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“I wonder,” I say aloud. “Does he know that he no longer has to eat men to survive? When he looks up at us, does he see the bars of a new cage?”
Eli rests a hand on my shoulder. He knows I’m not really talking about the lion.
Noah tears the steak from my hand and tosses it angrily at the hole. “Tell them what you did in there,” his eyes flash. “Tell them what you agreed to.”
I suck in a deep breath. I turn to face my three lovers, my tribunes. Noah’s face is a storm. Gabe’s face is open and earnest, ready to be hurt. Eli just looks… resigned. Like he knows what I’m going to say before I say it. Somehow, that’s the worst.
“The good news is that I getting out of the marriage to Nero and Constantine.” I stare at my hands. Blood from the steak runs between my fingers. At least it’s not their blood. “The bad news is that I’ll be marrying Constantine, which we knew was a possibility. I won’t be trying to get out of it. For now. But he wanted more, and he knows he’s got me by the ovaries. So I had to pull out my last bargaining chip, something I never wanted to use so we didn’t discuss it. I said that if we have a child, he could claim it as his own.”
Gabe’s face crumples. He staggers back as though I punched him in the gut. Eli throws out a hand across his chest before he trips over the edge of the swimming pool.
Every broken, lonely lyric and sad melody he’s ever written flashes across his face in an instant. The weight of it crushes me – in a single sentence I’ve done more damage than his father has done in his entire lifetime.
No. Gabe, I’m so sorry.
This is what it feels like to see a fallen angel lose his wings.
But I can’t back down now. I can’t be weak. This is happening, and I need them to understand. I need them to stand beside me on this.
So I take a deep breath and press on. “I know how you all feel about it. I’m not exactly thrilled, either. I feel like our lion friend here – I may have upgraded to a larger cage with a kinder master, but I’m still trapped. You don’t understand that I’m the first woman to have this kind of power in the Triumvirate. They don’t know what to do with me. I have limited options, and I need to use every weapon I have or we won’t survive the year. This isn’t just about me and what I want anymore. It isn’t even about the four of us. It’s about all the people who need me for their livelihoods, their lives. It’s about how safe this city will be for women like me if Nero takes over the August empire.”
I explain to them the terms of our agreement – that Constantine will offer us protection, he won’t expect me to sleep with him, and we’ll work together to overthrown Nero, provided that any child I had with my tribunes would be raised as his. “Remember, I’m not ready for kids yet, and a lot can change between now and when I am. I’ll fight this, the way I fought the marriage, but not now. Not until we’re safe.”
“We’ll never be safe,” Eli says in that dull, resigned voice that makes my stomach feel like lead. “There will always be another enemy at the gates.”
Gabriel’s chin wobbles. “If we have a child, they’ll never be able to know that I’m their father? They’ll never call me papa or daddy?”
He looks so completely gutted. I wrap my arms around him, nuzzling my face into his neck. “Maybe if there are other children. But the first – the one who will inherit my empire – will be Constantine’s in name only. But we don’t have to worry about this yet. We need to move forward, focus on Lupercalia and—”
“Does it not seem ridiculous to you?” Eli asks, his features shifting as an idea occurs to him. “Why leave the fate of empires up to the genetic lottery? Think about it. If Nero’s sons are all morons, why doesn’t he just find someone who isn’t? Constantine is surrounded by viciously competent people, but he’s supposed to force himself to sleep with a woman just so a baby has his genes, and then hope he doesn’t get snuffed until the kid grows up. A blood dynasty seems awfully precarious to me. Isn’t this why all the Egyptians went nuts? They were all fucking their siblings to keep the blood pure.”
“The Romans were aware of this,” I say. “It’s one of the reasons why they started ‘adopting’ heirs. Only a handful of emperors are blood-related. The rest were adopted to ensure a smooth transition of power. Otherwise you end up like Egypt – a child ascends the throne and the nobility or priesthood could force their will through them.”
“Exactly. I think if you asked your father, he might agree they had the right idea.” Eli’s eyes shimmer. He’s almost forgotten about my announcement in his enthusiasm for this idea. “If he’d been allowed to pick someone from his ranks to train as his successor – like Antony – everything we’re going through now might never have happened.”
“Yes, but then I would have grown up with Howard Malloy for a father,” I frown. I look up at the facade of Malloy Manor, trying to imagine what it might’ve been like to grow up here. I didn’t have to do much imagining. The horrors of Mackenzie’s diary are burned into my head.
This house really could have been my prison, and Howard Malloy’s fists my jailors.
I squeeze Gabriel tight, wishing I could squeeze the hurt from his marrow. For all the shit mounting on our heads, I’m still glad my life turned out the way it did. He may not have been my biological father, but Julian August believed in me. My mother may not have pushed me out of her cervix, but she was kind and fierce and wonderful. They loved me. And looking between my three princes, I see just how rare and precious love like that can be.
“Even if you never were Claudia August,” Gabe whispers, laying feathery kisses across my cheek, “even if you were a Valley girl who only cares about football scores and Instagram likes, we would still have fallen madly in love with you.”
I look into his shadowed eyes, and in the depths of his despair, I see a flicker of hope – a life preserver I cling to, praying it will float me into shore.
“I never knew how much you wanted to be a father,” I whisper, tugging his labret piercing until he gives me a sad smile. “I promise you that one day your child will be able to look you in the eyes and say, ‘I’m proud of you, Dad.’”
It’s exactly the right thing to say. Gabriel’s eyes flutter closed, his eyelashes tangling together as he slips away into his own head. I kiss his closed eyelids, wishing I could follow him, wishing I could slip away from my life as Claudia August for just a moment and exist in the stars with him.
“Do you remember Mackenzie’s twelfth birthday party?” Noah asks suddenly.
Eli nods. This is his territory. When I first met him, he lived in those memories. “Oh, absolutely. It was that pool party. She invited the whole class. Well, the whole class except George and a couple of other ‘freaks’.”
“Ooof. That Mackenzie was a real class act.” I stretch out on the pool lounger, pulling Gabe down beside me. It’s one of those double-width ones that can hold more than one person. Noah leaves and returns with two bottles of wine. He pops both corks and we pass them around, necking the sweet drink until we empty one of the bottles and a sugary buzz clouds my brain.
Noah holds up the empty bottle. “This was the exact spot at Mackenzie’s party where we played that game of spin-the-bottle.”
“Spin-the-bottle?” I glance at them incredulously. “Weren’t you all, like, twelve?”
