Antinous chewed on the end of his stylus as Apollodorus showed them plans for the new temple in Hadrian's study. The Temple of Olympian Zeus was the crown jewel of Hadrian's building programme in Athens. It would be adorned by statues of gods, personifications of the Roman provinces and Hadrian himself, naturally.

He tried to focus but his eyes stared right through the etchings on the parchment and into his own debauched thoughts of Leonides.

They had been in Athens for over a month and were still unable to enjoy their clandestine meeting. Leonides found a room. A secret passageway led from the slave quarters to an old antechamber that had fallen into disuse. Antinous claimed that he could not find an opportunity to meet him. That was untrue. There were opportunities at night while Hadrian slept, and during the day when he was in the forum or at the library, Antinous simply did not have the courage to take advantage of such moments.

Instead, they satiated their urges with passing looks, brushing fingertips and many, many hours languishing by the pool, while the soldier took in every inch of him—metaphorically that is.

Antinous too spent hours in the courtyard watching the guards train. Leonides was no better with a sword than the others but he was swift-footed and ran circles around his sparring partner, disarming him and putting him flat on his back. Antinous liked the way he teased his opponent, leaning on his left leg to lure him, before shifting to the right to strike. He especially liked the sound of his grunts with each swing. He was louder and his swings had more flare when he knew Antinous was watching.

"Antinous? Are you listening? What do you think of a chryselephantine statue of Zeus for the cella? It's a touch archaic, but it will echo Phidias' statue of Athena in the Parthenon and cause quite a stir, don't you think?"

Blinking at the sketch in Hadrian's hand, it occurred to him that he had no opinion whatsoever.

"Maybe you should consult Commodus."

The Emperor pursed his lips, while Apollodorus delighted in what he interpreted as wild jealousy between the Emperor's new and former lover. It was no wonder old squid eyes was an architect, Antinous mused, for he constructed the most elaborate fantasies about Hadrian's love life and wasn't shy about sharing them.

"Oh, how they fight over you! What I wouldn't give to have those two beauties tousling over my—"

"That will be all, Apollodorus."

"Sacratissime Imperator, I'm only too happy to mediate! I can entertain this honeysuckle while you consult the rose blossom. Do you want to go for a swim, Antinous? Or to the courtyard to exercise? Greeks exercise naked, of course. It's healthier that way. Your cheeks look like they could use some color."

Antinous folded his hands on the desk and placed his head upon them.

"Ah, you're unwell." Hadrian tucked a curl behind his ear. "Don't trouble yourself."

At that moment Sabina was gliding past the door with her palla over her head. She had just come from the Cybeline temple, where women worshiped at the altar of the Anatolian goddess, Cybele. The only men allowed in the temple were the eunuchs that castrated themselves on the Day of Blood before the goddess. It was no wonder the cult appealed to the Empress.

"Wife, will you offer your opinion on the new temple for Zeus?"

"I have just been cleansed at the feet of the Mountain Mother."

He held up the draft. "A chryselephantine statue of Zeus for the cella? Or is ivory and gold too much?"

She removed her palla revealing a rope of dark hair coiled atop her head like a sleeping viper. "Husband, if you truly valued my opinion you would have asked it the day we were married."

"I would have, were I not drunk and trying to forget the day before it began," he grumbled.

"That makes two of us."

He gathered his scrolls and clapped his hands for Apollodorus to follow. "Do get some rest, Tinou," he said, ignoring Sabina as he left the study.

The Empress looked at Antinous skeptically and pressed a hand to his forehead. "You're not sick." She lifted his chin to examine his face. "I knew it... You're in love."

"What?"

"Yes, you are."

"You can't possibly know that."

"I'm a woman, I know everything." She crossed her arms. "Tell me, are you lovers?"

"Of course not! I'm the imperial favourite. I'm loyal to the Emperor."

She arched an eyebrow.

"I haven't the courage to do it."

"I suspected as much."

He felt horrible asking her advice since it was he who destroyed her affair with Suetonius but he was desperate: "How did you find the courage to do such a thing?"

She bristled at his frankness. "Firstly, Hadrian never cared for me, and secondly he made his affairs with boys public, which disgraced and humiliated me," she said sharply. "Truthfully, it wasn't vengeance. I was afraid that I would die without knowing what it was like to love someone and be loved in return."

Was it worth it, he wondered—to know love if it could be taken away at any moment, if it meant risking everything? He searched her eyes for answers, but she looked through him with the indifference of an oracle, for whom the past and the present were one and the same.

Suddenly, they heard shouting from the courtyard. Sabina clutched her palla tightly around her shoulders in fright.

It sounded like the guards were training. He could make out Leonides' grunts.

"Don't worry. It's only the guards sparring. They do this every morning."

Then they heard the loud crash of, what sounded like, one of the large terra cotta urns. Antinous grabbed Sabina's hand and instructed her to crouch down and hide behind a large wooden chest.

"Wait here and don't come out until I tell you it's safe."

"Are we under siege?"

He didn't know. Hadrian was well liked in East. He'd poured much of the Empire's resources into the restoration of Athens. He was even more popular in Alexandria for a recent decree that extended human rights to the illegitimate children of soldiers.

He heard another crash.

Antinous ran out of the study and gripped the marble banister that looked down into the courtyard. Leonides and Brutus were fending off a group of assailants while another guard lay dead in a pool of blood with a dagger in his throat.

The men wore short black tunics, with linen wrapped around their heads concealing half their faces. Were these bandits? Was there truth to Tatius' silly tale?

Another assailant crept in through the mouth of the eastern passageway.

The guards were outnumbered. The others must have been protecting the Emperor. Antinous ran down the steps, hoping to create a distraction.

One of the men seemed to recognize him and uttered some ugly epitaph in a language he didn't recognize.

He thought this distraction might give Leonides and Brutus some time to gather their strength. Then two more strange men appeared beneath the pillared archway. Leonides grabbed the sword of the dead guard and tossed it to Antinous, who caught it by the grip and nearly fell over.

"What do I do?"

"Fight!"

"I can't!"

"Yes, you can!"

He tried to remember everything Leonides taught him, the steps, the swings, but in battle there was no time to think. He swung the sword clumsily from side to side slicing the air, which felt thick as honey. He was as weak as he was uncoordinated. How could Leonides entrust him with such a task?

The man continued yelling in his foreign tongue as he advanced. He recognized this phrase. Hadrian's general, Sextus, repeated it upon his return from Judea: One God. The man was speaking Hebrew. Antinous, who had never seen a battle outside of the gladiators' arena, had somehow found himself in the middle of a holy war.

The rebel lunged.

Antinous parried in a semi-circle and then raised his sword again. He did not hate this man, but he did love the gods. This was for Sabina's Cybele; his mother's Adonis; Hadrian's Zeus; Athena, Apollo, Artemis, Poseidon, Mars, Venus, Juno and countless others in the Roman Pantheon. The Empire, for all of its faults, welcomed all gods not just one.

In the fountain, Leonides had disarmed a rebel and wounded his leg so he could not rise. Brutus was flailing, back to the wall, pinned by two men ready to gut him from stem to sternum. Leonides ran over to help him. He leapt in the air and drove his sword, slick with blood, into one of the rebels' shoulders, before slicing the ear off another.

Antinous was somehow able to hold his own. His front leg gracefully passed his back leg in a lunge. Though, his hands were too shaky to land the wrath blow he was aiming for. Catching him off balance, the rebel took his chance. Antinous stepped left and right, defensively, to avoid the rebel's thrusts.

He could have sworn he caught Leonides grinning.

Hadrian appeared above the courtyard, clutching the banister while his men tried to pull him back.

"Where is Antinous! I must find him! I must make sure he is safe!"

Then he heard Remus yell, "Look! There's the fool! He's fighting!"

"WHAT!"

The rebels looked up at Hadrian and practically climbed over each other to get to him. Leonides and Brutus beat them to the steps. Antinous and two other guards quickly joined them.

"Hold the line!" he ordered. Antinous obeyed as though Leonides was their general. He held his sword out vertically, prepared to strike. When the rebels advanced, he yelled, "Charge!"

They stayed in formation and fought side by side. The sound of their blades clanking against those of the enemy rang out like a hundred deadly bells. When he'd successfully fend off one rebel, he would help a guard fend off another, and they did the same for him. He thought sex was closest two men could come, but he was wrong, battle drew men even closer.

Leonides was in a tight clash on the steps and it looked like he might lose his footing. Concerned, Antinous lowered his sword and soon felt a blade slide through his arm. Blood spurt and flowed down his wrist, making his hand wet and slippery. The pain was unbearable, and the blood made it next to impossible to hold the sword. He thought he was done for, when the rebel made a run for it up the steps and headed straight for the Emperor.

Before the guards could intervene, Commodus screamed and threw a cup of wine in the rebel's face. It was the most, unintentionally, brave thing he'd ever seen Commodus do.

The three guards surrounding Hadrian dealt with the threat with brutal swiftness, slicing open the rebel's throat so that blood sprayed everywhere. Now Remus screamed.

While this comic scene played out above, Leonides and Brutus took down the last of the rebels in the courtyard below. The men lay on the stone floor either moaning or dead. Leonides wiped the blood from his blade on the skirt of his tunic and slipped his sword back in the leather sheath on his hip. Antinous returned his sword to the side of the dead guard and pressed the man's eyelids shut.

He felt Leonides squeeze his shoulder and he reached back and discreetly touched his hand.

"You fought well, little one."

His chest swelled.

The battle seemed endless while it was happening and quick when it was over. Ignoring the ache of his wounded arm, Antinous helped bind the wrists of the surviving rebels. They would then be taken to a cell beneath the palace and questioned before being executed.

Antinous looked one of the rebels in the eye as if to say, "Why? Why would you do this? It's certain death."

He only smiled and despite being from different worlds they understood each other perfectly. Some causes were worth dying for.

🌿

Later that evening, in the firelight of Hadrian's study, Sabina and Orodes dressed the wounds on Antinous' arm, while Commodus went over the latest decrees from the state of Judea to find out what might have stirred the attack.

Hadrian paced by the fire. "Why here. Why now?"

"You're more vulnerable when you travel," Commodus said, grinding his teeth over the unfurled parchment. "They would not have dared try this in Rome."

"I thought we brought peace to the region?"

"We did. But who can know the heart of their enemy?"

Hadrian was distraught. "That's just it, I didn't think we were enemies."

"Caesar." Commodus consoled him. "All of Rome's conquered states are your children. You love them. As well you should. A ruler's love is the purest love known to man. But sometimes children rebel."

"I'm so glad I'm barren," Sabina whispered, tightening the dressing on his wound.

Antinous tried not to laugh.

The bandage around his arm bloomed red as blood seeped through the gauze. He would have to change the dressing every hour until it began to scab.

It was growing late, and they were all shaken by the day's events. Hadrian dismissed everyone in the study but Antinous.

He knew he was in trouble, but it must have been worse than he thought because Hadrian stared into the fire and couldn't bring himself to speak.

"What were you thinking," he said finally.

"We were under attack I only wanted to—"

"Do you have any idea how worried I was?"

"I fought well. I know how to wield a sword and—"

"Silence! You are not a soldier. Do you understand me? This isn't a game you play with your little wooden sword. You could have been killed!"

He flushed with humiliation. "I'm as good as any soldier."

He walked over to the divan where Antinous was cradling his arm. "Do you want to know what battle is like? I've seen things you can't imagine. Horrors I can't even begin to describe, they are so barbaric. The men who were lucky enough to live can scarcely survive the memory of it."

"Then why did you do it?"

"Don't be insolent. It was my duty."

"It's my duty too."

"I've spared you from that life. You don't yet have the wisdom to comprehend how I've saved you."

"Saved me! I live without honor. I can't call myself a man."

"War will not make you a man. It will turn you to dust and bone. You know what will make you a man? Philosophy, art, poetry—"

"That's the man you are!"

"—Hunting. Man's noblest pursuit. It requires the same skill as battle and one reaps all the glory—"

"The only reason you prefer hunting is because the animal can't fight back!"

Hadrian drew back his fist and hit him so hard, Antinous fell to the ground.

It took a moment before he returned to himself. The fire across the room was a blur as he rubbed his swollen jaw. Blood filled his mouth, more than that which flowed from the gash on his arm, and rather than spit it out, he swallowed it and contained the wound inside himself.

Hadrian's blue eyes were wide with terror. He no longer knew how to control Antinous and he looked at his bruised knuckles, shocked at the lengths he was willing to go to possess him.

The irony was that this blow was precisely what set Antinous free. He would meet with Leonides the following night, he decided.

He finally found the courage.

A/N: Next chapter will feature grapes and candlelight and... Leo and Antinous alone in a room on a makeshift bed...  👀

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