A week had passed since Cassius had painted the sand in the arena of Mediolanum with his life, and a throbbing absence had taken root in his domina, Cornelia Marcellina: the laurels he dropped at her feet from his bloody victories, the corded swell of his biceps flexing under her gaze in the yard, and his cock ripping into her with that brutal, Thracian rhythm, still echoing inside her cunt like a ghost she could neither summon nor silence.

"I fear the gods have abandoned us, little dove," she murmured, her eyes closed. "Of late, the games have become an insufferably tedious pantomime performed by graceless butchers. All noise. No gravitas."

Saffron and myrrh made the tepidarium thick as honey. Amber light slid across the water and picked out oil on her skin; mosaics glinted beneath like small, indifferent altars. She reclined like a foam-born Venus sculpted from Patrician discontent.

The only sound was the soft, rhythmic scrapes of the strigil in her body slave's hand. Lyra knew every ridge of her shoulders, the hollow beneath her collarbone, the subtle tension down her spine; each sensitive curve trembling under the pressure of precise, terror-fueled devotion. Cornelia shivered, a pulse of heat coiling low in her belly, at how thoroughly this girl had internalized the temple of her body.

A falter in the rhythm — a hesitation so slight it might have been imagined — was all it took.

Cornelia’s eyes snapped open, their cyan blaze searing the space between them. Her hand emerged from the water like a sea snake. The slap echoed off the marble; the strigil clattered into the water. A bloom of red on Lyra’s cheek flared white against the olive skin.

"You clumsy little Greek whore," Cornelia said. "How dare you reduce your Domina to a scullion?"

Lyra’s apology died in her throat. Cornelia’s wet fingers traced the rip across the girl’s face as if reading a text. She plucked a pearl-tipped pin from her hair and used the golden point to lift Lyra’s chin. The tip found the tender skin beneath the jaw — a hair’s breadth from the artery — and pricked. A near-perfect bead of blood welled, bright and private.

"Must we always circle back to this crude vocabulary of pain?" She hissed, her face a mask of disappointment. "You force me into such... unsophistication. Remember your purpose, slave. You are Greece, being given form. And I, Rome, provide the lesson. Do not make a barbarian of yourself by forgetting it."

Satisfied, she withdrew the pin, leaving a tiny, perfect bead of blood to blossom where it had rested. Casually, Cornelia used it to secure a stray lock of her own hair. She sank back into the water, her performance complete, as if Lyra’s silent tears were a vulgar aesthetic offense.

A new thought, sharp and tantalizing, displaced her boredom.

"Lyra, my dear," she began, the endearment a weapon. "I require a service. When your current... mediocrity... is concluded."

"Your will is my duty, Domina," Lyra stammered, flinching at the sweet tone.

"One presumes Corvus has returned from his... shopping expedition." A faint, disdainful smile touched her lips. "Let us hope to merciful Juno he hasn't squandered my denarii on another Cherusci brute who thinks verse is composed at the point of a splintered spear. Another woad-stained Silures tribesman, perhaps? Or must we suffer some Iberian thug waving a notched falcata about like it's Vulcan's own masterpiece?" She sighed, the sound full of theatrical weariness. "Still... curiosity proves an insistent muse. Go. Inform Corvus I would inspect his latest acquisition. We shall determine whether this clay is worthy of a proper Roman stamp."

Lyra fled.

Water fell from Cornelia's shoulders in crystalline sheets as she rose from the water. She drifted toward the waiting saffron stola, her form all flowing lines and subtle curves. The silk sighed as it embraced her, draping itself over the gentle slope of her hips, the narrow taper of her waist, the elegant arch of her collarbones. Twin serpents of gold coiled about the soft fullness of her arms, and pearls nestled in the hollow of her throat like enslaved morning dew.

She returned to the bath's edge and settled herself upon the warm marble, the pale yellow silk pooling around her like spilled sunlight. One slender foot broke the water's surface, ripples circling her ankle. From a small table nearby, she took up a silver goblet. Her fingers traced the rim of the cup as she waited. The metal hummed a faint, pure note into the stillness, a secret shared between goddess and silver.

---

The sound of echoing footsteps on the mosaic tiles announced arrival. He was brought to a halt a respectful distance from her, the hulking shadow of her trainer, Corvus, looming just behind him in the doorway like a stone-faced lictor.

Cornelia did not look up, her attention captured by the ripples her own feet made in the steaming water. She took a slow, deliberate sip of her Falernian wine. Only then, with an air of profound, almost divine effort, did she lift her head. Her cyan gaze began at his feet and traveled upwards with the insolent slowness of an lanista assessing new stock. Sand, sweat, potential. She took inventory of it all. Only when the silent appraisal was complete did her eyes finally meet his.

A slow, radiant, and utterly imperious smile touched her lips; less an expression of welcome than a flash of teeth from a lounging leopard.

"The last man who stood where you stand," she said, her voice a melodic, devastating hum, "was a son of Mars. A poem carved from flesh. He made the very sand of the arena sing a canticle for me."

She paused, letting the ghost of Cassius hang in the steam between them, a perfect and unattainable standard. Her smile sharpened into something more intimate and cruel.

"Enlighten me, slave," she purred, the word a velvet-wrapped threat. "Is that barbarian tongue able to be taught a civilized rhythm, or does its only poetry unfold through the crude syntax of the gladius?" She leaned forward, a conspirator sharing a delicious secret. "A thought occurs: If I commanded Sappho's own ghost to breathe her verses unto your lips at this very moment... I have to wonder, what words would you seize to describe a goddess clad in nothing but saffron and contempt?"