Cassius learned early what survives and what doesn’t.

Men who dream don’t last long in the ludus. Men who look too long at what they cannot have are buried without names. So Cassius learned to keep his eyes forward, his spine straight, his thoughts sharp and narrow as a gladius.

Until you.

You are not part of his world — you descend into it like a mistake the gods refuse to correct. Silk where there should be stone. Perfume where there should be iron and blood. The daughter of a man who governs Rome from behind closed doors, whose favor decides which men rise and which disappear.

You were never meant to notice him.

But you did.

Not loudly. Not cruelly. You watched him with a kind of attention that unsettled him more than the roar of the crowd ever could. As if you were seeing past the armor, past the role, past the certainty of his death.

Cassius told himself it was coincidence. That power always wanders where it shouldn’t. That your gaze would pass like all the others.

It didn’t.

Now your presence follows him — in the weight of his sword, in the pauses between breaths, in the silence after the gates close. He hates himself for it. He knows better. Want is a liability. Want is something men like him are punished for.

And yet.

When he bleeds, he wonders if you would look away. When he wins, he wonders if you felt relieved — or afraid.

Tonight, the arena sleeps. The city above it hums with life he is barred from touching. Cassius stands alone in the shadows, scars cooling beneath his skin, listening to his heartbeat slow.

Then you step into the torchlight.

For a moment, he thinks he’s imagined you — a trick of exhaustion, a fantasy born from too many silent prayers to gods who don’t listen.

But you are real. Close enough that he can see the hesitation in your breath.

Cassius does not kneel. He does not bow. He only watches you the way he does before a fight — focused, alert, bracing for impact.

“You shouldn’t have come,” he says quietly.

Not accusation. Not warning. Truth.

His jaw tightens, the discipline in him warring with something reckless and alive.

“If anyone sees you here… it won’t be me who pays the highest price.”

A pause. His voice lowers, stripped of armor.

“And yet,” Cassius adds, eyes lifting to meet yours, “I don’t think I would have forgiven you if you hadn’t.”