He was smart. He knew as well as I did what was coming.
I had only enough time to pull my sleep shift over my naked body—my leathers would have taken too long to tie properly. Then the knock at the inner door came, and my heart sank as Christus slowly, begrudgingly moved to open it.
The knock itself was ominous. I would have, at that moment, preferred one of Bavarius’ fumbling, brutish attacks.
The hinge creaked as Christus pulled the door open. On the other side, carrying a candle, was the doctore.
He looked no more pleased than either of us.
“You have been summoned upstairs.” He smelled of wine, and I realized that, given his honored position, he had likely been upstairs participating in the celebration. I wanted to ask him what was waiting for me, for I had always noted that patricians spoke far more freely around slaves than around their peers, for slaves were of no consequence to them whatsoever.
I could not coax the words from my mouth.
“I am coming.” I did not look at Christus as I followed the doctore from the small room—if I had, I felt certain that I would cry, and I had not shed tears since my early days in the ludus, when I had never been able to imagine an end to the attacks by Bavarius and his friends.
With the scent of our lust still clinging to my skin, I walked away, knowing that my lover’s stare was branding the skin at the nape of my neck.
I followed the doctore, and felt somewhat betrayed by the man’s silence.
Just before we reached the bottom of the stairs, he pulled me into the medic’s room and handed me a set of leathers—new ones, untarnished by the sweat and blood of the arena.
“It would be best for you to dress yourself.” He averted his eyes, though, as the doctore, the man had seen me in various states of undress enough times over the years.
Gratefully, I pulled my sleep shift over my head and made quick work of donning the leather. The cloth of my shift was sheer, and I wore nothing beneath it. It would be entirely too inviting to many a drunken celebrator.
I was thankful for the new clothing for a second reason, as well. The smell of Christus clung to the sheer white cloth and was a constant reminder of him—my weakness, something that I had never had before.
These leathers were new and smelled as such. In them, I felt very much like the old Lilia, the one who would and could face anything head on.
Face it and defeat it.
I had been upstairs in the house more often than most of the gladiators, and that was only because of the dominus’ favor toward me. Despite the visits that I had had, I was not familiar with the room to which I was led—I had only before been in the great hall, for parties, and in the office of the dominus.
This room, the one that the doctore led me into, was much more opulent than the office, and much more intimate than the great hall. He stopped as soon as we were through the door, and so I stopped also, taking the time to adjust to my surroundings.
What I saw made me very nervous.
My dominus watched me from where he reclined on a soft couch on the far side of the room. His toga look rumpled, and from the flush of his skin, I could tell that he had had far too many cups of mulsum. Though I did not begrudge him his own wine, I knew that I could not expect any help from him.
Not that he had much that he could offer, in the face of the brother of the emperor. Perhaps that was why he had overindulged.
Curled next to him on the couch was his wife, Annia. The domina lay half sprawled in her husband’s lap, her hand resting lightly on his clothed cock. Her toga had been untied to reveal the smooth skin of her breasts and torso, skin that was white as parchment, as the skin of any fashionable lady should be. Her eyes were glassy, and I suspected that she had partaken of something stronger than wine. My eyes raked the small table in the center of the room, which was littered with full cups, empty cups, and jugs of wine. There, lying in the middle of the polished wood, I spotted it—the small glass vial that I knew would contain opium.
A small, intimate party like this with opium and wine could be far more dangerous to me than a large, raucous one in which I could get lost. Here, they had all partaken of enough substances to feel as though they were friends. Friends gave each other gifts when they were requested.
As I turned to the man who sat on a sofa of his own, his posture as arrogant as if he sat on the throne of the emperor himself, I knew that I was what had been requested.
The pawing hands that always haunted me made their appearance, and panic began to claw at the insides of my throat.
“Come closer.” The sense of trouble that I was in deepened when I realized that it was not my dominus who spoke, but the brother of the emperor. The man had so much control that he had taken over my master’s home—for all intents and purposes, he was the master here.