The herald's words were not a request; they were a blade aimed at the one person in the world he couldn't afford to lose.
Marcus stared at the impassive messenger, then at Marcia. The air in the grand chamber grew thick and heavy. The summons for "tapestries" was a lie so thin it was transparent. This was a move on the chessboard, and Lucilla was putting his queen in check.
His first instinct was raw, protective fury. A primal rage that belonged to Commodus, not to him, rose in his chest.
"You will not go," he said, his voice a low command. He turned to the herald, his eyes like chips of flint. "Tell my sister her servant is occupied."
He was the Emperor. His word was law. It was a simple, absolute exercise of power.
Marcia stepped forward, placing a hand gently on his arm. Her touch was a small anchor in a raging storm. "And what happens then, my lord?" she asked, her voice quiet but piercingly firm.
He turned to look at her. Her face was pale, her lips a thin line, but her eyes were clear and resolute.
"I refuse your order," she continued, laying out the logic like a battle plan. "You protect me. In that moment, you prove to every servant, every guard, every spy in this palace that a former slave means more to you than your own sister. You confirm every suspicion Lucilla has about your 'change.' You hand her the victory without a single fight."
Her cold, brilliant logic was a bucket of ice water. He wanted to act on pure emotion, to be a shield, to use the immense power at his disposal to protect her. But she was showing him that in this vicious game, acting like a shield would be the same as falling on his own sword.
His absolute power was a gilded cage.
He dismissed the herald with a curt nod. The man bowed and retreated, leaving the two of them alone in the cavernous room. The silence was deafening.
"She cannot hurt you," he said, the words sounding hollow even to himself. "She wouldn't dare."
"She won't need to hurt me," Marcia replied, her gaze unwavering. "She will only need to listen."
He fled to the only place he could think clearly. The archives.
He threw the laptop open, its screen casting an anxious blue glow in the dusty dark. He paced back and forth in front of it like a caged wolf.
"JARVIS!" he barked. "Run scenarios. Lucilla's objective, her methods. Give me a strategy. Give me a way to protect Marcia."
He needed another 'Roman Solution,' a clean, logical answer to an emotional, human problem.
The AI's synthesized voice was maddeningly calm. ANALYZING. LUCILLA'S PRIMARY OBJECTIVE IS INFORMATION EXTRACTION AND PSYCHOLOGICAL PROVOCATION. PHYSICAL HARM TO MARCIA IS IMPROBABLE. LIKELIHOOD IS 11%. IT IS TOO CRUDE A TACTIC AND WOULD TRIGGER DIRECT RETALIATION FROM YOU, CONFIRMING HER HYPOTHESIS THAT MARCIA IS SIGNIFICANT.
"I don't care about probabilities!" Marcus roared, the sound swallowed by the rows of silent scrolls. "I care about what she's going to ask."
PROPOSAL: A 21ST-CENTURY SUBDERMAL AUDIO TRANSMITTER COULD BE...
"Useless!" Marcus slammed his hand down on the heavy stone table next to the laptop. A sharp, grounding pain shot up his arm. "She's not in the 21st century! I can't put a bug on her! Can't you understand that?"
The machine was a god of data and logic, but it was utterly worthless here. It could analyze troop movements, grain prices, and Senate loyalties. But it could not compute the venom in a soft word, the threat behind a polite smile. He was completely, terrifyingly on his own.
He returned to his chambers to find Marcia waiting, calm and composed. The fear was still there, deep in her eyes, but she had walled it off. She was a survivor. She had survived far worse than a conversation with a noblewoman.
The mood was tense, like actors preparing for a play where one wrong line meant a grisly death.
"She will ask about me," Marcus began, his voice low and urgent. He had to prepare her. He had to give her a script. "About my habits. My moods. You must tell her the truth she expects to hear. The truth about the man I replaced."
He began to coach her, using the ghost of the real emperor as their only defense.
"Tell her I am volatile," he instructed. "That I rage in private over small things. That I have nightmares and wake up shouting. Tell her the man she knew, her brutal brother, is still in here, fighting against whatever this 'change' is."
Marcia listened, her brow furrowed in concentration. She nodded, absorbing every detail, every lie.
Then she asked the one question he wasn't prepared for. The one detail that defied any logical explanation.
"And what if she asks why you haven't touched me?" Marcia's voice was soft, but the question was a thunderclap. "Why you treat me with... respect? The old Commodus paraded his concubines. He used them. He would never have done this. What lie do I tell her then?"
The question hung in the air between them, deeply personal and strategically fatal.
He had no answer. He could invent a reason—a vow to the gods, a strange illness—but it would be a clumsy lie, easily seen through. The simple, unspoken truth was that his respect for her, his growing affection, was the one anomaly. It was the one piece of data that didn't fit the pattern of either the old tyrant or a new, ruthless strategist.
It was his greatest weakness.
"Tell her... you do not know," he finally managed, his voice strained. "Tell her it frightens you."
It was time. Marcia had changed into a simple but elegant stola of deep blue, the picture of a favored and trusted servant. Against the backdrop of the massive, gilded palace, she looked small, fragile.
She walked to the door, then paused and turned back to him. Her face was a mask of calm, but he could see the pulse beating in the hollow of her throat.
He crossed the room in three long strides. He stopped in front of her, wanting to say something, anything, but the words wouldn't come. He reached out, not to hold her, not to embrace her, but to adjust a simple bronze pin on her shoulder.
His large, scarred hand—Commodus's hand—looked clumsy and oversized as it fumbled with the delicate pin. His fingers brushed against the warm skin of her shoulder. The touch was brief, electric, and filled with a universe of unspoken fear.
She didn't flinch. She simply looked up at him, her dark eyes holding his.
She gave him a single, reassuring nod, a silent promise to be strong. Then she turned and walked away down the long, echoing marble hall, heading toward Lucilla's villa.
He watched her go, her lone figure shrinking with every step. The great bronze doors at the end of the corridor swung shut behind her.
The sound was heavy, final. Like a stone sealing a tomb.
He was the Emperor of Rome, the most powerful man in the known world. And all he could do was wait.