Chapter 20
Chapter Twenty
Charity
Five o’clock crawls toward us like time forgot how to move.
The hotel room feels too small for both of us, even though neither of us is talking.
Draco sits in the chair by the window, scrolling through articles like he’s forcing himself to look at the blade before it strikes.
I’m on the bed, knees pulled to my chest, refreshing my inbox even though nothing new is coming in.
The silence between us isn’t comfortable, and it isn’t angry.
It’s heavy.
Like everything we haven’t said is suspended between us, holding the air down.
I close my eyes. “Draco?”
He looks up immediately. “Yeah?”
I swallow, pulse skittering. I can’t believe I’m about to ask for something real. No polite phrasing. No careful avoidance. Just truth. We don’t do truth in my family—we do performance. We do silence.
“Tell me what you’re thinking. The real version.”
He sets his phone aside, but his jaw is tight. “You don’t want that.”
“Yes,” I whisper. “I do.”
A beat. A breath.
Then, quietly:
“I’m thinking that everyone out there sees me as your… accessory. Your stray. Your project.” His gaze drops to his hands. “And I hate how much of my old life that echoes. Being owned. Being displayed. Being less.”
My lungs go tight. “Draco…”
“I know you don’t see me that way.” His voice roughens. “But the world does. And part of me… a part of me hears them and thinks—maybe they’re not wrong. Maybe I became yours the moment you decided I mattered.”
I stand so fast the bed squeaks. “You didn’t become mine,” I say, too fiercely. “You chose me.”
“Did I?” His eyes finally meet mine. “Or did I do what I’ve always done—cling to the first person who didn’t treat me like a tool? How do I know this isn’t old wiring? Survival, not love?”
The words land hard—low, precise, and impossible to defend against.
I make myself breathe. “Do you really think that’s all we are?”
“No,” he says instantly. Angrily. “But fear doesn’t care about truth. Fear cares about patterns.”
My throat burns. “And what pattern am I repeating, Draco? What wound do you think I’m acting out?”
He doesn’t answer.
He doesn’t have to.
I hear it anyway.
“You think I needed you so I could rebel, break free,” I say hollowly. “You think I walked away from my parents to prove something.”
“That’s not—”
“It is,” I whisper. “And the worst part? I’ve worried about that too. Not because of you. Because they raised me in a way that made every choice feel predetermined.”
His shoulders slump like he’s in pain.
“Charity…”
“I’m scared too,” I say, voice trembling now.
“I’m scared that I don’t know how to be someone who gets chosen.
I’m scared that I’ll become Grace’s ghost again.
And yes—I’m scared that you’ll look at me one day and think I’m too soft or too rich or too sheltered or too fragile or too… too everything you’re not.”
The words spill out too loud, too raw. “I’m terrified I’ll lose you.”
He stands slowly, as if approaching a wild animal.
“Why?” he asks. Not harsh. Just honest. “Why would you lose me?”
“Because you survived Rome, first as an orphan on the streets, then as a gladiator slave, and then two thousand years suspended in ice,” I say. “And I survived… politeness. Presentation. Expectations. I’m afraid you’ll wake up and realize I’m made of silk while you’re made of steel.”
He flinches like I slapped him.
“Silk,” he says, voice low, “can garrote a man as easily as steel.”
I make a choking sound that’s half laugh, half sob.
He steps closer, but we’re still feet apart—like there’s an invisible line neither of us knows how to cross.
“Charity,” he says, voice cracking on my name. “I don’t want to run. I want to stay. But the world is bigger than us, and it’s already trying to twist what we have into something ugly.”
“Then let them try.” My voice is shaking but steady. “We can’t control all of them. But we can control us.”
He looks at me with an expression I’ve never seen before—hope and fear warring in his chest.
“I’m scared,” he whispers.
“So am I.”
And then—
The air in the hotel room changes—pressure dipping, the temperature shifting in a way that feels almost intentional.
And then the scent arrives.
Roses. And something like distant salt spray.
The lamp flickers.
Draco goes still.
A shimmer gathers near the foot of the second bed, bending the light, pulling it into the shape of a woman—half shadow, half starlight, fully impossible.
Fortuna.
Draco drops to one knee before I can even breathe. A reflex older than any building in this city. I don’t kneel—mostly because my body refuses to move at all.
Her smile is warm, amused, knowing.
“Rise, gladiator,” she says, her voice stretching across centuries. “The wheel turned for you long before today. Even the small one felt its shift—his thread was fraying, so I tightened it. He will return to you soon.”
Draco rises slowly, reverently. My heart stutters.
Fortuna steps closer—though “steps” isn’t the right word. It’s more like the room rearranges itself around her presence.
Her gaze lands on Draco first.
“You fear being owned,” she says. “Because the last time you gave your heart, it was forged into a weapon used against you.”
His breath shudders out of him.
Then her eyes turn to me.
“And you fear disappearing. You were raised inside a story that demanded your silence. You think loving boldly will cost you yourself.”
Tears burn instantly behind my eyes.
She takes us both in—hands linked, worlds different, trembling with truths we’ve both been too afraid to speak.
“Your wounds are not each other’s burden,” Fortuna says softly. “They are each other’s map.”
Something in my chest cracks open. Draco’s shoulders drop as if the weight on them shifts.
The light around her flickers, grows softer, like sunset caught in glass.
She looks at each of us one more time, gaze sharp and kind in the same breath.
She speaks the words that change everything:
“Your love is not wrong. Your fear is. Choose courage, and the bond holds. Choose fear, and it unravels.”
The room hums, like her words echo inside the walls themselves.
Then she glances toward the door—like she sees something we can’t yet.
“Threads hold when they are chosen,” she murmurs. “Yours. And his.”
The scent of roses deepens.
And she’s gone.
Vanished like she was never there at all—except the air still tastes like sea spray and revelation.
A heartbeat passes. Two.
Then—
A quiet, polite knock.
Draco and I stare at each other, barely breathing.
He moves first, crossing the room in three long strides and pulling open the door.
A vet tech stands there, smiling gently, holding Lucky’s leash.
And Lucky—groggy, cone askew, tail thumping against the hallway wall—wobbles inside like he’s been waiting two thousand years to come home.
I drop to my knees. Draco drops beside me.
Our hands meet in Lucky’s fur.
We both break.
Not loudly—just the quiet, shuddering kind of relief that feels like surviving something you didn’t realize was killing you.
When we finally look at each other again, everything is unspoken and understood.
Courage.
Love.
Choice.
“Okay,” I whisper. “Let’s tell our story.”
Draco presses his forehead to mine.
“Together.”