"Step into the light."

Antinous stepped forward and dropped to one knee.

"You needn't do that when we are alone."

He rose. His eyes adjusted to the dimness and the room came into view. It was not as lavish as one might expect of the Emperor's bedchamber. The furnishings were austere but there were objects and artefacts from his travels that Antinous was not yet cultured enough to be impressed by: a Canopic jar from Egypt used during the mummification process with a human heart inside; an Anaximander map, the first known map of the world; a clay tablet inscribed with Persian cuneiform the words of Achaemenid kings. He touched the bust of Greek leader Pericles, a treasure rescued from the bottom of the Aegean, pocked with algae.

The Emperor closed the door behind him, his purple toga sliding across the floor with a hiss. In the field where they met, Antinous could hide in the grass like a rabbit and run away just as fast. Here there was nothing to do but walk around in circles.

"I brought you a gift from Smyrna."

"A gift?" Antinous peered shyly from behind the bust. He liked gifts.

Hadrian reached for an object wrapped in silk. Antinous saw a flash of silver and became excited for a moment because he thought it was a sword or a dagger. It was neither. It was a silver hand mirror with a Gorgon etched onto the back.

Hadrian placed the mirror in his hands and stood behind him. Antinous thanked him for the gift but did not look at his own reflection.

"What's wrong?" Hadrian guided the mirror in front of him. "Does the gift not please you?"

Antinous hated to appear ungrateful and explained. "My mother removed all of the mirrors in our home when I was born. The oracle said my face angered the gods. I am cursed."

He'd never said that aloud to anyone before. But Hadrian wasn't just anyone. He placed Antinous on that ship to Rome eight months ago and changed the course of his life forever. Their destinies were entwined.

Then, shockingly, Hadrian fell to his knees. He took Antinous' hand and kissed it. "You are more beautiful than Adonis himself."

"Blasphemy! Aphrodite will come and strike you down," Antinous whispered. "Adonis is her beloved."

"Let her. You're my beloved."

Romans truly had no sense.

His large hands wrapped around Antinous' wrists, weak as saplings in his grip, and urged him to continue.

"There was a terrible storm the eve of my birth. The oracle told my mother that the gods demanded a human sacrifice. She refused but my father lost his crops to the flood and tried to smother me in my cradle. I was too little to remember it, though sometimes when I'm frightened I can still feel his hand covering my mouth and nose."

Hadrian became gravely serious. "Human sacrifice is a barbaric practice that I have outlawed. That should never have happened to you. I won't let anything like that happen to you ever again."

His fingers released Antinous' wrist and wandered up his tunic. The boy stepped back. Hadrian wasn't angry. As Antinous would soon come to learn, he never appeared angry. His blue eyes were placid as lake water.

He put his hands out before him in a steadying gesture as though he were trying to break a horse. "There, there, I'm not going to harm you."

"I know that." He didn't understand what was wrong with him. He liked the Emperor and wanted to please him but his body rejected the notion.

Hadrian reached out and tried again. He tensed but did not step away. The Emperor's chest was broad and his embrace was warm. He held him close and knotted his fingers in the boy's curls. Antinous' head barely came up to the man's chin.

"Sweet little warrior. Don't fight me."

He glanced over at the bed. It had been prepared for two with embroidered cushions and twin footstools. Matching goblets sat on the bedside table next to a phial of oil. He only vaguely understood its purpose. His knowledge of the act came from the images on painted pottery and the crude jokes of his classmates.

Remus would die to be here, he thought to himself, Commodus would kill for it, there wasn't a guest at that banquet who would not take his place, so, Antinous reasoned, he must have wanted this too.

You don't know what you want, Leonides' voice echoed in his head.

The Emperor led him to his bedside. There was a large boar's pelt atop the blanket. Antinous ran his fingers through the brittle hairs. It looked like the creature's chest was rising and falling but it was just a trick of the light.

"I killed the sow myself with a spear when she charged at me from ten paces."

He had an illustrious military career with territorial gains in Mesopotamia during Trajan's rule, and fought on the Dacian front. But unlike his predecessors, the Emperor avoided war and withdrew where he could. When peace was not an option he had generals to command his battles and soldiers to fight them. Hunting fulfilled the bloodlust that occupied him in his youth.

Hadrian loosened the folds of his toga, exposing the hard lines of his chest in the candlelight.

Once again Antinous' nerves got the best of him. He crossed his arms.

"You're modest. I like that. You know, you almost remind me of Lucius."

"Commodus?" The noble was as modest as a peacock.

"He was when he was your age, believe it or not. I courted him during his eleventh year and he could scarcely look me in the eye without blushing."

"You Patricians do turn the oddest shade of pink," Antinous noted.

He threw his head back and laughed. "I had him presented to me in my bedchamber after an afternoon at the baths. Even then he was mad for flowers and jumped in my fountain to splash among the lily pads. He stood where you're standing right now, dripping wet with a blanket around his shoulders, and do you know what he said?"

Antinous dropped his arms. "What?"

"He said he was frightened."

"He said that?!"

Hadrian came closer and put a hand on Antinous' shoulder. "He was not so brave as you."

Antinous looked at his sandals.

The Emperor bent down and kissed him on the cheek. His beard tickled. Then he lifted the boy's chin and kissed him on the mouth. It scratched. Antinous ducked his head.

"I thought you were brave?"

"I am. I—I don't know."

"Don't you want to become a Roman soldier? Don't you want to join the legionaries?"

"More than anything," he answered fiercely.

"Become my eromenos and you can become anyone in this world."

Eromenos, the Greek word for the boy a man takes as his lover. It was the highest form of love in his culture, more sacred than the love between a husband and wife. He had been courted by every man in Nikomedia when he came into season. He could scarcely enter the baths without receiving another offer. He was always destined to be a great lover. Was it not fitting then that his erastes was the greatest man in the Empire, the Emperor himself?

He did not know how to signal his willingness. His mind understood the acts he was expected to perform but he had never actually performed them. He took the Emperor's hand, twice the size of his, and hoped he understood his intentions.

Hadrian seized him by the waist overcome with longing. He felt the Emperor's excitement build beneath the folds of his toga. He breathed in his ear and his beard itched madly against Antinous' neck but he suppressed his urge to scratch and struggle.

He was carried to the bed, where Hadrian turned him around, limp as a doll in his arms. Antinous bent over and lifted his tunic to consummate their sacred lust. It will be over faster this way, he thought, squeezing his eyes shut. But Hadrian wanted him slowly. He wanted to caress every inch of his bronze flesh he whispered, more drunk on Antinous' beauty than he had been on fine wine.

He was so eager, the Emperor tried to tear the tunic right off his back. Then he attempted to lift it over his head, but the sash around his waist was too tight.

Hadrian tugged roughly at the sash, cooing feverishly his ear. "My brave warrior. My Greek beauty. My sun and stars, my earth and sea..."

A small scroll of parchment tumbled to the floor.

Antinous froze.

His poem.

Perplexed, the Emperor caught his breath and picked up the piece of parchment. He unrolled it and began to read aloud.

"Don't!"

"...come with songs to celebrate the warrior Leo of the golden hair, who over the peak of Caelian Hill, comes to the Tiber River as he leaves for Judea."

He glanced up at Antinous. "Who is Leo?"

His eyes were the same placid blue, calm and unchanged. He wasn't angry. Antinous could simply tell him the truth, that his friend had joined the Roman army and he wrote him a poem to be remembered by. He was about to explain when something inside told him to lie.

"The lion at the Flavian who fights the gladiators. He killed the Crupellarius and I wrote a poem about him."

"You wrote of a lion sailing to Judea?"

"I imagined him as a great hero defending Rome against her enemies."

He smiled and shook his head. "Such an imagination!" The Emperor went to his desk and placed the poem inside an ivory box, which contained all of Antinous' letters. He'd kept them and he would keep the poem too. "I shall cherish it always, eromenos."

Hadrian reached around to the clasp that fastened his toga and released it with the snap of his fingers.

Antinous averted his eyes, and lifted his tunic over his head. Though he could not look at the Emperor he could hear the man's breathing quicken.

An eromenos is a great prize for the erastes who wins his affection. Antinous always knew he would be won. Though, no one ever thought to ask an eromenos: who was his prize?

He lay down on the bed and Hadrian climbed on top of him. His long dark lashes swept across the apples of his cheeks as he blinked up at his lover. He was not frightened. It was not like the time his father covered his mouth and nose in his cradle. It felt like being in the temple. His skin was cold as the marble gods he prayed to.

🌿

He awoke in the night with pain. It won't always hurt, Hadrian had murmured lazily in the aftermath of their lovemaking stroking circles on the small of his back. Always. The candle had nearly burned down to the wick but he could still see. The slaves had brought a basin of water while they slept, or perhaps they'd entered the room while Hadrian was having him a second time and he didn't notice. This embarrassed him. He was seized by the urge to clean himself and went to the basin. There wasn't much blood, Hadrian had been careful, but a drop was enough to turn the clear water to rose. He dried himself and glanced up at the window, which overlooked the peristyle. They would likely take their breakfast there in the morning. Its white columns looked like the iron bars of a cage in the darkness.

He somehow knew he would never go back to school. It seemed impossible that earlier that day he had been in his Latin lesson watching Leonides cross the courtyard. That was a lifetime ago.

Hadrian stirred but did not wake. He was a heavy sleeper, the flesh of his wide back rising and falling with the boar's pelt.

Antinous went to the ivory box where Hadrian had placed his poem. He wished Leonides had read it. He would have given all the world to see the smile on his face. It would remind him of Antinous' soft voice as he played the lyre in his bedchamber. The box was locked, his voice trapped inside.

Instead, he turned to the mirror, his gift from the Emperor. He did what his mother had always forbid him from doing and stared at his reflection. Though a beautiful face stared back at him, it filled him with melancholy. He thought of young Commodus, a year younger than he, dripping wet from the baths, frightened. He wondered what might have become of Remus had he and Hadrian never met in Claudiopolis. Lastly, he thought of Orodes, beautiful but forever marred. Antinous smoothed a hand over his cheek.

Suddenly he realized how Orodes got his scar.

He did it to himself.

A/N: Why did Orodes give himself the scar?

This chapter was a balancing act. What Antinous experienced was socially accepted at the time but likely traumatic. 

The next chapter will dive deeper into H & A's relationship and there will finally be a time jump. Antinous will be sweet seventeen. 

Do you think living at court as Hadrian's beloved will change Antinous the way it changed Commodus?  

Like the chapter mentions, an eromenos is an adolescent boy who is in an erotic relationship with a man, known as the erastes. Here's the pottery that Antinous refers to—one of the less graphic images of an erastes and his eromenos.

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