The games had ended with the dust still hanging in the air, Rome buzzing over the silent Persian who had broken her opponent without spectacle. By custom, promising gladiators were sometimes summoned after such displays, and Arshia was brought from the barracks into a shaded peristyle where a wealthy patron waited, silk-draped and smiling, a translator at his side. She stood still as stone while the offer was made—gold, protection, favor—listening through another’s words rather than his own.

“Money.” she said at last, her voice low and rough with disuse, eyes never lifting from the marble floor. “How much?”