Chapter I Lela
I
LELA
Masculine laughter rumbled up to the domed ceiling of the great hall. The lilting flute music grated my nerves, but I remained still and silent as always in the corner, waiting to be summoned by my master, Consul Valerius.
Sometimes I thought—hoped—he might forget about my quiet presence at these revelries. But he never did. He liked to flaunt all of his pretty possessions.
For the moment, the new slave girl Roza danced and twirled, her sheer green skirt lifting to reveal her naked body beneath. Her breasts were bare, painted with green and gold paint in the pattern of dragon scales.
Valerius’s three guests—senators of Rome—were enraptured by Roza’s display. All but one whose gaze moved about the room with a slow, calculating sweep.
I’d never seen him before. He was younger than the other senators Valerius usually invited into his home and far more attractive.
His black, wavy hair was short as most Roman nobles.
He wore a close-cropped beard that didn’t hide the sharp-cut edges of his jaw and chin.
His blue toga denoted him of the Sapphirus house—one of the higher-ranking dragon houses.
Higher than Valerius. No wonder he’d hired the more expensive musicians and had prepared such an extravagant feast.
I’d spent several minutes observing my master’s new guest, who didn’t seem to quite fit in with the others. Distracted by his unusual demeanor, I hadn’t noticed him noticing me, his arresting blue eyes fixed and intense.
I immediately averted my gaze to the floor, disliking the skitter of my pulse. Rarely did anything make my heart race anymore. I’d managed to become numb to everything—easily able to let my mind drift to a safer place when my body was being used.
“Valerius,” called the stranger. “I did not know you took a wife.”
Quintus laughed, chilling my blood to ice.
The first time I heard that laugh was when I screamed and cried for mercy the night he and other Romans in half-skin form attacked our village—my wedding night.
That laugh had burned into my bones and my very soul as he killed my beloved Jardani.
Quintus was the one who’d sold me to Valerius.
Not for money, but for a high seat in the senate.
“I don’t have a wife. Lela is my favored slave,” Valerius answered the stranger before calling louder, “Lela! Come forward.”
I stepped toward the lounging, feasting demons in human form, ready to play my part as his muzzled pet. Valerius waved his hand for Roza to move to the side. She sauntered to the left and continued dancing, her concerned gaze catching mine as she swept past me.
Valerius lounged on his side on the highest cushioned chaise.
His settee faced the center of the atrium that opened up to the dome’s oculus, which gave his guests a view of the starry night.
Corinthian columns encircled the intimate salon.
Green velvet chaise sofas and golden silk cushions filled the intimate space.
It was a pile of luxury for Valerius’s most important guests.
Leto, his closest ally in the senate, stretched out on his side to Valerius’s left, filling his gullet as usual.
Quintus lounged on the floor of cushions to his right.
And the new, handsome stranger sat up on the rug beneath, his back propped against one of the pillars that enclosed the atrium.
He sat with them, but also somehow seemed apart.
“What is that thing on her neck and mouth?” asked the dark-haired stranger, his expression grim and tight.
His attention to my ornate, gold-plated bridle instantly dragged my own to the coldness of it against my skin and the plate in my mouth pressing down on my tongue. The metal collar was wrapped around my throat, with the muzzle sculpting over my chin, jaw, and mouth.
The bridle had been specifically designed for me.
Valerius had wanted one that was elegant but still completely covered my mouth.
Thin golden chains anchored it over my head so that I could still wear my hair down the way he preferred.
The mechanism locked at my nape beneath my hair.
He kept the key in his bedchamber. Only he or his body slave had access to it. So he thought.
Valerius had paid a high price to the sculptor. Not only for the crafting of it but also for the emeralds encrusted in a straight line where my mouth should be.
But I had no mouth in this house, no voice at all. Not even when the bridle was off.
I walked to the center of the room, my dark, wavy hair brushing my hips. The picture of caged beauty. I turned and faced them, my demeanor cool. My mind blank and my heart frozen. As always.
“That’s right,” said Quintus to the younger senator. “This is your first visit to Valerius’s lair, isn’t it?” He chuckled, but I refused to look at him. “You’ve never seen the pretty viper he keeps in his home.”
“What do you mean?” asked the stranger.
I kept my eyes straight while all of theirs were on me, looking their fill, gorging themselves on my state of torture.
Leto, a rotund man, chimed in while chewing on his roasted lamb. “She’s a witch.”
The stranger huffed in disbelief. “There’s no such thing.”
“How can you even say that?” snarled Quintus. “When your own general was beguiled by one. They say that Celtic witch caused mayhem for our armies until Julianus took over. Then he fell spellbound by her as well.”
“You witnessed Legatus Julianus’s downfall by that woman,” added Leto, narrowing his beady eyes on the younger senator. “You had to know she was a witch. Used her powers to make him betray the emperor, his own blood.”
“Julianus was a treasonous fool,” added my master, watching me intently. “To kill another general, burn his corpse and half of Palatine Hill, then flee Rome. For a woman?” Valerius chuckled, plucking a plump peach from a bowl at his elbow. “Idiot.”
“Yes,” agreed the handsome stranger. “General Julianus was indeed ensnared, but she was no witch. Just a woman who seduced her master and made him into a traitor.”
I absorbed the story I’d heard more than once by now.
The once famous Roman general known as the Coldhearted Conqueror, nephew to Caesar, who had shifted into his giant red dragon, killed and burned another Roman patrician who’d hurt his woman, then flew with her on his back away from Rome, somewhere across the ocean.
I wished I’d seen it. The beautiful fantasy of it kept me awake some nights, a dream that would never come true for me.
Refocusing on my reality, I let the cold settle in again. It was dangerous to wish for more, to wish for escape. I’d tried. And it had gotten this golden muzzle on my face and made my master maniacal and obsessive of me.
“You never said why you still keep her after what she did,” added Quintus. His gaze always devoured me, but I refused to ever look him in the eye. The day I did, I would kill him.
“What did she do?” asked the stranger.
Valerius fingered the scar on his throat. The one I’d given him. “You may not believe that your general was charmed by a sorceress, but these witches do exist. You’re looking at one.”
His voice dropped deep, his eyes glinting an otherworldly green. His dragon loved to tell this story. The one where he nearly died at my hands and survived to cage me so well.
“Quintus didn’t know what she was either until after he’d sold Lela to me. One night, when I took her to my bed, she bit me so hard that I bled.”
I stared at my master, loving to hear how I almost regained my freedom. His eerie, glittering gaze bore into mine.
“I thought it strange when she sucked the blood from the bite mark. But then I felt it, the kind of magic I feel in transformation.”
The men were riveted by his story. So was I.
It had been the first time I felt the magic surge up inside of me.
My bunica—my grandmother—had always told me it would come, that I would know when to use it.
And I had. It was the first night Valerius forced me into his bed.
And the mystical powers that lived in my blood instantly awoke, fed by my rage.
“What happened?” asked the younger one.
“She spoke and told me to pick up my dagger and slit my own throat.” Valerius grinned, his fangs extending. “And I immediately did as she ordered.” He laughed. “Thank the gods, my body slave Grigor stopped me, or I’d be dead.”
“She’s god-touched,” said the stranger with such awe, I turned my attention to him.
His eyes lit with something more than curiosity or wonder. It was almost like recognition. But that couldn’t be. We’d never met.
“A child of Minerva, it seems.” Valerius tilted his head, still staring at me while he ate his peach, the juice dribbling down his chin.
“That cunt of a goddess should never have defied her betters,” grunted Quintus, guzzling his goblet of wine.
Bunica had told me and my sisters the story of Medusa and her own sisters, who’d been given special gifts by the goddess Minerva. I’d never believed it until the night I’d almost killed Valerius, the night I felt the magic surging inside me.
“Fascinating,” said the stranger, his expression pinched with concern.
“But why keep her?” demanded Quintus. “Now that you know she’s so deadly. She’s a coiled serpent, waiting to strike. Look at her. Even now, she stares as if she’s plotting against us. Her pulse is steady, her heart as cold as ice.”
Valerius’s grin widened. “Oh, she can get hot enough.”
Quintus chuckled. “I bet she can.”
Valerius tossed the half-eaten peach on the platter and wiped his fingers on a fold of his green toga. “Besides, I like the reminder to be wary. When death lives in your home, you never let down your guard.”