Every drip of water from the clepsydra in the corner of the room sounded like a drop of blood.
Marcus paced his chambers, a caged wolf in a world of gilded bars. He couldn't sit. He couldn't read the reports his scribes brought him. The empire could be burning to the ground, and he wouldn't have cared. His entire world, his survival, his sanity, had shrunk to the fate of one woman walking through his sister's halls.
The heavy doors swung open and Crixus entered, his hand resting instinctively on the hilt of his gladius. The big man saw the raw, undisguised agony on his Emperor's face.
"Say the word, Caesar," Crixus said, his voice a low, rumbling promise of violence. "My men and I can be at her villa in minutes. We will tear it apart stone by stone to get her back."
It was a tempting offer. A brutal, simple solution. The old Marcus, the purely rational manager, might have calculated the odds. The ghost of Commodus would have reveled in the bloodshed.
But Marcus Holt, the man trapped between them, saw the trap with perfect clarity.
"No," he said, stopping his pacing to face the gladiator. "That's exactly what she wants."
His voice was steady, the cold logic a shield against his own terror. "She wants me to act like a tyrant. To lose control over a mere servant. She is baiting me, Crixus. And we will not take the bait."
He was learning to play Lucilla's vicious game, even as it was torturing him. Crixus saw the resolve in his eyes and gave a single, reluctant nod.
An hour passed. It felt like a year. Then another. The shadows in the room grew long.
Finally, the doors opened again.
Marcia entered.
She was alone. She was physically unharmed. Her deep blue stola was immaculate. But the woman who had walked out with quiet resolve was gone. Her face was unnaturally pale, a stark contrast to her dark hair. Her usual composure had been stripped away, leaving behind a deep, bone-weary exhaustion.
She was clutching something tightly in her right hand.
Marcus was at her side in an instant, his hands hovering over her shoulders, afraid to touch her, afraid she might break. "Marcia? Are you alright? What happened? What did she say?"
She looked up at him, her eyes seeming to focus from a great distance. She slowly uncurled her fingers. In her palm lay a single, perfect white rose. Its petals were flawless, like carved ivory, but its thorns were sharp and visible. A beautiful, threatening gift.
"She... she was perfect," Marcia whispered, her voice trembling slightly. "The perfect hostess."
He led her to a chair, and she sank into it. He knelt before her, waiting.
"She served me chilled wine from Greece," Marcia began, recounting the meeting in a low, halting voice. "She never raised her voice. She smiled the entire time."
She didn't ask about troop movements or the grain supply. She didn't ask about the Senate. Her questions were soft, insidious, and deeply personal. Little needles designed to find a nerve.
"'Does my brother still enjoy the honeyed wine from Crete?' she asked me," Marcia recounted, her eyes unfocused, replaying the scene. "'Does he still sleep poorly at night? I hear no shouting from his chambers anymore.'"
Marcia swallowed hard. "I told her the lies we prepared. I told her you rage in private, that your moods are darker than ever. I told her you were fighting something inside you."
"And she believed you?" Marcus pressed, his heart hammering.
"I don't know," Marcia said, shaking her head. "She just listened. And smiled. Then she said, 'He seems to have lost his interest in the arena. What does he do with all his time in those dusty archives?'"
Every question was a test. A probe searching for a flaw in their story.
"Then," Marcia continued, her voice faltering, her gaze dropping to her own hands. "She looked at my hands. She reached out and touched my fingertips. Her skin was so cold."
Marcia shuddered at the memory. "She said, 'You have such capable hands. Strong. Not the soft, useless hands of a pampered concubine. They are the hands of a... manager.'"
That one word—manager—hung in the air between them, a terrifyingly accurate shot in the dark. Lucilla wasn't just interrogating Marcia. She was profiling her, analyzing her like a piece of data.
Despite the chilling accuracy, Marcus felt a wave of relief. They had survived. Marcia had played her part perfectly and revealed nothing.
"She learned nothing," he said, trying to reassure both of them. "You were brilliant. It's over."
"No," Marcia whispered, looking up at him, her eyes wide with a dawning horror she was just now beginning to process. "You're wrong. She wasn't looking for what she could learn from me."
She held up the white rose. "She was sending a message to me."
"Before I left," Marcia said, taking a shaky breath, "she gave me this. And she told me to give you a message."
She recited the words, her voice a monotone, as if the words themselves were poison. "'Tell my brother that I am pleased he has found a new hobby to occupy his time. But he should be careful.'"
Marcia's eyes locked with his, filled with terror. "'Sometimes our little tools... develop a mind of their own.'"
Marcus froze. The blood drained from his face.
Tool. Hobby. A mind of its own. His time in the archives.
He saw it then. The entire conversation wasn't a test about his identity. It was a confirmation of a different theory entirely. Lucilla didn't suspect he was a different person. Her conclusion, born from the logic of her own world, was something far more tangible, and infinitely more dangerous.
She didn't think he was possessed by a ghost.
She thought he had found a forbidden artifact. A sorcerous device. An oracle that fed him impossible knowledge.
She wasn't talking about Marcia being his tool.
Marcus stared at the rose in Marcia's hand, the pieces of the puzzle clicking into place with horrifying, stomach-churning clarity. The game had just changed completely.
Lucilla wasn't hunting for a man who wasn't her brother.
She was hunting for the source of his power.
"She isn't hunting a ghost," he whispered, the realization chilling him to the bone. "She's hunting a god."