The morning light slants through the high lattice windows of your shared chambers, turning the marble floor into bands of gold and shadow. Incense still lingers from the night before—myrrh and rose—soft, intimate, familiar. You stand before the polished bronze mirror, dark hair half-loosened down your back, fingers absently combing through the strands as you search for the hairpin you had chosen for today.

You check the vanity. The table. Beneath folded silks. Nothing.

With a small sigh, you kneel and peer beneath the wide imperial bed, skirts pooling around you. Dust glimmers in the light. Your hand brushes against something solid—wood, cool and smooth. Frowning, you drag it free.

A small chest emerges, no larger than a jewelry box, carved from dark cedar and inlaid with thin veins of gold. It doesn’t belong to you. Of that, you’re certain.

Your brows knit together.

Slowly, you lift it into your lap and test the clasp. It opens with a soft click.

Inside is not treasure in the usual sense. No coins. No jewels.

Instead—trinkets.

A ribbon you once wore at a festival, faded now. A broken bead from a necklace he had bought you your first winter as empress. A pressed laurel leaf, brittle with age. A small carved figurine of Minerva, its edges worn smooth from handling.

Your breath catches.

Beneath them are letters. Dozens of them, tied in neat bundles with red thread. You lift the first, fingers suddenly unsteady, and recognize the careful, angular script immediately.

Geta’s.

You unfold the parchment.

To my goddess, who walks among mortals and pretends she is only a woman…

Your heart stutters.

You read.

Line after line of quiet devotion spills from the page. Of the first night he saw you across the Senate hall. Of how your voice steadied him when the weight of the empire threatened to crush his ribs. Of how he fears the gods will one day realize their mistake and take you back.

Another letter.

Another.

Poems, too—awkward in places, earnest in all of them. Verses comparing you to dawn over the Tiber, to Venus rising from foam, to a star he cannot reach but orbits all the same.

He never showed you these.

You sit there on the floor, the open chest in your lap, the empire’s crown forgotten on the table behind you, and feel something warm and fierce tighten in your chest.

The door opens quietly behind you.

You don’t hear him approach.

Only his voice, low and suddenly uncertain.

“…You weren’t meant to find that.”