, and his mouth is on yours. Geta kisses you back onto the velvet-satin and settles over you once more. It’s wet. Hungry. Unforgiving.

You kiss him back with a similar intensity, clutching his robe in both hands, desperate to understand him.

Marcus remains on the other side of your door — an invisible ghost, an unwilling witness. He hears all of it, as clearly as he would if he were seeing it with his own eyes. A hollow feeling of yearning and hunger gnaws at the pit of his stomach as he tries to imagine your pleasured form. The painting behind his eyelids is blurred and distorted with time.

He wishes he could see you now, even with Emperor Geta fucking you into the mattress.  He could pretend that he was the one fucking you, at least, and let the image alone bring his withered form back to life. 

You’re together in his head, entwined still, with your mouths bruised in a relentless kiss.

Marcus hopes you’re still together in yours, too.

General Acacius spends most of his nights in the crypt, which he feels is rather fitting for a half-dead thing like him. When he is not surveilling your bedroom door, or being otherwise taunted by Emperor Geta, he finds a strange sanctuary in the dreary tombs. It is perhaps the only place where he is left alone. 

Caracalla is petrified by thoughts of ghosts, and Geta detests history, so neither is likely to show their face in such an ancient mausoleum. Which is ideal for someone plotting an insurrection.

You find him there in the wee small hours of the late, late night. He wears a deep red cloak over his white robe, perhaps to conceal himself, as he shuffles around the room to snuff out flickering candles. You wonder who he lit them for because you know he does not need them. He’s grown too used to navigating in the shadows.

Your sandals scuff suddenly against the damp cobbles. Marcus does not seem startled by the intrusion. He knew you were there by the sweet scent of your perfumed body alone. There is nothing about you he would not immediately notice.

“What are you doing here?” he wonders with his back facing you, voice low with a timbre that bounces off the tomb walls.

“I wanted to see you,” you answer sheepishly.

Marcus says nothing in response.

You wring your hands into knots and shift your weight on your feet. He extinguishes the torch on the far wall, and shadows engulf the windowless crypt — save for one lone candle flickering atop Emperor Commodus’ cracking tomb. Your eyes flit from the flame to Marcus’ silhouette, gaze swimming with uncertainty.

“May I ask you a question?”

“I don’t see why not,” he monotones and flits across the room like a ghost.

“What do you do down here?” you ask. When your voice inevitably trembles with distant alarm, you quip, “I only mean it mustn’t be healthy— Spending so much time in the dark.”

“It’s none of your concern,” Marcus insists with a venom that makes you flinch. He hooks his pointer finger around the hook of the candle holder, and the dancing flame paints his statuesque features in shades of amber. He softens immediately at the sight of you.

“I just do not wish to incriminate you,” the wartorn man confesses.

Your chest aches with an immediate concern. “What does that mean? Please do not tell me that you’re doing something perilous—”

“No,” Marcus interjects firmly, then amends. “Not yet, at least.”

“Explain it to me, then. Help me understand.”

“It’s best you do not know, petal. It’s safer that way.”

The word alone makes you cross. You wish he’d stop using it.

“But I will tell you when the time is right, I swear,” he assures you, though his voice threatens to tremble with wavering strength. His dark eyes flit between both of yours, heavy with an emotion you cannot place. “I will keep you safe no matter what, you know that—”

“It’s not me I’m worried about, Acacius,” you murmur with a stern glint in your eye, clutching the downy fabric of his robe in your fists.

“There is naught to worry about, petal. I assure you.”

Marcus takes a step closer to you despite the voice of reason in his head telling him otherwise. He lifts his free hand and swipes a callused palm over your cheek, soft and warm with sleep. You lean into his touch like a cat. A funny feeling blossoms in his chest.

“I’ve been thinking… About what you said some days ago… Making a new world for ourselves…” He talks slowly and deeply and nearly to himself. You nod against his palm to egg him onward. “You were right. We deserve better than this— Why should we have to live like dogs?”

Marcus swipes his thumb over your jaw and takes another daring step closer. You feel the heat from the candle he holds in his free hand, though your eyes remain on his face. You couldn’t look away from him if you tried. A part of you is hesitant to blink even, for fear that you might miss him for a millisecond too long.

He angles your gently head upward with his weathered palm. You can smell the musk on his tanned skin from here, as well as the ale and mint leaves on his breath. It’s dizzying. The ground seems to sway under your feet at the dwindling proximity between you.

“We love each other, don’t we?” he murmurs in a honeyed voice.

You nod without a second thought. Your mouth waters with the hopes of tasting him.

He nods with you. “So fuck the war.”

Marcus ducks down to press his mouth to yours. His lips swallow your own in a kiss, lingering and languid and deep enough to drown in. 

You melt into his touch with a heavy sigh exhaled through your nose. The warm breath fans across his unshaven cupid’s bow while your hands migrate to his hair. You twist the greying tendrils in your fingers, keeping him impossibly close against you. 

When Marcus goes to grip the fabric of your nightgown in both his hands, the candle holder tumbles to the ground. The gold clatters audibly across the cobbles. The wax light falls on his side, and the flame begins to dwindle on the murky stone floor. 

You wonder, briefly, if it will take fire — if the smoke will give you away, or if the tomb and all its history will burst into flames, or if the inferno will take you and Marcus with it.

Though it snuffs quickly out, bathing the two of you in a navy blue darkness, you figure you wouldn’t care if it did burn you to ash. Not as long as Marcus was there to kiss you into embers.

Marcus’ face consumes your dreams. 

The details are blurred with the haze of sleep, but he was there — touching your face, asking to try again. You merged into one another like ghosts. Like drops of melted honey. Like lovers of Pompeii turned to ash. Every day, you tell yourself that it is unsafe to love him more than you do now. And yet he haunts your dreams, and yet you find more love in you for him.

And yet…

A violent hand pulls you from your gentle slumber. It jerks mercilessly at your arm, snatching you from your peaceful dreams and waking you into a nightmare.

“Wake up!” a strident and familiar voice bellows into the quiet bedroom, lit only by the faint blue of an early morning. The words are punctuated by another rough tug at your wrist. You awake to the sharp aching in your fingers.

“Wha—” you slur, trying to blink away the bleary mist as you lift your heavy head from the pillows. “What’s going on? What’s happened?”

“Up!”

You’re urged from the mattress by the unforgiving fingers digging bruises on your arm. You squint through the sleep and ebbing darkness to find Geta looming over you — blonde curls mussed on his head, swollen eyes wide and wild, velvet robe askew on his shoulder to reveal his pale chest. His skin there is flushed red with anger. You don’t know what you did to deserve his wrath.

“Geta?” you gasp through a faint whimper in your throat, trying to pull your wrist from his grip. He only holds you tighter. “What are you doing— You’re hurting me.”

“Liar!” is all he shouts in response, like he doesn’t even hear you.

The crazed Emperor drags you out of bed just to drop you to the cobbles. The thin sleeves of your nightgown slip off your shoulder; the skirt of it bunches at your thighs. You make yourself as small as possible as you shrink away from the man towering above you. 

“I don’t understand,” you squeak through the heart in your throat.

“Liar!” he shouts again.

His voice rings through the shadowed bedroom. You cower in response. He sobers at the fear twisting your features, but only slightly. His heart pounds hard against his ribcage, beating red-hot rage through his veins. He can hardly hear you through the rushing in his ears.

“What have I done?” you whisper, voice trembling.

“You have made…” Geta trails off, swallowing the emotion threatening to strangle him. He blinks away burning tears and spits, “A mockery of me.”

Fear ebbs into confusion. “I have not—”

“You lie!”

“I do not!” The volume of your voice startles even you. You blink up at him with wide, pleading eyes, searching for any ounce of mercy within him. 

You find none. 

Just a man made of towering orange flames, threatening to set you ablaze. 

“I have given up everything to be here,” you whimper. “To be at your side. To understand you—” 

“Make no mistake… Your lies no longer have an effect on me, little dove,” Geta interjects through a bout of cynical laughter. He shakes his head and grins despite the tears glittering in his eyes. “You think you are so clever. That you were brought here, to my Empire, to be cherished...”

The Emperor takes slow, daunting steps towards you. You shrink away from him and choke back a sob bubbling in your throat. Tears fall from your lashes in fat droplets down your burning cheeks. 

Geta grins like it pleases him.

“Let me be clear, so there is no longer any misunderstanding…” he tells you, speaking in slow, deep murmurs as he crouches before you. You can see the flecks of gold glimmering in his deep brown eyes from here. You can see the fire swimming within them, too, as he assures you, “You were created merely for me to destroy you.”

The throne room is absent of its usual bright red roses and ornate gold decoration. The chandelier overhead has not yet been lit. Instead, the spacious room is illuminated by an ever-rising sun — which basks everything it touches in shades of melancholy blue. 

The servants light torches along the wall while you and Marcus stand together before the scowling Emperor. Something about it strikes a feeling of nostalgia in your chest, though these circumstances are much different than the ones you were brought here under. Geta no longer looks at you with lust in his dark eyes. He looks at you, instead, with betrayal.

“Thanks to the civic virtue of some good men…” the eldest Emperor quavers into the silent room. “…Your insurrection has been revealed.” 

Your stomach twists at his words. Your mouth falls softly agape with shock. Of any explanation you could’ve been given upon your sudden imprisonment, you couldn’t have expected this one. You thought, perhaps, that he had somehow found out about your meetings in the crypt with Marcus. You would’ve been able to stomach that, at least. Your love for Acacius is something you’d be willing to die by.

But not this.

Not something you were completely unconscious of.

Geta continues tearily. “The honor… The dignitas that Rome has bestowed upon you— All this, you have forfeited by your treachery.”

“Emperor Geta, please,” Marcus sighs. His deep voice echoes through the empty throne room like a heavenly, sorrowful instrument. He bows his head and swallows hard, knowing now that he must beg for mercy. Not for himself. But for you. 

“Torture me, if you wish, but let her go. She had no part in this—”

“Forgive me,” Geta spits emotionlessly. “But I have no cause to believe you, General.”

Marcus turns to you then, tired eyes wide and pleading. “Tell him. Go on, it’s alright,” he urges gently, though your silence makes his chest ache. “Petal, tell him— Tell him you were unaware.”

You say nothing.

“Tell him!”he repeats in a shout that rings through the quiet throne room. His trained apathy splinters for the first time in front of Geta. He is perhaps more fearful now than he has ever been before. No war was nearly as frightening as the thought of losing you.

“What does it matter?” you mutter in response, voice fragile like glass. “He made up his mind the moment he found out.”

“Then take me if that’s what you want,” Marcus says, pleads to the merciless Emperor. His sandals scuff the stone floor as he takes a step closer in surrender.  “Put me in the Colosseum— Crucify me on the royal steps, if you must— But please, do not make her suffer for something I brought upon her. Do not punish her for my sins.”

“You are the Great General Acacius…” Geta croons bitterly. “What could one more splash of blood possibly mean to you?”

“Everything,” Marcus answers without a second thought, voice heavy with a predestined grief. “It would mean everything.”

Something in Geta shifts. You see it flickering in his dark, teary eyes. A surge of power, almost, like a stroke of bright white lightning. The corner of his pink mouth twitches as he tilts his chin upward. “Step back ten paces,” he commands suddenly.

Marcus’ brows pinch first in confusion, then relax a moment later when he inevitably obeys. His feet sound along the cobbles as he takes ten slow steps backward. He mourns the distance it puts between the two of you.

“Turn around,” Geta’s voice echoes through the vacant throne room.

You hear Marcus take a wavering breath in. He spins on the heel of his leather sandal until his back is facing you. His heavy eyes flutter shut as his chin falls to his chest. He searches for an ounce of hope within himself, knowing he’d lost all of it some time ago now.

The Emperor smirks. “Good dog.”

Acacius seethes.

Geta’s dark eyes, rimmed red with emotion, flit back to you. Something heavy settles in the pit of your stomach — dread, perhaps, or maybe acceptance for what’s surely to come. 

“Was it a lie?” 

“What?” you ask with bated breath.

Geta shrugs, then readjusts his robe when it falls from his shoulder. “Any of it.”

“No.”

“Tell the truth.”

“I am.”

Geta snarls at your subdued emotion. “I am the Emperor of Rome. I could have my pick of whores— You being here is a privilege. Do you understand?”

You nod once. “Yes.”

“You came from filth— to the greatest city in the world,” Geta spits the words like so many drops of venom. He waves his hands up and down your form, pale fingers now void of their usual gold rings. “You were just… some whore without a face before I made you better. I did this!” 

He gestures wildly around the darkened manor, voice breaking at the volume of his shouting. His robe falls askew to reveal more of his bare chest as spit coats his bitten lips. You remain in place while the Emperor inches closer. The fear has left you, as well as any instinct to cry — your grief is too violent for that now.

“I brought you here,” Geta convinces himself. His saliva splatters on your cheek in faint droplets. Tears glitter on his cheeks like stained glass windows. A fire flickers in the deep brown of his eyes. 

“I willed this— I cared for you with every bit of conscience as I was born with.” He takes a deep breath and steps back, shaking his head in disgust. “And yet…”

He turns away. 

You’re able to take in a deep breath for the first time in several minutes when he parts from you. The leadened weight on your chest remains.

“If you do not wish to be here, I certainly will not make you,” Geta rambles in teary blubbers. “One whore is as good as any other— Perhaps I can find one who is capable of pretending she cares.”

You step towards his retreating form. “Geta—”

“Go!” he shouts, looking back at you with a crazed look in his sleep-worn eyes. He wipes spit from his chin and quietens, strangled by an unavoidable emotion. “Now. Walk through those doors, and I promise no harm will come to you. Just do not stand before me and patronize me in this way, I will not stand for it.”

His promise makes your chest swell with hope. You remain frozen even still, stuck at an unnavigable crossroads. Such assurances of safety mean little to you when Marcus

has a sword to his throat. 

You look at the man over your shoulder. He has not moved from his spot some feet behind you. His back still faces you, though you notice his hands are balled into trembling fists.

Even if it were true — even if Geta really planned to let you go without a knight slitting your throat — it would mean little without Marcus. You would not know where to go without him. You would not be able to live with yourself if you left him here, not knowing what Geta planned for him. You would be away from the city, yes, but it would not be freedom.

Your instinctual will for survival is replaced by the primal need to keep Marcus alive.

To do that, you must reach for the bloodied hand of death.

You turn away from your lover — away from the opened cage door and the promise of freedom — and rush to the heartbroken Emperor. You clutch his cotton robe in your fists and tug at the gold trim to pull him closer. You meet him in the middle, entwining your mouth with his.

You kiss him. Hard. With enough ardor to snatch the breath from his lungs. His pink lips part for yours, almost instinctually so, and you swipe your tongue over the rough pad of his own. He tastes of sleep and honey and very distantly of wine. He gets heavy against you as he falls into your kiss. His hands cling to the skirt of your nightgown until his fists start to shake.

You pull away only when he’s melted for you all over again, when the red-hot anger has ebbed from his milky white body. A thin string of saliva keeps you connected until it splits against your chins.

“I know… I know you are hurt, Your Majesty,” you speak in slow murmurs, and through uneven breaths. Your fearful eyes dart over his face and find him utterly kissbitten — mouth swollen, eyes heavy, cheeks flushed. “And I know that it is difficult to forget pain. But I’ve found it’s harder to remember happiness. Glory.”

Each word from your mouth is stamped with intention. 

You speak of glory only with the hopes that he might remember his many useless wars, all of which Marcus has won for him without complaint. There would be no Empire to rule without the Great General Acacius, who dares not to sneak a glance at the two of you over his shoulder. He, instead, keeps his heavied gaze on the torch hanging by the door. The flame sears his vision until he can see you dancing within it.

“We have no scar to show from sweetness, do we?” you quaver with a forced smile, cupping Geta’s burning cheeks between both your hands. You swipe your thumb over a fat tear clinging to his cheekbone. “How can we allow ourselves to be blinded by anger when there is still so much love?” 

Geta snivels and rests his forehead against yours. His long lashes flutter against his glowing cheeks.

“I wept for you,” the Emperor confesses quietly, words weighed down by tears. “I had come to believe that… If I wanted something badly enough, the sheer strength of my desire would make it mine. I see now that it was foolish—”

“Perhaps it is true,” you whisper to him, breaths entwining and kissing both your cheeks. If he notices your voice shaking, you hope he confuses it with desire and not with fear. “Perhaps that is why I’m standing here now. Because I am yours…”

A moment of silence lulls over the blue hour. The quiet feels deafening in the large throne room, quelled only by the sound of heavy breathing. Yours hitches in your throat when Geta parts wordlessly from you. He sniffles once, then exhales hard through his mouth. 

Your gaze remains fixed on his face in an unwavering stare as you try to gauge his reaction. His features are emotionless, but his heavy-lidded eyes flit back and forth between yours — as though he, too, were trying to measure your sincerity. 

Your fate, in that split second, teeters on a knife’s edge. You hold your breath and wait for him to raise his hand. Not to hit you, maybe, but to sic his guards upon you like dogs — either to drag you into a cell or to be kind enough to kill you on the spot.

Geta lifts his palms only to cradle your jaw between them. His long fingers wrap around your neck like he intends to choke you there. He drags your mouth back to his instead. Your noses smush together with the intensity of his touch. It’s all teeth and tongue and spit. Desire and anger and grief. A billion things he licks into your mouth.

The weight of his hunger smothers you. Consumes you. He could kill you this way, if he wanted. There is little difference, you’ve found, between a bite and a kiss. It only matters how deep he buries his teeth into you.

Your chin shines with his spit when he parts from you. Geta’s chest heaves with labored breaths, flushed and swelling with proud. He hasn’t yet let go of your neck. You wonder if he can feel your thrumming pulse against his fingers.

“Show me, then,” he pants. “That you’re mine… Prove it to me.”

The Emperor goes to step back from you. Your hands dart for his wrists, holding him there when he threatens to pull them away. Geta’s eyes widen in shock.

“Don’t make him watch,” you plead in a delicate whisper.

His wide, chocolate eyes flit over your shoulder. He seems to forget about Marcus’ presence until that very moment. He looks back to you, at the plea swimming in your eyes, and nods once in response. 

“Take him,” he calls to the knights lurking in the darkness.

Their heavy armor clinks together as they comply without complaint. They lead Marcus to the door with their hands on the hilts of their swords. You watch him leave from over your shoulder, in the very corner of your eye. You hope he understands, but you wouldn’t blame him if you didn’t. You find it hard to forgive yourself even now.

Marcus always said that people find out who they truly are during times of war. Maybe this is who you are. Maybe you cannot kiss the devil without taking some of his sin.

The door closes with a heavy thud across the room. 

The weight of being alone with the Emperor washes heavily over you. Like drops of ice-cold rain. Like warm, melted honey.

Geta peers at you with a similar uncertainty. Head bowed slightly, wide eyes glittering from beneath his lashes. You do what you have always done — take care of this man the way he’s asked you to, placate his anger with your body. Giving yourself away is as natural as breathing most days.

“Sit down, Your Majesty,” you urge in a gentle whisper.

The Emperor listens as obediently as his knights. 

The sound of his sandals padding along the cobbles fills the suffocating quiet. He descends upon his throne like he was made for it, spreading his legs before him and propping his arms along the golden rests. He looks like a painting upon his seat of power, bathed in the deep blue of an early morning. An angel dragged to hell.

Geta watches you with an unwavering stare as you take slow steps toward him. His brown-eyed gaze goes glassy at the sight of you, an angelic thing all dressed in white. His thighs part to welcome you between them. He tenses under your palms when they smooth over his milky white chest, past the sparse chestnut hair littered there and down to the tie of his robe.

His stomach rises and falls in heavy, uneven pants under your touch. You unknot the string with bated breath, then brush the golden trimming to his sides. He’s bare underneath it, likely from where he’d been brutally roused from his slumber. His cock is on immediate display — resting on his fuzzy thighs, half-hard and glowing red at the tip.

You descend to your knees to take care of him on instinct. His hands dart to your shoulders to stop you. “Ride me,” he commands, though it sounds more like a plea as it spills his swollen mouth.

Wordlessly, you straddle his thighs. The cotton fabric of your nightgown bunches at your hips. You spit into your palm and reach between your bodies for his cock in a single practiced motion. He feels like velvet in your fist. 

Geta’s nostrils flare with a heavy exhale when your hand drags up the length of his cock. His head tips back onto his throne when your fist falls back down again. Your lips find the expanse of his long, white neck like a deep-seated compulsion. You kiss his pulse as though it were his mouth. He cradles the crown of your head and brings his lips to your ear.

“You love me,” he sighs within a moan when your thumb brushes the head of his drooling cock.

You can’t tell if it’s a command to repeat the words back to him, or an affirmation he repeats only for himself. Either way, you nod in response and line his stiff cock at your entrance. Geta’s mouth parts in a silent moan at the feeling of your silky cunt. 

“I do,” you whisper just before you mount him. 

There is a dull ache in your belly when he pierces you, though you’ve grown accustomed to his length with time. Your satin folds split to welcome every inch of him accordingly. Your hips rock back and forth over his supple thighs and your velvety walls pulse around him, swallowing him further inside.

Your breathy moans entwine and fill the air. You keep a white-knuckled grip on the back of the golden throne as you ride him, without break and without mercy — in spite of the burning sensation in your thighs. You tell yourself it’s to finish him quickly, though a primal part of you chases after your own pleasure.

Geta’s breaths leave his parted mouth in huffed exhales as you bounce on top of him. He mourns the sight of him disappearing in and out of your glistening pussy but fights to keep his eyes open to watch the rest of you. Your fucked-out face swirls in a mixture of concentration and pleasure as Geta lifts his hand for the collar of your gown.

He unties the dainty knot at your sternum and tugs the fabric down your chest, baring your breasts for him. His mouth waters at sight of your plush skin, moving in time with your rhythmic grinds over his lap. 

A strangled moan sounds in your throat when he takes your left nipple in his mouth. You caress the back of his head, twisting your fingers in his honey hair in an effort to keep him close. He runs the rough pad of his tongue over your sensitive tit and smiles when he hears you whimpering. 

“You love this,” he mutters against your chest. “You love when I fuck you. ”

You nod until the words catch up with you. “Yes, Your Majesty.”

“God—” he grunts through gritted teeth, tipping his head back when one particular grind makes him twitch inside you. His hands grip your thighs over your skirt. His fingers threaten to sear bruises onto your skin. “Your pussy was made for my cock, wasn’t it?”

You nod again.

His right hand parts from you only to come down a moment later. The dull smack of his palm against your clothed hip echoes through the throne room. “I don’t think I heard you.”

“Yes,” you squeak with your face scrunched, trembling when your clit drags across the thatch of pubic hair at the base of Geta’s cock.

“Who’s cunt is this?”

“Yours—”

His hand lifts again. You hear the impact of his palm against your ass before you feel it, a subtle stinging you find a strange comfort in. Geta laughs in maniacal, breathy chuckles when you keen for him. 

“I can’t hear you.”

“Yours!” you exclaim in a feeble gasp, clutching the Emperor to your chest. You shudder on top of him when an orgasm rakes suddenly through your body. It flows quickly and without mercy, but never quite ebbs. You’re left a whimpering, weeping mess while the aftershocks of your pleasure consume you. 

“It’s yours,” you squeak in nearly inaudible blubbers, pressing your kissed mouth to the shell of Geta’s ear, repeating the phrase like it’s the only one you remember. “’S your pussy… It’s yours…”

The words alone are enough to make Geta burst inside of you. 

He tenses all over. His dull nails press crescent shapes into the skin of your thighs. His rosy mouth parts to exhale a guttural moan. You feel his cock jerk with your drooling confines right before he spits several loads of cum inside you. Your cunt pulses around him, instinctually milking him for every drop of liquid pleasure, and a whimper sounds in Geta’s throat.

You feel it bloom in the pit of your belly like a flower — something soft and warm and seeping. As the two of you relax against one another with wavering exhales, you feel his cum leaking out of you like drops of summer rain. It pools on his lap and drips down to the throne underneath him, tainting the gold with a mixture of your sin.

It proves a point. Marks a territory.

Geta swells with pride.

Your back slouches as you melt into his body. You hide your burning face in his neck as his feverish grip on you loosens. Geta twitches beneath you when your cunt pulsates around his softening cock. “Mm…” you hear him hum, mixed with a laugh you feel rumbling in his chest. His head tilts back as a lopsided smile tugs deliriously at his mouth.

He runs a gentle hand up and down your spine, a reminder of his being there despite your feeble efforts to dissociate your brain from your body. You can’t ignore the warmth of his touch on your tingling skin, or the way your hearts press together and beat to the same rhythm.

A distant feeling of acceptance pools in the pit of your belly along with the Emperor’s cum. Your grief is a much more discreet thing, however, and you miss Marcus like an unstitched wound that won’t stop bleeding. Like a knife lodged somewhere deep in the body.

“I think… I think I’ve found an adequate punishment for the General,” Geta pants, the crooked grin audible in his words. “Perhaps he will learn his lesson when I’ve fucked a child into you—”

You tense when the Emperor’s palm splays over your stomach.

“—Perhaps then he’ll understand that you’re mine.”

Your union was arranged, of course. As was expected, and not to be contested. For no one could possibly entertain the notion of an Emperor falling in love.

And yet, that was exactly what had happened. Not at once, but through time on his part, and patience on yours, Geta found himself growing more and more enamoured with you.

No one had ever shown him the care that you had, that you do.

Even as a boy, he knew that there was something discordant in how his parents cared for each other. It was sterile at best, and hostile at worst. His father had a ferocious temper, made only worse with age.

Geta remembers it well.

They were the very antithesis of love. As though Cupid's arrow had arched too high, and fell short, some ways away. And yet, what they had was all that he knew. It was what his future held for him, in spite of his reluctance, his fear.

But you...

Oh, you were most certainly a surprise.

And to this very day, you remain so.

You take care to ask his opinion on whatever matter may be at hand, and you listen to what he has to say. Not from a sense of propriety as his wife, but because his thoughts actually matter to you.

In the beginning, it was close to pushing him to the brink of madness, this habit of yours. Surely, you must be mocking him. Hoping that he would falter, stumble in what he had to say. Make a fool of himself for your amusement. You had had as little say in your marriage as he. This must be punishment of some kind. Recompense for this life that had been forced upon you.

When Geta had admitted this to you, in a fury made only worse by sleepless nights and potent wine, you had looked at him with such heartache. As though his words had struck your skin like lashes.

He has never spoken to you in such a manner since that night. And he never will again.

Regardless of how well Geta performs his duties, there is always a hand guiding him to work harder, push further. The demand that he marry was satisfied for no more than a day, before the demand for an heir was placed upon him. The pair of you had looked at each other, with such unspoken trepidation, knowing what was to be expected.

A boy.

Nothing else would satisfy an Empire as greedy and relentless.

Offerings were placed at the Temple of Juno, prayers offered to Priapus, and a statue of the dea nutrix - a goddess who takes the form of a nursing mother - brought to the palace. Medici and midwives were chosen with the utmost care, and your diet was carefully constructed to ensure the health of you and your unborn child.

Geta remembers the hours of labour as though they were a dream brought about by fever - pacing the corridor continuously, back and forth, back and forth, as he waited for news. And all the while, he could hear you, in such unbearable pain, locked away from him. There was nothing that he could do; not even he could go against such a long-standing tradition. Emperor or not, he was not permitted inside. He could not be with you. And so he paced on, for hours on end, until the small hours of the morning.

When the door finally opened, he has never known relief like it in the time since.

He had rushed to your side, to find you in a complete state of disarray, and yet still the most beautiful thing he had ever laid eyes on. You had looked up at him with such a warm smile, the one that reached your eyes, before casting your gaze down to the little bundle tucked carefully into your arms. His own followed, and he had felt as though the very earth had been pulled from beneath him.

A girl.

After every offering, every prayer, everything, the Gods had been cruel enough to give him a daughter.

In hindsight, he is able to see what a fool he was. You had held her out to him; this fragile, delicate, little thing, and he is ashamed to admit now that he felt nothing but disdain. Why had the Gods forsaken him?

He held his tongue, allowing you to place her in his arms. Her little hand had stretched out, opening and closing around nothing, until finally she found him. Her tiny fingers wrapped around his, gripping him so tight, as though he were her anchor.

It was only when a teardrop struck her skin that he realised he was crying. In that very moment, all of those feelings of disappointment and anger melted away. He would protect this little girl - his daughter - with his life, Empire and its cruel demands be damned.

There were whispers, of course. Geta knew them well. Poisoned words from forked tongues, of you, of your infidelity, your unfaithfulness. How else could the Emperor have been cursed with a daughter? Geta was merciless in his retaliation, and those tongues soon fell still.

He would not have your name sullied in such a manner. In spite of his fear, he knew that you were devoted to him, and only him.

How you have never wavered; stood only steadfast and loyal by his side.

On days such as today, long and arid, he finds that his mind is prone to wandering as it has. He rouses himself from his meditations, watching as you slowly pace the marble floors of your living quarters. Your child lies in your arms, her head resting against your chest as she continues to defy sleep. You hum softly to her, a soothing breath of a sound that would surely defeat a much stronger being.

It has been the undoing of Caracalla on many an occasion, and though he would be reluctant to admit it, Geta himself.

During your pregnancy, there had been talk of finding a suitable nutrix, but you had been quick to dismiss it. You would not have another person take the responsibility of raising your child from you. You had spoke with such ferocity that Geta knew it was a losing argument, and no more was ever said on the matter.

He rests his chin in his hand, a small smile pulling at the corners of his mouth. To think that there was a time when the very scene playing out before him would have made him recoil in disgust.

How he pities the man he used to be.

"Geta," you call softly, pulling him from his thoughts. "Perhaps you might try for a while?"

You cross the room to where he sits. Your child is still fussing, refusing to allow Somnus to cast his spell over her. Without a word, Geta rises, reaching out to take his daughter in his arms. When he looks down at her, it is to find her bright gaze already fixed on him.

"Whatever is the matter, little one?" he asks in a murmur.

Slowly, so as not to startle her, he rocks from one foot to the other; a gentle, back and forth rhythm. Her hands grasp at his robes, as her feet kick lightly at him. She is nearing the age where she is close to her first steps, but not quite. How it frustrates her.

He continues on in this manner, quietly placating her with gentle words, and rocking her slowly in his embrace.

"How she fights," you whisper from where you now sit.

Geta cannot help but smile. "She is truly Caracalla's niece."

It is some time before her eyes finally fall closed, her head pressed against Geta's chest. Her faint little snuffles are the only sounds to be heard, as the pair of you collectively hold your breath, so as not to disturb her. Carefully, Geta sits down next to you. You lean close to press a kiss to his cheek.

"And you were worried that you would not be fit for such a role," you say softly.

Geta frowns. "I said no such thing."

You gently wipe a dot of drool from your daughter's lip. "It does not matter. A wife always knows."

Geta cannot argue with you; at least, not without having to lie to you. So often has he worried that he is too much like his father. He wonders if given the choice, would he have ever become a father in the first place.

"Do not retreat too far, dulcissime," you say, your gaze still fixed on your child. "You are needed here."

There have many times throughout your marriage that Geta has been close to accusing you of witchcraft. For how can a mere mortal always seems to know what he is thinking?

"Shall I take her? Your arms will tire if she is to grace us with a long sleep," you tell him.

Geta shakes his head. "Not yet. Let me stay as I am for a little while longer."

You do not argue with him, merely resting your head against his shoulder, as you bask in the quiet of the late afternoon.

Just for a moment, Geta can pretend that this is his only responsibility. That he is but a man. A husband. A father. All of this, and no more. It is a quiet delusion that brings him a fleeting feeling of peace. For here, with you by his side and his daughter asleep in his arms, he finally has something that he can truly call his own.

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No one expected an invasion in the night. No one heard the trespassers skulk about the grounds, enter the halls and find the emperors chamber with ultimate ease.

It raised questions.

How did they get in so easily?

How did they find the chambers?

What made them target you?

Geta was hardly in his personal quarters, mostly, he sat out in his studies— just by the library and planned. His men would be by his side, offering the best advice and protection they possibly could while you would be away wandering the grounds.

At dusk, you would find your dear husband, kiss his cheek and ignore his comments about such a display before heading to retire for the night. “goodnight, my love,” you whispered.

The name was always changing, but it always gravitated towards some loving endearment. It made Geta scowl. Made him want to rip out his own heart for how it seemed to flutter and skip by such simple phrases.

Geta watched you go and tightening his fists before eyeing the map displayed across most of the table in front of him.

—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—

He hadn’t meant to stay out so late.

His eyes were heavy, little slits amongst the darkened room. Leaning on his hand, his jewelery began to feel uncomfortable, it itched at his skin a little too much.

Getting angry the emperor ripped off his rings before carelessly throwing them amongst the objects upon the table. “Fucking—"

Furiously getting up, the goblet at his side fell down the ground with a loud clatter. He had to concentrate.

On the plans.

The invasion.

The war he was suppose to be winning.

Screams, horrible fear induced screams erupted, echoing throughout the halls, the corridors that made about the secured building.

Geta’s head snapped back so fast his vision doubled. Usually, he would leave such a predicament to his guards.

But he recognized that pitch, that voice.

It couldn’t be?

“Wife!”

With his hand pushing his figure off the table, he ran. Bolted and turned. Pushing anyone, everyone out of the way until he reached the cracked door of his solitary.

He hasn’t even realized his guards were missing, not at their usual place by his side.

“Wife!” He called, already pushing the door open. This feeling was new. It made his fingers shake, his knees weak and his mind numb.

He couldn’t lose you already. Not when he was so early in his reign. Not when you doted on him so. Not when he barely got to love you in return.

A mumble called out with a voice so light Geta doubted himself upon hearing it. With furrowed brows he craned his neck, to where such a sound emitted.

And there you were.

Clutching your neck with a tight, bloody grip.

His lips, his face, flinched with such a sight. He just stood there, in the middle of the room like some bystander.

“G-Geta,” you felt so cold. It was odd, because usually, this room ran overwhelmingly warm. Especially now, with candles lit in every direction. Your husbands eyes were so wide, the white of his orbs shined bright against the flickering lights as his hand lightly shook at his side. You were trying to be strong, to not pass out, or cry in desperation.

But seeing your husband, who was usually as distant as a stranger, look at you so… scared, made you weak.

Weaker than the blood loss had made you.

Swallowing down the spit that had gathered, Geta rushed forth, descending down to get a better look at you.

“Let me see, let me—,” your hand moved, slumped down against the floor in a solid maroon color.

The wound started at the base of your neck, to the curve of your shoulder. A sloppy, rushed cut. Jagged and oozing with vast amounts of blood.

“I’m scared,” your eyes leaked with a teary wetness. It trailed down your cheeks until it met with the bloody mess upon your body.

Geta shushed you, taking a solid grip of his robe before ripping it with a strong tug. The material gave away easily against the pressure and it found home upon the junction of your neck.

It smelled so comforting that you couldn’t help but close your eyes and whimper at the firm pressure.

“I’m going to carry you, little wife, don’t close your eyes.” No longer wasting time, the man did just that.

He picked up your frame like nothing, but the action let out a pulsing fiery pain from the wound, earning a loud cry to spill from your lips. Geta frowned, mumbled some incoherent apology as his legs skidded across the stone floors.

Your head bobbed as the emperor picked up his pace, his voice sounded as if water blocked your ears. It was muffled—uneven.

Noticing your slackened form and droopy eyes, Geta let out a desperate cry. “Stay with me. We’re almost there.”

“I’m sorry, Geta” his robe scratched against your cheek. So rough, so soft at the same time.

“Don’t be daft, just stay awake!” Geta couldn’t help but keep glancing at you. You and your blinking eyes, that tired, bloody smile.

“Please, forgive me,” sticky fingertips met with the man’s cheek, blood stuck instantly to his pale skin.

“I love you.” The fingers went limp, they dragged down the emperors face leaving a thin line of blood that went towards his chin.

“Stop! Wife, love, please!” His breath grew heavy and his legs shook. Letting out whimpers and moans the man finally had the left wing in sight.

A healer, a healer, a healer—

Bursting through the first door, Geta came to his knees, with you still protectively held in his arms.

Out of breath, the man’s words were chipped and uneven.

“Healer— my wife— now!”

The people in the room dispersed, guards left their post in search for the accuser, the citizens left all together, in fear of seeing such a weakened display, and the healers gathered together, to take the empress from Geta’s hands.

“My lord,” an older white haired gentleman bowed before the orange haired ruler. His hands placed politely before him, he smiled sympathetically at the emperor.

“We will need to remove her from your hold and begin immediately—”

“No.”

Confused expressions emitted through the healers, the elderly man furrowed his brows as he wearily glanced at the bloodied couple.

“No.. my lord?”

“You will do it here. Now.”

“In your.. lap?”

A look of contempt was all that was given, before the white haired man nodded along. Urgently talking amongst his peers. They grabbed sutures, herbs, any medicinals that could possible help, were taken and placed before the two.

“We will begin now, my lord.” A nod was received, Geta’s eyes never strained from your face. He studied each and every freckle, looked upon your tear stained cheeks and down to your grim looking cut.

It would surely scar.

A growl broke out between his lips, startling the helpers in the vicinity.

The fireplace emitted the room in light, graciously allowing the healers to patch up their empress in a lit and warm room.

But such a light had nothing against the burning embers that raged within Geta’s eyes.

For there will be death, that much he was sure.

“Remember, you are here to observe.  Even the most insignificant detail you witness may be of use to me, so you would do well to pay attention,” Macrinus murmured, glancing at you out of the corner of his eye.

You gave a terse nod, focusing on holding up your skirts as you climbed to the top of the stairs and entered the palace.  Though you were familiar with the luxurious estates of the upper class, you had to admit you had never seen anything as grand and awe inspiring as the Imperial Palace and it took considerable effort not to gape at the opulence that surrounded you. 

Servants in rough tunics skirted your path, scurrying about their work with heads down and a sense of urgency, while every so often you passed a set of Praetorians standing guard or on patrol.  As you traveled further into the wolves’ den, the amount of servants traversing the halls thinned and you occasionally passed Senators or other dignitaries, draped in their fine togas—many of whom greeted Macrinus fondly.

“How will I be relaying my reports to you?” you asked quietly once you were finally alone, the halls before you empty, echoes of voices in the distance the only sound besides the scuff of your modest sandals against the cool marble floor.

Macrinus hummed, smiling as if you’d told a joke.  “Do not concern yourself, my dear.  I will be in and out of the palace regularly for business and when I am, I shall seek you out.”

At the way your lips pursed, Macrinus chuckled.  “You have my word, your brother will stay out of the colosseum, so long as you continue to supply me with information,” he said, adjusting his pallium over his shoulders, the golden bangles on his wrist clattering together softly.

As you rounded the corner, several Praetorians stood guard outside a set of large intricately engraved doors and you tensed, sensing this was your destination, unsure what exactly lay in wait for you on the other side.

“Smile, my dear, this is a great honour for you,” Macrinus murmured, his easy grin belying the cruel glint in his dark eyes.  “Will you let the emperors know I seek an audience with them?” he asked, addressing the guards, and moments later you were ushered into the room.

As you entered, your eyes were drawn to the two men lounging in the center of the room—you had only ever seen the emperors from afar, and now that you stood before them, their very presence felt almost suffocating, their gazes weighing on you. In their fine garb and laurel crowns, they looked every bit the Gods they were said to be.

Geta stood to greet Macrinus, while Caracalla watched you curiously and you swallowed, trying not to shrink away from his icy blue gaze.

“Macrinus, to what do we owe the pleasure of your visit?” Geta asked, his eyes flicking to you briefly—his dark brown eyes a stark contrast to his brother’s.  Though they were twins, they were not identical, and you began compiling a quick list of their differences.

“My emperors, the pleasure is mine,” Macrinus exclaimed, holding open his hands as he ducked his head humbly.  “In fact, I have brought you a gift,” he said, gesturing to you and you straightened imperceptibly, lowering your eyes.

Intrigued, Caracalla got to his feet, joining his brother to get a better look at you.

“A gift?” he asked, eyeing you up and down, an excited grin playing at the corner of his lips.  “She is for us?”

“That is correct, my Emperor Caracalla,” Macrinus answered, again bowing his head slightly.

Geta, less outwardly excited than his brother, looked down his nose at you.  “And what is the occasion for this generous gift?” 

Macrinus merely smiled at his query.  “Does one need a reason to show his appreciation to his illustrious rulers?” 

His answer seemed to satisfy Geta, who grinned in return, though there was something cold in his expression.

“What is she called?” Caracalla asked, stepping past his brother to move closer to you, circling you slowly.

“She is whatever you wish to call her, my emperor.”

This made Caracalla’s almost feral grin widen, but Geta spoke over him.

“You can speak, can you not?  Tell us your name, girl,” he commanded and you swallowed, your mouth suddenly feeling too dry.

Quickly working some moisture into your mouth, you answered, telling him your name, thankful your voice didn’t waver.

“What do you think, brother, should we let her keep her name?” Geta chuckled, looking to Caracalla.

“I like it, it suits her,” he answered, his eyes shining brightly as he gazed at you, a hunger in them that brought heat to your face.  “Can we inspect her?” he asked, looking between Geta and Macrinus.

“Of course, you need not ask my permission,” Macrinus replied, chuckling at the emperor’s eagerness.

“Yes, I should like a look as well,” Geta murmured, joining his brother.

Macrinus bowed and took several steps back, allowing them more room to examine you.

Taking your jaw in his large hand, his heavy rings cool against your skin, Geta turned your face toward him, instructing you to open your mouth to show them your teeth before Caracalla untied the thin woven belt from your waist and slipped your stola from your shoulders, letting it fall from your body to pool around your ankles on the floor.

“She has good teeth, smooth skin, a pleasant face—” Geta mused, releasing his hold on your jaw, only to let his fingertips brush over the curve of your breast, undoing your strophium and letting it join your stola.

He let out a soft hiss at the sight of your bare breasts and you fought the urge to cover yourself, instead balling your hands into fists at your side, giving a small jump as he tweaked your nipple, coaxing it to stiffen, while Caracalla greedily felt you up, massaging your other breast with his palm.

Forcing yourself to breathe, you tried to avoid lifting your gaze to their faces, thankful at least that the only ones in the room were the four of you.

“Is she a maiden?” Caracalla asked suddenly, and you eyed Geta as he circled you, ridding you of the rest of your small clothes and giving your ass a pinch.

“I am afraid she is not, but she is soft, and skilled, and untainted by disease,” Macrinus answered, and you fought to keep a straight face, despite the desire to clench your jaw.

“Ah, that is disappointing,” Caracalla muttered, though he wet his lips as he slipped his hand between your legs, his eyes finding yours, watching your reaction as he dipped a finger between your folds before brushing his thumb teasingly over your clit.  Your lips parted just enough for your breath to hitch and your lashes fluttered, your body betraying you.

“She will be a prized addition to our concubines,” Geta said decidedly, the pair of them looking pleased with their gift.

“I am glad my gift satisfies you, my emperors,” Macrinus murmured, spreading his hands and bowing modestly.  “I shall take my leave, as I am sure you are eager to test her out.”  His eyes met yours for a moment and all it took was one look to impart one last unspoken reminder of what you were truly there to do.

“Yes, yes, of course, thank you Macrinus,” Geta said distractedly, his thoughts already elsewhere—likely between your thighs.

“Come,” Caracalla commanded, grasping your wrist to lead you into the next room and you spared a glance at your clothes left in a pile on the floor.

“Leave them, come,” Geta repeated, noticing your hesitance, and you nodded, letting Caracalla pull you further into the anteroom, and you briefly thanked the Gods their other concubines were absent, not exactly wanting an audience for what was to come.

“Undress me,” Caracalla instructed, taking the lead while his twin lounged atop an ornate cushioned chaise, watching for the time being.

Stepping closer, you began ridding Caracalla of his robes, the fabric finer than anything you had ever felt before.  Under his heavy gaze, warmth flooded you, and you carefully kept your eyes downcast, unsure if you would be punished for meeting his gaze, or if that was what he wanted.  As his tunic fell away, revealing his trim, yet soft form, he guided your hand to his chest and you instinctively let your fingers run through the dusting of light red hair that ran down his body, merging with the thicker darker patch at his groin.  Under your curious gaze, his cock stirred and he grasped your chin, forcing your eyes back to his face.

“Does the sight please you?” 

He wore a predatory grin, his gold tooth glinting as it caught the light and you gasped as Geta’s chest suddenly pressed to your back and his lips brushed the shell of your ear, sending your skin pebbling.

“You needn’t be so timid,” he murmured, rutting his hardened length against your ass.

You’d been so focused on Caracalla that you hadn’t noticed Geta undressing impatiently behind you.

“I am beginning to think Macrinus was wrong about you not being a maiden,” Caracalla chuckled, grasping your hips to yank you closer—and away from his brother.

Behind you, Geta let out a disapproving grunt, and you might have found their subtle posturing amusing if you weren’t the one they were fighting over.  Before you could even think how to respond, Caracalla’s mouth was at your throat, his teeth grazing your skin as his tongue laved against you hungrily.  Planting his lips at your pulse, he sucked hard, drawing a gasp from you as he coaxed the blood to rise to your skin.

Giggling at the sight of his mark on you, Caracalla grabbed your hand, bringing it to his cock, his length hardening at your touch, while unbidden, heat pooled low in your gut, your body once more betraying you.

From behind you, Geta’s arms slipped around your middle, his hand snaking between your thighs, and a moan slipped from your lips as his fingers pressed to your clit, drawing lazy circles against it.

“There.  That's more like it,” he breathed, encouraging you to be louder.  

“Enough of these games, brother!  I wish to be inside her!  I must go first,” Caracalla insisted and you nearly whined at the loss of Geta’s touch.

“No, we will share her.  'Tis only fair,” Geta mused, ignoring his twin’s petulant pout.  “You can have her mouth.  Doesn’t it look sweet?” he drawled encouragingly.

Caracalla looked doubtful, but Geta brought his brother’s fingers to your lips.

“Open.”

Obeying, you opened your mouth, letting Caracalla slip his first and middle finger inside before wrapping your lips around them, letting your tongue curl against them before hollowing your cheeks to suck.

Your eyes flicked to Caracalla’s, finding them blown wide with want and you tried to ignore the way your cunt throbbed in response, your arousal wetting your inner thighs as you squeezed them together for some semblance of relief.

“Are you satisfied, brother?” Geta asked, his hands squeezing at your hips.

“Yes,” Caracalla answered, his eyes moving past you to look at his twin.

“Good, come,” he replied, tugging you toward the chaise.  “On your knees.”

Kneeling atop the cushion, you let Geta bend you forward, resting your forearms against the arm rest at one end and your face flared in embarrassment as he brushed his fingers through your puffy folds, coating them in your arousal.

“Look how wet she is already, brother,” he exclaimed, spreading your vulva for Caracalla to see.

“I bet she tastes of honey,” he groaned, wetting his lips and Geta chuckled darkly, leaning over you, his palm caressing the curve of your ass.

“Does the thought of being shared excite you?” he drawled in your ear, sending a shiver through you, but you bit your tongue, refusing to give him the satisfaction of an answer.

At your silence, Geta’s expression darkened and he raised his hand, bringing it down against your ass cheek with a sharp crack, and you gasped, though your cunt clenched at the sweet pain—the keen sting fading to a tingling throb.

Caracalla barked a laugh.  “She is a willful one,” he exclaimed, stepping in front of you, his fingers brushing your burning cheek.

“She is,” Geta mused, kneeling behind you, his gaze hot on your sex, watching your slick drip from your folds like nectar.  Squeezing his cock at the base, he dragged his length through your folds, teasing your entrance with his tip.

“That’s alright, you need not answer, your body does it for you,” he chuckled, finally pressing into you, splaying his jeweled hand against your lower back as he bullied his cock between your folds, watching his length slowly disappear inside you, sucked into your cunt as if it belonged there.

His hips stilled as they pressed flush to your ass and you cursed yourself as a whine slipped through your clenched jaw and you squirmed, pushing back against him, desperate for him to move.

Geta laughed, giving your ass another sharp swat, and to your dismay, you clenched around him, your face falling to the armrest as you jolted forward.

“See?  What did I tell you?” he exclaimed triumphantly.  “Like a bitch in heat.”

Pleased with your reaction, he pulled nearly all the way out, thrusting back into you hard enough to knock the air from your lungs.

No longer content to merely watch, though he wore a giddy grin, Caracalla caught your jaw, forcing you to look up at him as he loomed over you, while from behind his brother’s hips snapped into you once more, the force of his thrust rocking you forward.

Caracalla’s grin grew as you locked eyes and he gave his cock a couple lazy strokes, pressing his angry red tip to your lips, smearing them with his precum.  When your tongue darted out to taste his salty essence, he groaned, his eyelids fluttering with want, and you rocked forward again, fighting back a moan.

“Stick out your tongue,” he exclaimed, and you obeyed, taking a sharp inhale of breath as you opened wide for him.  

Snickering softly at the sight, he tapped his heavy length against your outstretched tongue before rocking his hips slowly, sliding deeper.  When you wrapped your lips around him, he let out a deep sigh and his head fell back for a moment as if in prayer, thanking the very Gods for your mouth.

“Good girl,” he rasped and those pale blue eyes once more found yours, holding you captive.

At his praise, a shudder ran through you and your cunt pulsed, fluttering around Geta’s cock—this time he didn’t even have to speak for Caracalla to know you’d liked it.  For a brief moment you wondered if it was true what you’d heard about twins sharing a special connection, but the thought was swiftly forced from your mind as the tip of Caracalla’s cock hit the back of your throat, making you gag around him.

Tangling his fingers in your hair, he held you in place, burying your nose in the thatch of reddish hair at his base before tugging sharply at your roots, bringing tears to your eyes.

“You can take it,” he growled, beginning to fuck your mouth, using you for his pleasure, as from behind, his brother did the same, setting a ruthless pace.  The lewd sound of skin slapping against skin and the squelch of your drooling cunt filled the room, almost drowning out the buzzing of blood in your ears.

Opening your jaw wider, you relaxed your throat as much as possible, resigning yourself to their pleasure, and finally your tears spilled over, catching in your lashes and rolling down your cheeks as you fought for air.

Caracalla seemed to enjoy the sight, your tear stained face bringing a cruel smile to his lips and he caught the dampness from your cheek with a swipe of his thumb.  Unconsciously leaning into his touch, your head swam at the sensation of being so full—stuffed from both ends—and you were suddenly all too aware of the way Geta’s cock dragged against that spot inside that sent pleasure rolling through you, each thrust fanning the fire in your core and bringing you closer to the release you didn’t expect them to concern themselves with.

As Geta’s thrusts grew more frantic, he released his bruising hold on your waist, taking you by surprise as he reached around you, slipping a hand between your thighs to rub sloppy circles against your clit.

As soon as his fingers found your bundle of nerves, electricity surged through you, pushing you over the edge, and you moaned around Caracalla’s cock as your body went taut, your orgasm searing your mind clean.

Geta’s hips stuttered and he snapped into you one last time as he released deep inside you with a groan, your pulsing walls milking him dry.  Once the adrenaline of your orgasm faded, however, your muscles trembled, turning to water, and the only thing keeping you up was Geta’s hold on you.

Thankfully, Caracalla was quick to follow, the vibrations from your stifled moan pushing him over the edge, and he twitched as he pumped his seed down your throat.  Swallowing awkwardly around his softening length, you licked him clean, though some of his spend trickled from your lips to join the drool running down your chin and neck.

“Good girl, so good,” he gasped, releasing his hold on your hair and you whined as Geta pulled out as well, leaving you to collapse in a heap atop the cushions beneath you.

Your chest heaved as you gulped down lungful after lungful of air and your eyes slipped shut, a wave of emotions overtaking you, threatening more tears, though you couldn’t deny the primal pleasure you’d felt.  Vaguely you were aware of the cushion next to you dipping and you wearily opened your eyes, finding Caracalla had taken his brother’s place.

“Here,” he murmured, handing you a goblet of water and you took it gratefully, drinking greedily, the cool water soothing your sore throat.  

As you drank, Caracalla busied himself with wiping the mess from your face and chest with a clean cloth, surprising you with a gentleness you had not seen from him yet and you studied him from the corner of your eye.  A sheen of sweat coated his pale skin, dampening his fiery curls against his brow and ruddying his blemished cheeks further.

“What do you think, brother?” he asked breathlessly, looking to Geta who had already begun dressing.

“She will do,” he answered, his voice clipped.  His dark gaze slipped over you before fixing on his brother.  “Do you agree?”

“Very much so!”  Caracalla grinned.  “Though, next time I want her cunt,” he announced.

“Yes, yes, of course,” Geta murmured distractedly, his indifference annoying his brother, leaving him sulking next to you.

Feeling your eyes on him, Geta’s attention returned to you, though he barely spared you a glance.  “You may dress.  I will send for a guard to escort you to your quarters,” he said, his tone a clear dismissal.

Caracalla eyed you as you got to your feet and made your way back to your discarded clothes on shaky legs.  Dressing hastily, you couldn’t help but wonder what was on his mind, his gaze turning unfocused.  You had heard whispers of the emperor’s black moods and sudden mood swings, and you didn’t exactly want to witness one first hand.

Once dressed, you gave a small jump as a guard appeared at your shoulder.  “Follow me,” he murmured and you swallowed your unease, offering Caracalla a nod in parting, though Geta had already seemingly forgotten you, absorbed in some parchments on a nearby desk.

Though your stomach churned nervously and a soreness had already set in your muscles, you held your head high as you followed the Praetorian, attempting to memorize the path he took, but you soon lost track of how many turns you’d made, all the white marble hallways blending together.  Finally, you stopped in front of a nondescript door and the guard pushed it open, gesturing for you to go in first.

Stepping inside, you had to force down a wave of dismay as you realized you would not have the luxury of a private room, instead having to share a living space with the emperors’ other concubines, and as you entered, several sets of eyes turned toward you—some curious while others lost interest as soon as it was clear they weren’t being summoned.

The guard that had escorted you turned on his heel and departed, leaving you to find an empty bed.  A slender woman with dark hair tied up in a braided crown watched you for a moment before approaching, the thin rose coloured silk of her stola swishing around her ankles.

“Welcome, I am Quintilla,” she said, offering you a tentative smile and you introduced yourself in return.

“I take it you have just come from… an audience with the emperors,” she ventured and you fought the urge to press your hand over the mark Caracalla had left against your throat.  Instead, you merely nodded, your exhaustion catching up to you.

“They can be quite demanding,” Quintilla murmured.  “I am certain you wish to bathe and rest.  I will show you to our private bath,” she said, gesturing for you to follow.  As you went, she introduced the other concubines, leaving you wondering how long each of them had been in the emperors’ service, and surprised to find more than a couple men amongst them, even if some of them were dressed as women.

Quintilla noticed the unspoken question in your gaze.  “Caracalla oft times prefers the company of men, as well as women,” she explained.  Leading you down a narrow hallway connected to the courtesans’ quarters, she pushed open the door at the end and you were instantly enveloped by a cloud of perfumed steam.

“Speaking of Caracalla–” Quintilla began, placing a hand on your arm.  “Take care around him,” she warned, her gaze holding yours.  “While both emperors’ moods can be... unpredictable, Caracalla’s is especially erratic.  I have seen the scars his brother bears from his outburst when his mind grows… clouded.”

Her words sent a shiver through you despite the wet heat that blanketed you.  

“I shall be cautious,” you assured her, thanking her for her assistance before she nodded and slipped away, leaving you finally, blessedly, alone.

Ridding yourself once more of your clothes, you winced at the dark bruises at your hips where Geta’s fingers had been, but as soon as you slipped into the warm water, a sigh left your lungs and you could feel the tension already beginning to leach from your tired muscles.

Already, the day had left you with much to think on, and though Quintilla had warned you of Caracalla, he had been the one to care for you afterwards while Geta had practically ignored you.

Your thoughts began to swirl, like the steam around you, and you closed your eyes, swallowing down the thick wave of emotion that threatened to carry you with it.  Willing your mind elsewhere, you let it linger in memories of warm sun and sweet scented grass, fields of grain rippling in the breeze and pastures of lowing cattle.

Though the scene was a balm on your fraying heart, it was also the razor threatening to slice too deep if you let it.  That life was no longer yours, and likely would never be again—it was time you accepted that.

It was the middle of the night when you felt a hand shaking your shoulder and you woke with a start, realizing it was a servant who stood at your bedside and you sat up, rubbing at your eyes.

“You are summoned, miss!  Please come with me,” the girl whispered in a hushed voice, careful not to wake anyone else.

“Summoned?” you repeated, her words still catching up to you in your half awake state.

“Yes, by Emperor Caracalla,” she answered, and you could practically feel the nervous energy radiating from her, willing you to hurry, afraid to keep him waiting too long and angering him.

The servant’s unease spread to you and you hastily pulled back your covers, dressing quickly in one of your new tunics; the gauzy fabric clung to your form, leaving little to the imagination, but you didn’t balk, sliding your feet into your sandals and following after.  On your way to the door, you noticed Quintilla’s bed was empty as well and wondered if perhaps she was warming Geta’s bed for the night.

Outside, braziers along the wall lit the dark hallways, keeping the night at bay and filling the palace with flickering firelight.  This time you didn’t have to travel as far, but like before, the Emperor’s door was flanked by two stone faced guards.  The servant pulled open the door for you and you nodded to her, offering her a small smile before slipping inside.

Caracalla’s room was darker than you expected and it took a moment for your eyes to adjust, the long swaths of moonlight filtering through the latticed windows, illumining the state of disarray.  Clothes and books were strewn across the floor, as if he had thrown them in a fit, and you picked your way carefully farther into the room.

“My emperor, you called for me?” you asked uncertainly, only just barely managing to keep your voice from wavering when you realized Caracalla was not in his bed.

“What took you so long?”

Caracalla’s voice came from the corner and you turned, finding him wrapped haphazardly in a sheet and crouched atop a wide chair, his knees drawn up to his chest and his pet monkey perched atop his shoulder, clinging to his sleep mussed hair.

Though his words held a demand, his voice cracked, as if he had been crying.

“I came as soon as I was summoned,” you answered carefully, moving slowly closer, his monkey chittering softly.

“It felt like longer,” he huffed, hugging his arms around his knees and rocking slightly.

In the moonlight, his pale skin appeared even whiter, as if he too were made of marble, but even in the dim light, you could make out his red rimmed eyes and flushed cheeks, his brows pinching in resentment.

“I apologize, your majesty.  I promise I came as fast as I could,” you murmured softly, hoping to soothe him.  He seemed to be having one of his episodes and the last thing you wanted was for him to turn violent.

He sniffled, and as you moved closer, you could see the dampness on his cheeks and something in your chest softened at just how young he appeared, like a scared little boy.  As you came to a stop before him, he stared at you wide eyed, as if he could barely believe you were actually there and not merely a spector—a figment of his unsound mind.

“What troubles you, Caracalla?” you asked gently, taking a gamble and calling him simply by his name.

Your question seemed to rouse him from his daze and his expression twisted with indignant anger.

“It is my turn to have you to myself!” he exclaimed, his legs dropping from their bent position at his chest.  “Geta always takes first pick, he is so greedy!” he raved, pounding his fists on the chair’s armrests only to wince in pain, startling his pet.  “Nothing is ever mine, always ours,” he cried, a gut wrenching sadness filling his words.

Unflinching in the face of his outburst, you knelt before him, placing a hand on his bare knee as you gazed up at him, careful to keep everything about your demeanor gentle, soothing.  His monkey scampered from his shoulder and up your arm, perching on you, it's little hands tickling you and you couldn't help but giggle softly.

"What is his name?" you asked, reaching up to pet him and Caracalla softened slightly.

"Dondus," he answered simply, watching you and his pet curiously.

"Hello there, Dondus," you murmured, smiling as the monkey's tiny hands wrapped around your finger, and you found the ghost of a smile curving Caracalla's lips as well.

Seemingly done inspecting you, Dondus jumped from your shoulder back to Caracalla's, using him as a bridge to his perch nearby.

“Caracalla, let me take care of you,” you murmured, returning your attention to him, and he gaped breathlessly as you nuzzled your cheek against his inner thigh before pressing a soft deliberate kiss there.  “Just you,” you insisted, gazing up at him with soft hooded eyes.

“Just me?” 

Nodding, you got to your feet, taking him by the hand to lead him back to his bed and he followed eagerly, his bare feet padding across the cool marble as a disbelieving smile hovered at the corner of his lips.

“Come here,” you murmured, slipping off your sandals and crawling atop the bed, patting the spot in front of you, and Caracalla obeyed without protest.

”Such beauty,” he whispered, pawing at the nearly see-through fabric of your loose tunic, his thumb brushing over your nipple, coaxing it to stiffen.  “You put Venus to shame.”

Taking his hand, you turned it over in yours, holding it palm up.  Leaning closer, you pressed your lips to the center of his soft palm—the hand of a man who had never had to endure a day of hard labour in his life.

Caracalla’s breath slowed, catching in his throat as you glanced up at him, kissing the inside of his wrist.  He groaned low in his throat, unable to look away, his tongue darting out to wet his parted lips.

Crawling closer, you plied him with gentle kisses, your lips trailing across his chest to his collarbone and up his neck, your tongue teasing his skin as your kisses grew more evocative.

Moaning, Caracalla slipped your tunic from your shoulders, baring your chest to him, his hands reverently cupping your breasts before pinching at your nipples and giggling as you gasped, arching into his hands.  Bringing one of your hardened buds to his mouth, he teased it with the tip of his tongue as you sighed, running your fingers through his hair, playing with his messy locks as he suckled at you, worshiping your tits.

Snaking his arms around you, he pulled you into his lap and you whined at the feel of his hardened length against your core, his sheets the only thing separating you, and you rolled your hips against him, seeking a hint of friction to relieve the aching in your cunt.  

You felt him grin against your breast before biting down around your nipple and you let out a hiss, tugging at his hair in response—though once again, finding the pain surprisingly sweet.  When Caracalla lifted his face, he wore a cheeky smirk, clearly pleased with himself.  

“I find your feistiness alluring,” he chuckled, squeezing at your hips, his eyes tight on yours.

“Is that so?” you murmured, playing with the curls at the nape of his neck, your stomach giving a traitorous flutter.  

“Indeed,” he responded simply, his hands moving up to cup your face with surprising tenderness.  “But your sweetness is pleasing as well.”

Before you could respond, his mouth was on yours, hot and hungry, and you kissed him back without hesitation, opening your mouth to him, your tongue sliding against his with a need that surprised you.  You’d once thought there was nothing more intimate than sex, but in that moment, you realized you were wrong.  

Your head swimming, you broke from his lips for air, but it was the intimacy of the kiss that scared you, sending your pulse thundering in your ears.

Leaning back, you tugged your skirt up your thighs to reveal your cunt, hoping to distract him before he kissed you again and you felt yourself slip further away.

“Is this what you want, my emperor?” you breathed.

Caracalla nodded, his gaze falling to take in the sight of your naked sex.

“Lay back,” you murmured.  “Let me take care of you,” you repeated, pushing him back against his pillows before ridding yourself of your tunic and unwrapping the tangle of sheets from his body, slipping his hardened length between your folds.

His cock twitched against you, angry and straining, and the sweetest whine left his lips as you ground against him, coating his member with your slick before guiding him to your entrance and sinking down onto him.  His hands balled in the sheets as he watched his cock disappear into your greedy cunt.  

Though he wasn’t as long as his brother, he was thicker, and you hissed a breath at the sting of the stretch, your chest heaving as you finally sheathed him, clenching tightly around him.

Your name fell from his lips, the sound sweet to your ears and you began to move, rolling your hips to grind against him, languidly riding him.

“Good boy,” you breathed, leaning back to prop your hands against his thighs, displaying your body tantalizingly for him and he let out a pathetic whimper at your words, his hands untangling from the sheets to slide up the tops of your thighs.

“More—“ Caracalla whined, his hands finding your waist, urging you to move faster, guiding your movements until you were bouncing on his cock, moaning sharply as he bucked up into you, matching your movements until you were one writhing gasping entity.

As he neared his release, he thumbed your clit, unrelenting, until you shuddered, gushing around him, ripping a cry from you, but you did not slow the roll of your hips until he emptied himself inside you, pumping you full.

Pulling you down atop him, he held you tight to his chest and you allowed yourself to relax in his embrace, panting hard, your sweat slicked skin sticking to his.

After what felt like an eternity, Caracalla released you, letting you roll off him and he turned toward you, pressing his brow to yours as his arm draped possessively over your waist.

“You will stay with me tonight,” he insisted, his breath hot on your face, but despite the command in his voice, fear flickered in his eyes and you shifted, scooting closer, caressing his cheek.

“I will stay,” you assured him, gently brushing his hair from his brow.  “Sleep now, Caracalla.”

It didn’t take long for exhaustion to overtake him, lulling him into slumber. And as you laid by his side, his body warm against yours, his tight embrace soothed something in you as well, even if you didn’t want to admit it.

As you drifted asleep, you already knew what your first report to Macrinus would be.

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