Chapter 1: The Princess's Rambling
The sun on the terrace was a physical weight, a gold coin pressed hard against the eyelid. Regulus leaned into the marble balustrade, its carved gods worn smooth by centuries of wind, and let the sea-tang in the breeze lick the salt from his skin. Below, the Tiber cut through the city like a careless scar.
“—and they say the Murmillo from Macedonia has never been touched by blade! Not once! They call him the Granite Prince, can you imagine?”
Pandora’s voice was a flock of starlings, all whirl and flash. She paced, her silks hissing against the flawless stone. Regulus watched a single cloud, thin as a nail paring, drift over the distant, dun-colored hills.
“Mm.”
“Is that all? A hum? Regulus, it’s the Grand Tournament. The entire city is vibrating. Don’t you feel it?”
He felt the tremor, but it was the wrong one. It came up through the marble from the bowels of the palace, from the deep cells where they kept the war-beasts and the men made into weapons. It wasn’t excitement. It was a drumbeat before slaughter.
“I feel the heat,” he said, his voice quiet, almost lost in the vast, bright air. He turned his head, the points of his ears catching the sun. “Will you want the blue stola tonight, or the saffron?”
Pandora stopped, blowing a strand of honey-gold hair from her face. She looked at him, really looked, and her exuberance softened into something more puzzled, more persistent. “You’re doing it again. Drifting away on that secret sea of yours.”
“My sea is not secret. It is conquered. There’s a difference.”
The words were flat, devoid of the bitterness that churned in his gut. He’d learned to sand the edges off everything here. Sharpness drew blood, and blood here was a spectator sport.
She came to stand beside him, her shoulder not quite touching his arm. Her scent was of jasmine and powdered citrus, a human garden. He smelled of deep water and cold stone.
“It doesn’t have to be a prison,” she said, softer now. “My father’s temper… it is a fire. It burns hot and then it moves on. He’s forgotten why you’re here, I’m sure of it.”
“He hasn’t.” Regulus’s silver eyes fixed on the horizon, where the sky blurred into a heat haze. “My presence is the reminder. A decorative echo of my father’s mistake. A pretty pillbox for his pique.”
“You’re more than that.”
“What am I, then?” He finally looked at her, a faint, sardonic twist to his mouth. “I am your companion. I fetch your shawls. I advise on embroidery. I am a nymph prince who cannot make a leaf tremble or a spring bubble within these walls. I am a son whose brother was turned into a sword because our father forgot to bend his knee. I am very clear on my inventory, Pandora.”
The roar of the Circus Maximus surged on a gust of wind, a wave of sound crashing against the palace walls. Cheers. Always cheers. He wondered if Sirius was cheering in some muddy, foreign field, his own sword-arm rising and falling to the same rhythm.
Pandora was silent for a long moment. “I wish you would let me be your friend.”
“You are my mistress. The geometry is simpler.”
“Ugh! You’re impossible.” She spun away, silk flaring. “Fine. Be a statue. But you’re coming to the games with me. Father has ordered our whole household to attend the opening procession. Even the gloomy, beautiful gifts.”
He didn’t react to the label. Gift. It was the official term. War spoils were crude; gifts were civilized. A subtle emperor he had.
“As you wish.”
“I do wish. You need to see something… alive. Something fierce and now. It might shake the stardust out of your eyes.”
The stardust, as she called it, was the last fraying thread of his power. A phantom sense of the moon-pull on deep tides, a whisper in his blood that had no outlet here, among the arid marble and shouting men. It was dying, and its death was a private, silent agony.
A heavier step sounded on the terrace. Not the soft slap of servant sandals, but the purposeful tread of military boots. Regulus went very still, his fingers curling against the sun-warmed marble.
A man in the crisp, white tunic of the Praetorian guard appeared, his gaze sweeping over them with impersonal assessment. It settled on Regulus.
“The Emperor’s daughter is required in the atrium. Her mother has guests.”
Pandora sighed. “Very well. Regulus, the saffron stola. And the topaz pins. I’ll be… ferocious.”
She followed the guard, her brief storm of energy moving with her. The terrace was suddenly, immensely quiet. The cloud had passed from the hills. The sun was merciless.
Regulus pushed himself upright. His joints felt stiff, as if he truly were turning to stone. He took one last look at the distant, shimmering line that was the sea—his sea—and turned his back on it.
The corridor inside was a throat of shadow, cool and swallowing. He moved through it, a silent figure in a simple linen tunic, his dark hair a curl of night in the dim. Maids and scribes passed him without seeing him; he was part of the palace’s furniture, a well-shaped object.
His feet took him past an open courtyard where a fountain played. The sound of water was a torture and a tonic. He paused, unseen in an archway, watching the liquid silver cascade over tiers of obsidian. His hand rose of its own accord, a slight, trembling reach.
Nothing. Not a shiver in the plume. Not a waver in the pool. The water did not know him anymore.
A rough laugh echoed from the opposite archway. Regulus dropped his hand, his face smoothing into blankness.
Two junior court officials leaned against the column, sharing a wineskin. Their eyes were on him.
“See?” one muttered, not bothering to lower his voice. “Trying to charm the fountain. Think it’ll sprout pearls for him?”
“Wasted on a creature like that,” the other said, taking a slug. “All that loveliness, and the wrong configuration downstairs for proper fun. A political puzzle, isn’t it? What do you even do with it?”
“Decoration. As intended. Looks pretty holding a fan.”
Their laughter followed him as he walked away, a hot brand between his shoulder blades. His cheeks burned, but his stride didn’t hurry. He let their words fall into the quiet pit of him, where they joined the thousands of others. Creature. It. Decoration.
He entered Pandora’s chambers, a riot of color and texture that always felt vaguely hostile. The saffron stola lay across a gilded chair, the topaz pins beside it winking in a sunbeam. He lifted the fabric. It was soft, heavier than it looked. He laid it out with methodical care, his movements precise.
As he worked, his gaze fell on a polished silver tray, its surface distorted. He saw his own reflection: pale, sharp-featured, the elegant points of his ears cleaving through his dark curls. The eyes that looked back were not full of starlight. They were flat, like coins paid for a debt. He saw what the courtiers saw: a beautiful, ambiguous thing, captured and neutralized.
The roar of the Circus came again, faint but insistent through the walls. A beast’s cry, or a man’s, it was impossible to tell from here.
Tomorrow, he would stand in the Emperor’s box, a living ornament amid the purple and the gold. He would watch men carve each other apart for the sake of that roar. Pandora would gasp and cheer. The sun would beat down.
And he would stand there, perfectly still, holding his mistress’s fan, while the last of the sea inside him evaporated, drop by silent drop.
He finished with the pins. The room was ready. He walked to the window, not the terrace, but a smaller one facing the interior garden. He placed his forehead against the cool glass.
Far below, in a dusty training yard, he could see the gladiators. They moved like hydraulic machines, muscles coiling and releasing under bronzed skin. One of them, a huge man with a net and trident, spun with a shocking, lethal grace.
Regulus watched, his breath fogging the glass. For the first time all day, his distant gaze focused, sharpened. Not with interest, but with a cold, dawning recognition.
There was no difference, really, between the man in the sand and the nymph at the window. They were both waiting for the gate to go up. They were both already in the arena.
A single, clear thought formed, hard as a diamond in the silt of his despair.
If I am to be a thing of beauty in a brutal world, he mused, I will have to learn the grammar of brutality.
He turned from the window as Pandora’s lively steps echoed in the hall. He arranged his face into its practiced, placid mask. But behind his eyes, the first cold current of a new resolve began to stir, deep in the forgotten dark.
But behind his eyes, the first cold current of a new resolve began to stir, deep in the forgotten dark.
The resolve felt thin as a hair when they entered the Empress’s receiving chamber later that evening. Regulus entered behind Pandora, as protocol demanded, and melted against the wall where the shadows pooled between towering amphorae. He became a part of the fresco—a beautiful, silent shape in the background.
The Empress, a woman of sharp angles and softer diamonds, was holding court with three men who looked like they’d been carved from a different stone than the courtiers. They carried the scent of the arena: leather, oil, sun-baked dust.
Pandora dipped into a perfect curtsy. Regulus’s gaze slid over the guests. Two stood, one lounged. The one on the chaise wore the heavy gold torc of a champion. It glinted against his throat, a crude, brilliant shackle. His tunic was plain, but his arms and legs were corded with the kind of muscle earned through repetition, not decoration. He was staring at the ceiling, bored.
“My daughter, Pandora,” the Empress trilled. “Come, my dear. These are our most celebrated guests. The tournament would be a dull affair without them.”
One of the standing men, younger, with restless eyes and a smirk that seemed permanently etched, wasn’t looking at Pandora. His gaze had found Regulus in the shadows. It was a predator’s glance, assessing and claiming. He detached himself from the group and began a slow, deliberate circuit around the room, as if examining art.
He completed his circle at Regulus’s side.
Regulus didn’t flinch. He kept his eyes forward, his breathing even. The man’s hand came to rest on the marble wall beside his head, then trailed down, fingers brushing the dip of Regulus’s waist. The touch was proprietary, insolent. It burned through the thin linen.
“And what is this?” the man asked, his voice a low purr for the room. “A forgotten statue? It’s warmer than it looks.”
The Empress let out a light, tinkling giggle. “Oh, Barty, that is Regulus. A treasure from the woodland court. A gift for my household.” She waved a dismissive hand, rings flashing. “Pay him no mind. He is part of the furnishings.”
Barty’s hand slid fully around Regulus’s waist, pulling him an inch from the wall. Regulus’s blood turned to ice water. His muscles locked.
“Furnishings shouldn’t be so distracting,” Barty murmured, his breath hot near Regulus’s pointed ear.
“Barty.” The voice from the chaise was flat, devoid of irritation or command. It simply cut. “Sit down.”
Barty’s grip tightened for a fraction of a second, then released. He shot a look at the man on the chaise—a look that held a complex cocktail of annoyance and deference. “Just admiring the spoils, James.”
“You’re cluttering the air. Sit.”
Barty retreated, throwing himself onto a cushion with a theatrical sigh. The eldest of the three men, who had been watching with an expression of detached amusement, finally spoke. He had the calm, calculating eyes of a banker who dealt in blood instead of coins. “My champion lacks discipline, forgive him. The heat of impending battle makes men… acquisitive.”
The Empress beamed, as if they were discussing a mild eccentricity. “Think nothing of it! Perhaps an incentive. Barty, if you win your match in the grand style, you may have that one to play with, as well as whatever gold my husband promises. A victor’s trifle!”
The air left Regulus’s lungs. The words hung in the perfumed room, as casual as a remark about the weather. A victor’s trifle.
The elder man—Alastor, Regulus would learn—smiled thinly. “Your generosity is noted. But let us introduce ourselves properly. I am Alastor. A sponsor of men. These are my current investments. The ill-mannered one is Barty Crouch Jr., a rising blade. And the one threatening my expensive chaise with his bulk is James Potter. He is the reason you are having this tournament.”
James, the gladiator on the chaise, finally looked over. Not at the Empress, not at Pandora who was standing stiffly, her cheeks flushed. His eyes, a startling, warm amber in the lamplight, found Regulus. They held no pity. No lust. No curiosity. They were simply… observant. He took in Regulus’s frozen posture, the too-still face, the hands clenched unseen in the folds of his tunic.
Then his gaze flicked back to Alastor. “You talk too much,” James said, his voice a low rumble. He shifted, the muscles in his shoulders rolling. “The Empress doesn’t care about your business. She cares about the show.”
The Empress laughed again, delighted by his bluntness. “He’s right! I do! I want a magnificent show. Bloody, of course, but stylish. The crowd loves style.”
“James provides style,” Alastor said smoothly. “Barty provides blood. It’s a balanced portfolio.”
The conversation drifted back to logistics, training schedules, imperial preferences. Pandora was drawn in, asked harmless questions about which colors the factions would wear. Regulus was forgotten again.
But the amber eyes returned to him once more. Just a brief, piercing glance. James’s head tilted, almost imperceptibly. It wasn’t kindness. It was the look a man might give a locked blade he hadn’t noticed before—assessing its potential for harm, wondering idly about the mechanism of the lock.
Then James looked away, closing his eyes as if the conversation was a dull ache behind his temples.
The chill in Regulus’s veins didn’t thaw. It crystallized. The Empress’s casual promise had been a spark thrown on dry tinder. A victor’s trifle. He was a prize to be handed to a brute with a hungry smile.
His gaze swept the room. The vapid Empress. The cunning Alastor. The volatile Barty, whose eyes still lingered on him like a sticky touch. And James. The bored champion. The one who had called off his dog with a single word.
The cold current of his new resolve met the heat of his humiliation. It didn’t steam away. It forged something harder.
He would not be a trifle.
As the audience ended and Pandora motioned for him to follow, her own face troubled, Regulus pushed off from the wall. His legs held. His spine was straight.
He allowed his own gaze, full of that condensed starlight and new-forged steel, to fall not on Barty, but on James. The champion’s eyes were open again, watching the retreating party.
For a heartbeat, their eyes held across the gulf of the room—the captured nymph and the conqueror in his golden torc. No pleading. No defiance. Just a cool, silent recognition.
Then Regulus turned and followed his mistress into the hall, the ghost of a possessive hand still burning on his waist, and the image of amber eyes, unsettling in their lack of hunger, burning brighter in his mind.
Then Regulus turned and followed his mistress into the hall, the ghost of a possessive hand still burning on his waist, and the image of amber eyes, unsettling in their lack of hunger, burning brighter in his mind.
The moment they were out of earshot, Pandora grabbed his wrist. Her fingers were tight.
“Did you hear that? Did you hear her? A ‘trifle’! I’ll speak to Mother, I’ll make her understand that was completely—”
“Don’t.” The word came out sharper than he intended. He carefully loosened her grip, peeling her fingers away. “You will only make it worse. She promised it to entertain a sponsor. To withdraw it now would be an insult. And we both know where insults lead in this house.”
He couldn’t keep the brittle edge from his voice. We both know. My family knows.
Pandora’s face fell, her anger dissolving into a frustrated helplessness that mirrored his own. “It’s not fair.”
“No.” He agreed softly. “It is Rome.”
They walked in silence for a while, the only sounds their soft footfalls and the ever-present murmur of the palace. When they reached the intersection that led to their separate wings, Pandora’s energy abruptly returned, pivoting with a swirl of silk.
“Forget them. Tomorrow! Oh, Regulus, tomorrow is going to be spectacular. The procession, the music, the energy. You have to wear your formal garb. The one from the solstice presentation.”
A cold lump settled in Regulus’s stomach. “That is not necessary. I am your attendant. A plain tunic is more appropriate.”
“Nonsense! It’s a spectacle. Everyone dresses for spectacle. And you looked…” She searched for the word, beaming. “Iconic. Like a fallen star. Please? For me? It will put all of this nasty business out of our minds.”
The formal garb. It wasn’t clothing. It was a premise. A statement: Look what we have captured and how prettily we can display it.
“Pandora, I despise that costume.”
“It’s not a costume, it’s ceremonial dress,” she said, her tone losing its plea and gaining the unshakeable certainty of the privileged. “And it’s decided. I’ll have it sent to your chambers first thing. I want to see you in full regalia when I call for you. No arguments.” She smiled, a radiant, implacable thing. “It’s going to be a wonderful day. You’ll see.”
He saw nothing but the looming face of the circus, a vast, hungry mouth. He saw Barty’s smirk.
He had no currency here but obedience. “As you wish, Domina.”
She kissed his cheek, a fleeting, perfumed brush. “Good night, Regulus. Dream of glory!”
He watched her float away, already lost in visions of heroic violence and martial elegance.
He did not go to his chambers immediately. He walked instead to a small, disused balcony overlooking the kitchen gardens. The air here smelled of thyme and turned earth, a humble, honest scent. He gripped the rough stone until his knuckles ached, wanting to feel something real, something that wasn’t polished or perfumed or promised to a brute.
The resolve from earlier felt fragile now, a blade of grass trying to pierce marble. What was the grammar of brutality? He knew no verbs of violence. His language was of tide pools and kelp forests, of persuasion and subtle shift. Useless.
Eventually, the night chill seeped into his bones. He retreated.
The garment was already laid out on the narrow cot in his small, whitewashed room. Someone had been efficient. In the low light of the single oil lamp, the gold chains glittered with a malevolent cheer. They were piled there, a careless heap of captivity. The linen wrap beside it was a stark, accusing white.
He approached it as one would a venomous snake. He lifted the chains. They were heavier than they looked, each link perfectly crafted, cold. They were designed to drape, to artfully suggest restraint without actually impeding movement. To decorate a prisoner. The central piece was indeed a harness, meant to clasp at the nape of his neck and cross over his chest and back, with trailing strands to wrap around his forearms. The belt was broad, hammered gold, set with garish chunks of citrine the color of cheap wine.
He let the chains fall back onto the cot with a hollow, musical clatter.
He stripped off his simple tunic and stood naked in the cool room. His body, slender and pale, felt alien to him here—a wrong thing in a wrong place. The points of his ears, the subtle, otherworldly proportion of his limbs, all just features on display.
Slowly, with the grim focus of a soldier donning armor for a battle he knows he will lose, he put it on. The linen around his hips was secure, but it felt insubstantial, a mockery of modesty. The harness clasp was tricky at the back of his neck; his fingers fumbled. The cold metal settled against his skin, a shocking weight. He wrapped the chains around his arms, the links catching in the fine hair there.
He did not look in the polished bronze mirror disc on the wall. He didn’t need to. He could feel it. Every brush of metal against his skin was a whisper: trifle, trifle, trifle.
He took it all off, the chains seeming to cling to him as he unraveled them. He lay the horrifying ensemble neatly on a stool and blew out the lamp.
In the dark, he lay on his cot, staring at the ceiling he could not see. The roar of the crowd was already in his ears, a phantom noise. He felt the weight of the chains as if they were still there, pressing him down. He saw Barty’s eyes, hungry and amused. He saw James’s eyes, amber and devoid of any readable emotion—which was somehow worse.
Humiliation was no longer a future event. It was here, in this room, seeping into him. It was the cold memory of the harness on his skin, and the certain knowledge of how he would look under the ruthless sun, bound in gold for the pleasure of a mob that adored the destruction of beautiful, alien things.
He turned onto his side, curling in on himself. The marble of the city, which had stolen his brother and his sea, had one final theft to complete tomorrow: his last, thin shred of dignity. He held onto the cold, silent fury of that thought, a single, sharp rock in the drowning tide of his despair, until a thin, grey light began to outline the window.