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The boy shot Teigra a disgusted glare, before receiving the nod from his father. “Fine.”
As they weaved through the mourners, Domenin rattled on half-heartedly about the history of the temple—of the meaning of the dome and of the lore of the Five High Gods and their myriad offspring of lesser deities that made up the divine and extended family that was the Galaxians.
At each step, he sought to increase his distance, pushing into those sections of the crowd far from the powerful and the proper.
He can’t even bear to be seen with me. Even now, three years on.
As Teigra face burned hot with shame and the sharp spikes of memory, she searched the crowd for the one person who might be able to release her from this torture.
For Evdonia’s sake, Aurelius! Where are you?
3
AURELIUS
Every eye in the temple fell on him, sweeping in amongst the funeral dirges to Telos Rina, God of Death. As he moved through the nobodies at the back of the crowd, past the plebeian scum and mercator wannabes, he could almost taste their condemnation.
Arriving late to his own aunt’s funeral!
And what is he wearing? A golden cloak and tunic? Where is his toga?
Well, what do you expect? Everyone knows what sort of man he is.
A man? More like a beast. No better than the uncivilized hordes that did away with poor Ura.
Aurelius let the hate wash over him—giving him energy, giving him life. He knew they’d be talking about him anyway.
At least this way they’d be talking on his terms.
He cut through the masses until he found poor Teigra, having her ears chewed off by the Viturin boy. He was a nasty sort, whose charm was as thin as his limbs.
But still, he was not without his uses.
Teigra caught Aurelius’s eyes through the crowd and started stroking her proud locks of auburn hair, running in a thick braid over her shoulder, the twists barely containing the curling desire within each strand. It was the sort of vibrant, healthy mass that the other girls must surely envy.
On seeing their code, he swooped in and kissed her on both cheeks. “Tiggy, darling, so lovely to see you. Do you mind if I borrow the good patrician for a moment?”
Teigra’s face twisted into a disappointed expression before she melted gratefully back among the mourners.
“Goddess save me, Savair,” said Domenin, once she had departed. “How many people saw me with that freak? After what she did? It will take weeks to wash out the stink of her residual scandal. And her mother? She must be the most colossal bore in the city. I don’t know how you handle them.”
“Come, Viturin. Surely no one could be bored in your presence.”
He puffed his bony chest out. “I wouldn’t have thought so.”
Those at the back of the crowd, too distant from power to understand anything of worth, might have wondered why the young senator was speaking to him. After all, Aurelius was a known pervert. An affront to the goddess of reason! And Domenin was a rising power. A future censor of the senate if he rolled his dice right.
But what they didn’t understand, but those who mattered most certainly did, was that Aurelius derived his power through other means. Even as he chatted away, moving forward into the better part of the crowd, half-a-dozen other young patricians circled in his near vicinity, all awaiting their own turn to talk.
The reason for his allure was simple: Aurelius made it his business to know things. And better still, he made it his business to ensure that everyone knew that he knew things.
Through careful planning, he had turned this into a self-fulfilling cycle—an ouroboros of gossip. Being seen at his side made one’s rivals nervous of what naughty little secrets he was passing on. Nervous enough to share some gossip of their own.
And what scandals he couldn’t learn of, he’d found pleasurable ways to create for himself.
And yet, despite all he had done to claw his way back from the shit heap of irrelevance, it still wasn’t enough. This impression of power he had built for himself wasn’t enough.
The barely worn toga in his bedroom bore two hollow stripes along its edge—indicating someone from a patrician family, but not themselves a senator.
