𝑰

𝒘𝒉𝒆𝒓𝒆 ⠀⠀⠀ 𝒚𝒐𝒖 ⠀⠀⠀ 𝒄𝒂𝒏𝒏𝒐𝒕 ⠀⠀⠀ 𝒍𝒐𝒗𝒆 ⠀⠀⠀ — ⠀⠀⠀ 𝒑𝒂𝒔𝒔 ⠀⠀⠀ 𝒃𝒚

[love-hypothesis]

clarissa thinks there must be a name for men like him. not prince, not emperor’s son, not god, though rome keeps trying to carve divinity into the bones of cruel boys and pretend it has made something holy. no, there must be another word for a man who can stand above death and call it appetite. another word for a boy in purple who has mistaken the roar of a crowd for love. she feels the threat before she understands it. daughters. the word settles between them like a blade laid flat upon a table, not yet cutting and not yet lifted. only waiting for the hand that will choose where it falls. below, the sand drinks what rome gives it. cheers rise, bright and monstrous, and clarissa keeps her eyes on geta because she refuses to let him see her look away first. that would please him. she knows it would. he is the sort of spoiled creature who has been given everything except gentleness, and now he treats gentleness as something to conquer. [ in her mind she repeats : do not flinch. ] but her fingers tighten against the stone all the same. ❝ i was not hoping for anything from you. ❞ the lie is small, almost pretty. she lets it leave her mouth before it can become truth or prayer or whatever foolish thing lives inside the heart of a girl raised among soldiers. because perhaps, when she was younger and rome was still a city in stories, she had believed princes were made for better things. like mercy offered from a hand strong enough to spare. ❝ you are wrong if you think feeding the beast makes you its master. ❞ she looks back at him then, dark eyes steady, almost tender in their accusation. ❝ it only teaches it to expect your hand. ❞ her eyes search his face, and for a moment her composure turns cruel too. something born from being cornered and still refusing to kneel. ❝ i only wonder what will be left of you when rome is finished eating. ❞

[saintgods]

Geta does not answer her at once. For a moment, the arena is louder than thought. Rome screams beneath them, greedy and joyous, and the sound climbs the stone like heat. It reaches for him as it always does. For his hand, his smile, his permission. It wants to be fed, yes. It wants blood, yes. But more than that, it wants proof that he belongs to it. That the boy in purple will not look away from what his city has made of him. And then Clarissa speaks of what will be left. Something in him stills. Not softens. Never that. Softness is too dangerous a thing to wear in public. But the amusement leaves his face by degrees, stripped away beneath the dark attention of his stare. He studies her as though she has placed a dagger between his ribs and has not yet decided whether to twist it. ❝ You speak very boldly for someone standing on my balcony. ❞ His voice is quiet. That is the warning: Geta has never needed volume to be cruel; he was born into rooms where men leaned closer simply because he breathed. He turns toward her fully now, the purple at his shoulders stirring in the wind, gold catching against his throat like something sacred and rotten at once. Below them, another blade strikes, the crowd roars and Geta does not look down. ❝ Do you think that frightens me, Clarissa? Being eaten? Being emptied? Being made into something unrecognizable by the city that crowned me before I was old enough to refuse it? ❞ A smile returns then, but it is not the lazy thing from before. This is sharper, younger, and almost wounded. ❝ Rome has been eating me since I was a child. ❞ The confession is too honest, and he hates her for drawing it out of him. His hand closes around the balcony rail, rings biting into his fingers. There is a bruise-colored anger beneath his composure now, something restless, something that has less to do with empire than with the girl who stands before him unbowed. Acacius’s daughter. The general’s pride. A creature raised among soldiers and still foolish enough to believe truth is safer than silence. ❝ You think you are the first to notice the teeth? ❞ he asks. ❝ You think your father’s honor protected you from them? No. It only taught you to call the devouring by prettier names. Duty. Sacrifice. Rome. ❞

He steps closer. Not enough to frighten her, perhaps. Only enough to remind her that fear has never been required for danger to exist. ❝ But you are wrong about one thing. ❞ His gaze drops briefly to her hand tightened against the stone. He sees it. Of course he does. The smallest betrayal of her body, the fear she refuses to give him openly. It pleases him less than he expected. That irritates him. ❝ I do not mistake the crowd for love. ❞ The words come softer now, almost intimate beneath the arena’s thunder. ❝ Love does not sound like this. ❞ For one breath, his eyes hold hers too closely. There is something terrible in his expression, not tenderness exactly, but the shape of a thing that might have become tenderness if it had been raised anywhere but here. ❝ The crowd loves nothing. It consumes. It praises while the blade is falling and forgets before the body is cold. I know that better than you do. ❞ His smile thins. ❝ But it obeys. ❞ The word settles between them with all the weight of an empire. Geta leans nearer, his voice lowering until it belongs to her alone. ❝ And so will you, if you are wise. Not because I have threatened you. Not because Rome is watching. But because you understand now what your father has always understood. That survival is not given to the noble. It is given to those who learn which monsters may be fed, and which must be kept hungry. ❞ His eyes search her face, bright and unkind and something else beneath it, something he would sooner drag a knife across his own palm than name. ❝ So wonder if you like. Wonder what will be left of me. Wonder whether Rome will finish what it started. ❞ A pause. The arena gate opens again below them but Geta does not turn away from her. ❝ But do not pretend you are not curious enough to stay and see. ❞

[saintgods]

Jon Snow has learned that loyalty is easier when it does not have a face. A vow can be kept at a distance. A kingdom can be served like an idea. A war can be fought because there is no other choice. But Daenerys Targaryen stands at the painted table with ash at the hem of her cloak and every lord in the room watching for weakness, and loyalty becomes something warmer, something harder to name. It becomes silver hair beneath torchlight, a quiet voice over maps, the rare softness in her eyes when she looks at him not as King in the North, not as a threat, not as another man waiting to disappoint her, but as Jon. The lords have been arguing for nearly an hour. Strategy, sacrifice, provisions, what the queen must do, what the queen must give, what the queen must become if she wants Westeros to love her. Men with clean hands speaking boldly of costs they will not pay themselves. Jon watches her listen in silence, chin lifted, shoulders still, fingers resting beside the map as though she is not tired. But he knows her better than they do. He sees the tension in her jaw. The weight she refuses to bend beneath. The loneliness of a woman surrounded by men who kneel and still do not stand with her.

So he steps beside her.

Not before he — she would hate that. Daenerys does not need a shield between herself and the room. But beside her, close enough that his hand rests near Longclaw, close enough that the hall understands what he means before he says it. ❝ Your Grace. ❞ His voice cuts through the council, quiet but firm. The room stills by degrees. Jon keeps his eyes on the gathered lords, though he feels her turn toward him. ❝ If any man here means to question the queen’s courage, he can do it after he has stood where she has stood. After he has faced what she has faced. After he has offered more to this war than advice from a warm hall. ❞ A few men look away — good. Only then does Jon look at her. The anger in him changes when he does. It becomes gentler, more dangerous, a feeling that has been growing between friendship and devotion with every late council, every shared silence, every moment her hand has brushed his over a map and neither of them moved away quickly enough. ❝ You should not have had to stand alone in this, ❞ he says, softer now, meant for her more than the room. ❝ I am not asking you to be fearless. I know better than that. I am asking you to remember that you are not without friends. ❞ The word is too small. Too careful for what sits in his chest when she looks at him like this. But it is the only word honor allows him. Jon holds her gaze, steady as the North, gentle as he knows how to be. ❝ You have me, Dany. Whatever they whisper. Whatever crown, war, or prophecy tries to take from you. You have me. ❞ @love-hypothesis

[love-hypothesis]

all she thinks about is the sound of the arena before blood, before the doors open, before men become bodies & the crowd remembers how much it loves death. there are two sides of rome, her rome. one side is marble, gold, her father’s voice telling her to stand straight in the halls of men who would rather see her kneel. the other is sand. red sand. sand that sticks to sandals, to hems, to the palms of men dragged away before the emperor finishes smiling. clarissa follows the curve of the balcony with one hand against the stone. below her, the city roars. she can see the games beginning to gather themselves into something monstrous. banners snapping in the wind. guards moving like dark beetles along the walls. the lions restless behind their iron mouths, and her father’s soldiers, the few who still look at her like she belongs to something honorable, keep their eyes forward. she wonders if geta knows that is what frightens her most. not the blood, not the screaming, not even him. it is how easily honor can be made to bow. ❝ my father says the games are a mercy, ❞ she says, voice soft enough that only he might hear it beneath the crowd. ❝ he says rome must be given its spectacle or it will make one of us instead. ❞ her eyes lift to his. ❝ is that what you believe? ❞ below them, a gate shudders open. the crowd rises like a storm. clarissa does not look away from geta. ❝ or do you only enjoy watching men prove they would die for you? ❞ @saintgods

[saintgods]

Geta had been born above the arena. Not in truth, perhaps, but close enough that the distinction no longer mattered. He had been born into marble halls that trembled with the sound of Rome wanting. Wanting bread, wanting conquest, wanting blood, wanting a prince to lift his hand and tell them their hunger had a shape. He understood the crowd better than most men understood their mothers. Clarissa spoke of mercy as though it were a clean thing. As though mercy did not often arrive dressed in cruelty first. As though her father, with all his honor and all his practiced restraint, had never sent men to die beneath prettier banners than these. She was too composed. That was the first offense. The city thundered beneath them, lions snarled below, steel waited to be made useful, and still Acacius’s daughter stood beside him with her chin lifted as if she had not been fashioned in a world that devoured gentle things. There was something insolent in her steadiness, something expensive, something he wanted to ruin simply to see if she would remain beautiful afterward. A slow smile touched his mouth. “Your father says many noble things.” His gaze drifted at last toward the sand, where the gate yawned open and a man stepped out to meet whatever Rome had prepared for him. The crowd rose in waves. Geta watched them with the mild interest of a boy watching servants arrange his table. “Men like him build cages out of such words and call them virtues.” The prince leaned against the balcony, rings glinting on his fingers, purple cloth shifting at his shoulders. He did not need to raise his voice. “But yes,” he continued, almost lazily. “I believe Rome must be fed. It is a beast with a thousand mouths. Deny it spectacle, and it will turn its teeth upon palaces, temples, generals…” His eyes returned to her. “Daughters.” There it was, offered with the softness of a threat and the sweetness of concern. The roar swelled until the stone beneath them seemed to pulse with it. He let it fill the silence, let her feel what the city sounded like when it agreed with him. Then, with all the careless cruelty of someone who had never been denied anything for long, he tilted his head. “Does that disappoint you, Clarissa?” His voice softened around her name, making a possession of it without permission. “Were you hoping to find a better man beneath the purple?”

[hylialeia]

easy to forget but book jon snow is great actually. he gets so drunk he cries in his first chapter. he's 16 years old and laser focused on loan negotiation. he keeps getting promoted against his will. he's the chosen fantasy protagonist with the worst genre awareness ever. he implements pro immigration social reforms. he has a giant albino pet wolf. he cuts a guy's head off. he thinks he invented cunnilingus. he's been dead for 15 years.

[gloomglimmer]

say some nice things in the tags about the person you reblogged this from.

[propheices]

the light in rome was crueler than in alexandria, it didn’t shimmer, it struck. it clung to marble and iron, to the bronze of the eagles perched above the senate steps, to the polished armor of soldiers who did not look at her unless told to. even the air felt heavier here, as if the empire itself pressed down on her shoulders to remind her she was not free. clarissa stood where he had left her, in the peristyle garden of his palace, his, though she remembered when it had been her father’s word that commanded reverence. the fountain murmured behind her, a mockery of peace, its water catching the reflection of the setting sun and throwing it back in gold. she had forgotten what gold looked like in alexandria.

his voice broke the silence before she saw him, deep, unhurried, the kind that did not need to raise itself to command. ❝ you do not eat. ❞

she turned slowly, her fingers still wound in the silk of her stola, its roman weave foreign against her skin. emperor geta stood at the edge of the colonnade, half in shadow, the crimson of his cloak pooling around his boots like spilled wine. his eyes, when they found hers, were not cruel tonight . only searching. dangerous in a quieter way. ❝ i am not hungry, ❞ she said, steady, though her voice faltered at the end, and she hated herself for it. his footsteps followed, until he was directly in front of her. she wanted to flinch, to recoil from the warmth of his hand and the weight of his gaze, but she stood still instea. she had learned that stillness was its own kind of defiance, and it unsettled him more than tears ever could. ❝if you mean to frighten me, ❞ she whispered. ❝ it's not working. ❞ @saintemperor

[saintgods]

The question strikes him first, not the words, but the tone. It's not hungry, not afraid, and not pleading. Defiant. Always defiant. Geta stands beneath the marble colonnade, the light spilling in long, cold ribbons through the arches. Rome gleams around them, a monument to conquest and cruelty both. And yet, in the fading light, all he can see is her. The princess who will not bow. The girl whose silence weighs heavier than a legion’s roar. He studies her, eyes tracing the sharp line of her jaw, the quiet tremor of her breath, the way the foreign silk clings to her arms like chains. She looks like something carved from marble and moonlight, too proud to break, too beautiful to spare. ❝ Frighten you? ❞ he repeats, and there’s something like amusement ( soft and dangerous) curling at the edge of his voice. He steps closer until the shadow of his cloak swallows hers, the scent of iron and incense closing the space between them. ❝ If I wanted to frighten you, Clarissa, you’d know it. ❞ He pauses then, searching her face, and for a moment, the mask slips. The emperor fades, and the man beneath looks almost unsure. ❝ You think I don’t know what this place does to you, ❞ he says quietly. ❝ You think I don’t see how Rome devours the things it covets.❞ The fountain murmurs again behind her, a sound too soft for the sharpness in his tone. ❝ I could’ve left you there,❞ he continues, voice low, almost confessional. ❝ Let the siege finish what it began. But I didn’t. I took you from Alexandria because, ❞ He cuts himself short. The words catch on something he doesn’t name. Something raw. His gloved hand reaches out, hesitates, then settles lightly against her cheek, not in command, but in disbelief that she’s real, somehow alive. Still looking at him with that same fierce loathing that feels too much like worship turned inside out. ❝ You say you’re not hungry, ❞ he murmurs, thumb brushing her jaw, ❝ but I think you are. For a world that no longer exists. ❞ His gaze darkens. ❝ I destroyed that world, Clarissa. Do not ask me to give it back. ❞ He leans closer, the words softer now, dangerous in their quietness, lethal in their tone. ❝ But here, in my world, you will not starve. ❞

[saintgods]

The sky burned red before he even heard the first scream. Wings eclipsed the sun, black scales blotting out heaven itself, and for one suspended moment, the empire felt small beneath the shadow of something older than rome. Soldiers scattered, servants fled, but Geta stood rooted, every nerve raw, every thought narrowed to one name. Clarissa. [ The court called her empress. The people whispered goddess. but to him, she was neither : she was his. And in that heartbeat of terror, he knew with a clarity sharper than steel: he would tear down gods, dragons, whole kingdoms, before he let her be taken. ]

When the dragons descended, fire curling against stone, his men shouted for him to retreat. His brother’s voice rang, too, half-command, half-warning, but he could not move. Frozen, the image seared into his mind was her, fragile against the torrent, silks torn by the wind, eyes wide but unyielding. Defiance in her even as the world cracked open around them. ❝ Clarissa, get behind me! ❞ His voice ripped out of him, too raw, too human for an emperor. He shoved past guards who thought to shield him, their spears clattering uselessly to the ground. Rage surged in his veins, cold and absolute. At that moment, he did not care for rome’s throne, not in that instant, he cared only for the girl with terror in her lashes and fire painting her shadow. [ Let Lucien burn forests, let him scorch every marble column of rome. none of it mattered. What mattered was that Clarissa was his, and if flame dared lick her skin, if claw dared touch her, then dragons themselves would learn what it meant to provoke him. ] He caught sight of her in the chaos, running, stumbling, guards encircling her like a fragile jewel in a storm. And when the beasts roared, when their master stepped through smoke with hunger in his eyes, his lips curled into something more dangerous than fear. | @saintsplanet

[saintsplanet-old]

her lips part, then close again. what words could she give him? the court is still humming with the ghost of her scream, her blood still wet against her cheek. she feels every stare of the senators, the weight of their silence pressing into her skin. rome did not miss her. rome stole her. [ and she has not forgiven it. ] she forces her breath to steady, though her ribs ache with the tremor she cannot quite master. and in the silence, memory betrays her. the nile at dusk. her brothers’ laughter drifting over the river. the sound of her mother’s bracelets, gold chiming against gold. a now home, distant, untouchable. [ what has rome ever given her but iron chains dressed as jewels, cruelty softened into vows? ] her gaze lifts to him then, looking at geta. his face is still pale with shock, his hands trembling as if the act of holding her might erase the wound. but his eyes burn too bright, too fevered, too sure. horror, devotion, and something darker knotted into one. he has always been the empire’s child: forged in his father’s shadow, crowned in the ash of cities he cannot name, the senate’s scorn carved into his skin. he is rome. and she, somehow she was a fool to think she could stand before rome without breaking. her voice comes at last, soft and frayed but steady enough to carry. somewhere between his ragged shudders she can make out what he says, broken through tight lips. ❝ you cannot keep what you destroy. you — you could have killed me. ❞ the words fall heavy, bitter, tasting of defiance she barely feels. [ she knows he will twist even this into proof that she belongs to him, that her resistance is only another tether. ] her cheek burns where the blade kissed her. her heart burns worse, knowing he will ask her to bleed again. and when his arms close around her, desperate, unyielding, trembling with something too close to love : she does not know which terrifies her more: his cruelty, or his need.

[saintgods]

Geta’s hand still shakes where the dagger slipped, the blade’s memory etched into his palm as though it had struck him instead of her. Her blood glimmers faintly against her cheek, and it is the most terrible, the most holy thing he has ever seen. The court is watching. The senators murmur. He does not hear them. He only hears the echo of her scream, still shredding the silence between them. He leans closer, his breath sharp, ragged, his voice low enough that it belongs to her alone, though all of Rome aches to hear it. ❝ Do you think I do not know? ❞ His words shake with fury, with grief, with something that no emperor should allow in public. ❝ Do you think I do not know I almost lost you? ❞

His hand rises, trembling, hovers near the cut as though his fingers could mend it, as though his devotion were enough to knit her skin whole. But he stops short, afraid that even his touch might wound her further. ❝ I am not Rome, Clarissa, ❞ he breathes, though the tremor in his chest betrays him. ❝ I am not my father, nor my brother, nor the chains you curse. I am only this—❞ his voice cracks, shatters— ❝ a man who cannot breathe without you, a man who would rather tear the world to pieces than see you taken from him. ❞ The senators whisper again. He ignores them, every muscle drawn taut as a bow. His eyes search hers, desperate, burning. ❝ You cannot keep what you destroy, you say. Then know this, ❞ he leans in, fever-bright, his words broken between reverence and madness, ❝ I will destroy everything else before I destroy you. ❞ And when his arms close around her, trembling, too fierce, too desperate, it is not Rome that holds her, it is Geta, undone before the woman he nearly ruined, clinging as if she is the only thing left worth crowning, the only thing left worth surviving.

[saintgods]

Geta raises the sword because fury demands it, because her brother dares defy him, because the Senate watches and he cannot be made small in their eyes. (He is not a man built for softness. He was shaped in his father’s shadow, refined in the Senate’s scorn, crowned in the ash of cities he no longer names. He is Rome’s son, and Rome does not forgive.) The blade descends. And then, she is there. A sudden blur of white silk, hair loosed, eyes wide. The steel grazes her cheek before he can stop it, and blood beads bright as rubies against her skin. The sound that leaves her mouth is small, but it breaks the chamber into silence. Even the senators do not breathe. He staggers back as though struck himself, the sword heavy and useless in his hand, his heart stopping at the sight of her hand rising to her face, trembling, stained red. And in her eyes, not accusation, not hatred, but fear.

He cannot breathe. Clarissa. He is fragile, trembling, unbearably brave, standing between his wrath and her brother’s chains as if she could shield either of them from Rome. She did not run. She never runs. And that truth undoes him. The sword slips from his fingers, clattering to marble. He reaches for her too quickly, too desperately, but she flinches. That flinch cuts deeper than steel. For a moment, his mind shows him the vision he cannot bear: her body broken at his feet, her name whispered with horror, his own hands stained with her death. It sickens him. It exalts him. It binds him.

He cradles her now, blood on his fingers, his forehead pressed against her hair. His voice is low, ragged, dangerous. ❝ Never again. Never stand between me and the sword. If you do, I will raze your home to the ground. I will burn every memory you cling to until there is nothing left but me. ❞ His hand shakes against her cheek, trembling with something he does not know how to name. The court still stares, but he does not care. He is no longer Rome’s prince, no longer the heir, no longer the wolf of the Senate’s fears. He is only a man who nearly destroyed the one thing he cannot live without. And in the silence, as her blood streaks his palm, Geta knows he is already lost. Not to war, not to empire, not even to rage. Lost to her. @saintsplanet

[saintsplanet-old]

she does not dream anymore, not the way she used to. not of white lilies on the river, nor her mother’s bracelets singing soft music against her wrists, nor the cool shadows of the library where she used to trace the spines of every book like they were sacred things. those dreams died screaming. burned into ash and parchment, caught beneath the iron tread of roman war boots. they crumbled the night the soldiers came. [ all for rome. ] the name is a wound, not a word. a blade dulled with overuse, buried in the chest and left there. it echoes through her like thunder locked in a temple. he had entered her city like a storm wrapped in silk, not with the madness of caracalla, but the method of a man who already knew he had won. and when the siege ended, it was not her father’s hand that found her in the ruins (...) it was his. she remembers the way the firelight painted him that night. a god cut from blood and marble. he looked at her like she was already his. not a prisoner, not a prize. but a prophecy. and clarissa, stupid, shaking clarissa, looked back. and didn’t run. now, in the hollow quiet of a roman palace too far from home, she wonders if that was the true moment her home fell. ❝ you call this peace, ❞ she wrote to him, one ink-stained letter among many. her fingers ached. her voice trempled inside her chest like a caged bird. ❝ but i know what peace smells like. it is not sandalwood and iron. not blood-soaked marble. not gold on every door. ❞ she closes her eyes, and sees the creek by her father's home. sees her brothers. sees the temple where her mother used to sing. it's all just a memory now. ❝ peace is home. and you have burned mine. ❞ but the ink bleeds softer after that. as if the fury gives way to something else (...) something far worse. [ she does not tell him that she sleeps in his robe now. that she still hears the thud of his boots in her dreams. that his voice, low, commanding, cruel, has become the thing her mind clings to when she is trying not to scream. ] ❝ and yet, i write to you. i want you to come home. ❞ a confession. a surrender. her hand still trembles. but she presses on. ❝ i do not know if i hate you, or if you are all i have left to remember that i’m alive. ❞

@temperors

[saintgods]

He reads the letter once, and then again. Each word a blade, each pause a wound. They cut him not because they accuse, but because they still care enough to. (He is not a man built for softness.) He was made in the shape of an empire, forged under his father’s shadow, refined in the senate’s scorn, crowned in the ash of cities he cannot name anymore. Alexandria. He does not say it aloud, only remembers the smoke and the look in her eyes when she did not run. It's a quiet night, his chambers are silent, almost too silent, save for only the low sound of his armor being removed, the gentle rasp of leather straps, and her letter, folded once, then again, then again, as if closing it might still silence the tremor it left behind. He presses the edge of it to his lips. ❝ — you speak of peace as if it were ever yours to give. ❞ He says it aloud, but only to the marble walls. As if they would defy him the way she has. ❝ you want the scent of water and lilies, the song of your mother’s bracelets, your brothers laughing like war never touched their names. But clarissa — my clarissa — you write to ghosts, and you ask the ghost of a man to give you life. ❞

His hands curl, fist to forehead, as if the act alone might hold back the avalanche inside him. [ He can imagine her, donned in his robe, sitting by the fire as her delicate hands write. ] The image strikes him like lightning. She misses him. She dreams of him? She loathes the sound of his name, but writes it anyway. It makes him sure that she is still his, not by conquest but by something far more brutal: choice.

❝ peace, ❞ He writes back, ink biting into parchment, ❝ was never the goal. peace is a lie they taught us to keep us dreaming. i never promised peace, clarissa. i promised survival. and you — are surviving. as you always do. ❞ He pauses, then adds, ❝ you should have joined me here, the people would do well to see their empress, but instead you choose to hide behind silks. do no task me if i hate you when you avoid me. ❞ his signature is jagged, unfinished. a little like him now. and at the bottom, in handwriting no soldier has ever seen from him before : you do not have to forgive me, but i am already on my way.

[yushraq]

                     𝐎𝐍𝐂𝐄 𝐏𝐑𝐈𝐍𝐂𝐄𝐒𝐒 𝐅𝐎𝐑𝐓𝐔𝐍𝐀,      with honeyed eyes that narrow at his words,       whispers :       ❛    you wish to be adored,      yet you rule through fear.     ❜       the people on the streets strave but instead geta has adorned yet another circus for them to attend,      &      though he’s draped it in gilded promises for the greatness of rome,   for the sanctity of its empire  —   all fortuna could think is that he sounds foolish to sing his songs as she,   the hostage,   stands against the column.      ❛     you know the people bow to you out of fear.     not out of love.      ❜       —      &      as she turns away from him,      the faint scent of his wine stronger than his conviction,   fortuna curls her fingers       &      her mind ablaze at why he’d care for her opinion as if it mattered at all to him.            ❛      —   you’re a fool to think otherwise.   ❜       @goldengeta

[saintgods]

The years grow old — the feasts of his war come to fruit. A grape pressed to his lips, fingers squeezing the juice out of it as he laughs. He can remember years ago. She, the pharaoh's daughter, young and full of wonder when the Roman ships came to Alexandria. A night he doesn't forget, sent alongside his brother in a facade of diplomacy when their father had already made the decree days ago. She had worn red, bloody maroon that painted her soft features with a glow. Deadly. That night, Geta had told Caracalla they had seen a prophetess in the flesh. The prophetess that belonged in Rome. ❛     Why should I listen to the lectures of a hostage?  ❜    He dismissed her, throwing her a half smile before walking closer, stopping her before she could leave. ❛      I only waited conversation. Your company. Yet you wound me so. I who saved your life? Your cruelty knows no bounds my princess.  ❜