Chapter 27
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Sophia
By the time the sun has climbed high enough to turn the curtains pale gold, I’ve lost track of how long I’ve been lying here just… feeling alive inside my own skin.
Not in a bad way.
My body hums with a low, pleasant ache—hips, thighs, the muscles along my back. My mouth feels bruised in the best way. There’s a faint scrape on my shoulder where his stubble rasped when he buried his face there and shook apart.
My nervous system offers a familiar interpretation: post-adrenaline tremor, possible overload, probable crash coming.
My actual state: grounded. Sorted. Full.
And in love.
That part doesn’t feel new anymore. It feels… confirmed. Like finally seeing the pattern that was obvious all along.
The other new part is stranger: I let him see me. And he let me see him back.
I roll onto my side, facing the space where he slept. The impression of his body is still in the mattress—a shallow hollow in the shape of a man who used to sleep like prey and somehow decided he could rest here.
He’s gone now. The clock on my phone says 8:10 a.m. The sanctuary doesn’t pause because I had soul-bending sex-adjacent intimacy.
He let me hold him afterward. He let me kiss his hands. He let himself be seen.
The memory makes something tight and bright twist low in my chest—wonder, maybe. Or the quiet terror of realizing how much his trust means to me.
I pick up my notebook from the bedside table and flip it open.
The page where I wrote I love him doesn’t look unhinged in daylight. It looks inevitable.
Under it, in smaller writing from last night when I got up to pee: He trusted me with Marcellus. He let me see the worst thing and stayed.
I add: We moved the line. I’m not afraid of wanting him.
My body does a self-check: heart steady, hands warm, breathing calm. No panic. No overload spike. Just… yes.
The shower helps. Hot water, steam, predictable sensory input. My brain arranges last night’s emotions into neat compartments while the water drums a rhythm on my back.
By the time I pull on jeans, a soft T-shirt, and a thin cardigan, my hunger finally cuts through the mental haze.
The walk to the dining hall feels different today. Not lighter. More aligned.
Thirty steps from my cabin to the gravel bend. Forty to the first glimpse of the arena rail. Thirty-five to the dining hall door.
The numbers soothe me, but this morning they feel less like coping and more like the architecture of a world I’m choosing to stay in.
Inside the dining hall: chaos, warmth, noise. Sanctuary normal.
Varro is impossible to miss—towering over a waffle maker he absolutely shouldn’t be trusted with. A small girl is staring at him with wide eyes. He hands her a perfectly round waffle with ceremonial gravity, as if he’s presenting a legionary medal.
She squeals. Varro smiles—tiny, rare, painfully earnest.
I grab a tray and enter the line. Plate. Toast. Fruit. Tea. My hands line everything at right angles without thinking.
I’m about to sit at a small empty table when I hear an eruption of laughter near the front of the room—kids, delighted, unselfconscious.
My stomach does that thing again. Recognition. Warm. Sharp. Certain.
I turn.
Flavius is surrounded by a cluster of early day-tourists, wooden gladius in hand. He’s demonstrating something—some exaggerated “arena dodge” maneuver that involves a dramatic roll, a fake yelp, and clutching his chest like he’s been mortally wounded by a foam sword.
The kids howl. A teenage girl stares at his arms like she’s discovered religion.
It should make me laugh. Instead, it makes my heart tug in a way I’m still learning how to decode.
This is the version of him the world gets: big, bright, safe. The Jester. The distraction he learned to weaponize.
But now I’ve seen the other version too. The one who fought Cassius with lethal precision yesterday morning. The one who told me about Marcellus with a voice scraped raw. The one who shook apart in my arms at dawn this morning.
He glances up.
His gaze finds mine from across the room.
The shift is microscopic: the grin remains, the posture stays, but his gaze drops the performance for one breath.
Then… he winks. Not the theatrical wink he reserves for children. A small, private one.
Heat curls low in my belly.
I look away fast because if I don’t, I’m going to walk over there, climb him like a tree, and we will both be sent packing before lunch.
A tray thumps onto the table beside me.
“Morning, Doc,” Thrax says, sliding into the seat diagonally across from me with the reckless cheer of a man who has never once doubted the world will rearrange itself around his needs. “You look steadier. Good. People think focus comes from rest. Sometimes it comes from the right kind of war.”
I choke on my tea. “I… slept well?”
“Sure,” he says, grinning like a devil. “Let’s call it that.”
Varro arrives a moment later with his own tray and a waffle that looks aggressively symmetrical.
His gaze flicks to me. Then to Flavius. Then back to me.
He doesn’t smile, but something in his expression softens. Approves. It feels absurdly like being knighted by a quiet mountain.
“Morning,” he rumbles.
“Good morning,” I manage.
They fall into easy conversation—Thrax complaining about tourists who ask if gladiators wore deodorant (they did not), and Varro adding, in his quiet, matter-of-fact way, “Oil. Strigil. Cold water. We weren’t animals.”
Thrax snorts. “Speak for yourself, mountain man.”
The corner of Varro’s mouth lifts—barely—but it feels like witnessing a solar event.
Underneath the noise, my body does the familiar calculations—volume levels, sensory loads, table proximity—but none of it overwhelms.
The chaos feels like weather today, not a threat.
When the meal ends and the crowd thins, I take the long way back toward my cabin.
Past the stables. Past the Roman garden gate (closed, quiet, waiting). Past yesterday’s training yard, where sand still holds faint grooves of footwork patterns burned into my memory.
I walk more slowly than necessary. Not stalling. Letting things settle where they want to live.
Back in my cabin, the quiet meets me like a held breath. I pull my laptop toward me. The complaint folder waits—already filed, already submitted. But the interview is coming. They’ll want me to walk them through it verbally, defend every choice, and explain every piece of evidence.
I need to organize my thoughts. Not write a new document to send, but create a framework for how I’ll speak when they ask their questions. Talking points. The narrative arc they need to hear.
For a moment, everything inside me vibrates—the romance, the research, the fear, the longing, the fight—all competing for space in my head.
Then I hear Fortuna’s voice again, light as a fingertip on the inside of my skull: You can hold both.
“Yes,” I whisper. “I can.”
I open a clean document—not for submission, just for clarity. At the top, I type: Interview Prep: Key Points for the Office of Research Integrity
Underneath, I begin organizing the framework I’ll need when I’m sitting in front of them:
· Pattern of appropriation over time
· Power dynamics: senior researcher vs. early-career researcher
· Autistic communication style misread as uncertainty
· Refusal to disappear ≠ aggression — it is integrity
My fingers move faster. Steady. Sure.
I think of a panel of strangers deciding whether my truth is palatable enough to fit their rubric.Then there’s Flavius yesterday—dangerous, brilliant, controlled. Flavius last night—shaking, vulnerable, choosing to stay. Flavius this morning—letting me love him without flinching.
My body logs that memory as data: Safe. Held. Chosen.
“I can do this,” I say aloud, surprised by how right it sounds.
Not bravado. Not hope. Fact.
Outside, a child screams with delight as someone demonstrates a foam-sword “fatal blow.” A horse snorts. Diana yells something about helmets.
The sanctuary goes on.
So do I.
The wheel is still turning—slow, rusty, bureaucratic—but now there’s momentum. And for the first time, the turning doesn’t scare me.
Because I’m not disappearing.
Not from this fight. Not from this life. And definitely not from him.