Archive of Our Own ^beta

Titus was in the war room when Varro made his demands, though it wasn’t like that made much of a difference when Varro never even bothered to address him directly as he laid out the conditions for his army’s support. None of it made any difference at all, really, since the ambassador for the Aquillian Empire had them all backed thoroughly into a corner, and everyone in the room knew it. Proculus and his bands of raiders would carve the Licinians to pieces, starting with the outflung worlds of Eporedia and Alpes Graiae and moving core-ward from there, taking untold lives and committing untold cruelties along the way — unless the Aquillian Empire was willing to support them, support they would have to buy with Titus’s life. The rest of the terms would have been disgraceful enough on their own: regular tribute, taxes almost twice as high on outbound trade than inbound, six full companies of pilots and gunners levied from their worlds to serve in the Aquillian emperor’s militia under Varro’s own command once the war with Proculus was over. And then Varro had paused, with one of his snake-wide smiles, and added with obvious relish, “And the second prince of the Licinians, married into the house of the commander of the Aquillian forces, as a sign of the Licinian Federation’s true contrition for their recent attacks on the Aquillian worlds of Dubris and Anderida.” Tiberia had almost protested there and then; Titus had seen her mouth open and had kicked her viciously into silence.

Their father had ended the meeting without making a promise either way. That didn’t matter either; they all knew there was no bargaining to be done. The Licinian Federation would wither and die without the Aquillians’ help; Varro knew it and Claudius Licinius Agrippa knew it too. There was no answer Claudius could give other than complete acceptance, and he’d likely think he’d gotten off easily with only terms that would affect his people and his children.

“I know you think you’re being noble,” Tiberia bit out, late that night, as they hunched over the holo-sim table in her quarters, “but Titus, please, you should run. For my sake, for the Federation’s sake, if not your own. You know Varro wants to control me by threatening you, and, gods above and below, he’ll have what he wants if you go through with this. I won’t be able to refuse him anything if he threatens to harm you. Surely you want better for us all than to leave me as his puppet when I take the throne?”

“Then you’ll just have to learn to refuse him,” Titus snapped back, “whatever he does to me. You know he’s petty enough to refuse his fleet’s aid if his terms aren’t met. All we can do is deny him anything he doesn’t claim outright. If he demands me, very well, he can have me. You’re the one who decides if he’ll have you as well, and I’m telling you you can’t.”

“You’re marrying in,” Tiberia said harshly, but Titus could already hear the anger in her voice beginning to melt into helpless grief. “Titus, you’re marrying in. Everyone knows the only difference between a client spouse and a concubine is that you weren’t born into the collar. If he threatens to have you stripped in front of all our armies put together and whip you until you bleed, I can’t stop him. If you think there’s anything I wouldn’t give to spare you that, you don’t know me at all.”

“And if you think he won’t do exactly what he wants with me anyway, you’re a fool,” Titus snapped back. “He’s wanted me broken under his boot since the day I met him. Nothing you give him will keep him from doing all that and more with me, because he can always threaten worse.”

“Titus.” In Tiberia’s voice, it was a plea. Titus clenched his teeth and refused to let it break through the shell of indifference he’d managed to wear since that afternoon in the war room.

“You have to let me go,” he only said. His own voice sounded strange and faraway to his own ears, but whatever tone was in it made Tiberia look like she’d been stabbed. “Tiberia. Let me go. I’m nothing to you now.”

“Never,” Tiberia choked out, a sudden fire in her eyes. “I won’t let him have me. I swear it. But don’t ask me to forget you, or to forget what you are to me. I'd sooner forget how to fly.”

There was very little Titus could say to that. He fell into Tiberia’s arms, and they shuddered against each other, wracked by something deeper than grief as the dark closed in around them.

Claudius accepted Varro’s terms the next morning. They drew up the betrothal contract that afternoon, in a stiff, stilted meeting that Titus was only permitted to watch from the hall outside, where the soundproofed windows did nothing to hide the way Varro shot occasional leering glances his way while everyone else pretended not to see. Titus kept his eyes on the scuffed tiles under his boots and bit the inside of his cheek raw while his father signed his life away, and ignored all the stares aimed his way, both the pitying and the mocking ones. At least they’d been given the concession that the marriage itself wouldn’t be performed until the Aquillian fleet arrived, which bought Titus maybe three scant months of freedom to settle his affairs.

“Three months to learn some respect for your lord husband,” Varro murmured in his ear as they were leaving the station for the docks, and his smirk as Titus flinched away was all teeth. They’d met at a riding party in the northern Eporedia mountains, when Titus had broken Varro’s crop over his knee for lashing his cat so viciously it nearly clawed down three others in its pain and madness, and the Aquillian ambassador had never forgiven what he’d seen as unpardonable insolence from the second prince of the Licinian Federation. Titus had never thought he’d find himself in a position where Varro could really make him pay for it, but now he was only three months away from the beginning of an entire lifetime of torment and humiliation. He tried to remind himself that it was for the good of both their peoples that he suffer it, and it helped, but only a little.

It was some small relief that Varro announced he intended to leave at once to inform his emperor of their agreement and muster the Aquillian fleet to their aid. Of course, he also managed to corner Titus before he went, under the guise of better acquainting himself with his betrothed, and really to tell Titus in exacting detail what he meant to do with Titus on their wedding night. It was harder than usual to put on a good face for Tiberia that evening, over their nightly game of chess, and he woke more than once in the night with his breath caught in his throat in a soundless scream, feeling phantom hands pinning him down and choking the life from him. That had been bad enough, but the night before Varro actually meant to depart, Titus came back from the hangers to find an errand boy waiting for him in his quarters with an urgent summons to the war room. When he arrived, he found Varro waiting for him, with Claudius and one of the camp medics flanking him. Titus didn’t even need Varro’s viciously triumphant smirk to tell him he was about to hate whatever came next.

“As the patron spouse, I’d like to claim my right to be certain of my betrothed’s purity in my absence,” Varro said, with a false courtesy that made Titus’s blood boil before he even understood what the ambassador meant. Then he saw the little silver object Varro was holding out to him, and it took every inch of his reserves of strength to keep himself from striking the man then and there.

“No,” he said, and counted it a mercy he didn’t shout. Varro only raised an eyebrow.

“I’m not asking, Your Highness.”

Titus took a steadying breath, jaw so tight it was a wonder his teeth didn’t shatter. It was, technically, Varro’s right to demand it of him, and his father wouldn’t even meet his eyes, let alone argue on his behalf. “Very well,” he bit out, and held out his hand for the cage. Varro drew it back, though, his smile gaining fangs.

“Here and now. I’ll be sure of you before I leave.” Titus’s hand dropped, feeling his entire face heat as though branded.

“No.”

“As amusing as it is to see Your Highness play at defiance, I won’t stand for a disobedient spouse. You’ll do it now.”

“Like hell —”

“Titus.” Claudius’s voice, quiet but stern, drew him up short. “You disgrace your house by disrespecting your husband.”

Distantly, Titus knew that every sign of his fury and humiliation was exactly what Varro wanted from him, but he was sure his helpless outrage was painted across his face in letters a mile high anyway. It was several long moments before he could control himself enough to incline his head in his father’s direction, and when he held his hand out again he could see the fingers tremble. “As His Majesty commands,” he managed to say, and Varro smiled at him with a horrible light of pleasure in his eyes as he dropped the little metal thing into Titus’s outstretched palm.

When it was done, when he’d laced his flight trousers back up over the horrible reminder of his situation, and the little silver key-disc had been duly handed over to Varro, Titus fled to his own bunk and screamed himself hoarse into his pillow.

Varro was gone for a month. He sent letters, one a week, with the message-runners that passed official communications through the jump gate — real letters, not transmissions, written by hand on what Titus could tell was real, core-quality parchment, each with promises darker than the last, to the point that Titus burned the last one without even breaking the seal. He’d thought he knew what he was giving himself over to, but Varro was… inventive. Even the few letters that Titus did read filled his imagination with an endless stream of horrors to look forward to. Of course he knew the anticipation was as much a part of it as the actual cruelty Varro intended to mete out, and that he was only playing into the ambassador’s hands by letting the threats occupy so much of his mind, but he couldn’t seem to dismiss the scathingly vulgar phrases from his mind, no matter how ragged he ran himself trying to drive them out of his head — and every day, when he dressed, when he bathed, when he relieved himself, when he so much as sat wrong in the cockpit of his wing, there was the reminder of Varro’s control over him, as bad as a groping hand between his legs. Only a month, and he already felt himself beginning to break apart under the strain.

Then the letters stopped.

At first it was a relief. Then, after another month had passed without word from Varro, relief gave way to a new sort of dread. Silence on Varro’s part could only mean some worse game, and when he returned — when he returned with the promised warships, when he claimed Titus as his own in every respect, every defense and every protection stripped away — Titus couldn’t think of it without shuddering. He was sleeping less and less each night, waking in a cold sweat and trembling head to foot with nightmares, and he knew Tiberia could see it, knew it was gutting both of them before the marriage was even sealed, but it was all he could do to keep himself going through the work of each day. There was nothing left beyond that for him to pretend at being unaffected.

He dreamed, one night, that he was running through the halls of the old palace, many worlds away in the capital. They were dead silent, utterly deserted, even the emergency beacons dead and lifeless in their wall sconces, and out of the darkness he could hear Varro’s low voice whispering just too quietly to be distinct over the sound of his own breath as he gasped for air. If he could just get to his own rooms — he knew, he knew Varro was just behind him, that he was about to catch him, and every step felt as slow as though he was swimming through mud. Somehow he hurled himself over the threshold of his old rooms and slammed the door behind him, pressed trembling against it as a foreign terror clawed deep inside his chest, consuming as only a dream can be. Then the shadows in the farthest corner of the room stirred and unfurled, and Titus woke with a scream rising in his throat as Varro stalked out of the darkness with a smile like the blade of the long knife bared in his hand.

He couldn’t bring himself to try to sleep again that night. All he could see when he closed his eyes was that horrible smile, and the dreadful light in Varro’s eyes when he’d promised to make Titus beg for his touch. He lit every lamp and beacon in his quarters and sat on the edge of the cot, gripping it so tightly that the light synthetic frame began to creak alarmingly, until the claxons for the dawn change-of-watch began to sound through the camp.

He must have looked particularly dreadful, because Tiberia took one look at him, and her face crumpled. “Tea,” she said, gruffly, and dragged Titus off to the mess hall to force half a pot of tea and two bowls of porridge down his throat, deaf to Titus’s reassurances that he was fine, he was fine, there was nothing to be concerned about —

“I’ve been called away to take a squadron of wing to the southern frontier,” Tiberia said quietly, when Titus had finally choked down enough of the horribly bland rations to satisfy her. “Only for a week, but I’ll be out of all but emergency comms range for most of it. I tried to argue for less, but Father insisted. You’ll — you’ll be all right? It’ll only be a week, I swear on my life.”

“Of course,” Titus lied. He wasn’t sure how convincing his smile was, but it wasn’t like it mattered. Neither of them could refuse an order from the king, and Tiberia would do her duty no matter what might happen to Titus in his absence. “We aren’t expecting — we aren’t expecting the Aquillian reinforcements for another two weeks, regardless. Don’t worry about me.” He found he couldn’t bring himself to say Varro’s name, and thought a little bitterly that it was at least good practice for when he wouldn’t even be allowed to say it if he wanted to. If he was lucky, it would be lord husband. He had the growing suspicion Varro would insist on master.

Tiberia didn’t look entirely as though she believed a word of it; in fact, she looked as though she intended to worry the entire time she was gone — but in the end she left to gather her pilots and gunners, and Titus left to pace the blue-oak woods below the camp, full of restless energy despite the sleepless night. Command of his own squadron of wing had been transferred to one of his lieutenants a week ago, leaving Titus mostly at loose ends. If it had been a proper marriage, he’d have been doing his best to learn the workings of his spouse’s estates, but as it was, there was no point trying.

He’d never really expected to be married out of his own house, either. As second prince of the Licinians, he had always taken it for granted that anyone less than the heir of another major system would marry into the Licinian royal house, and insofar as Titus had ever thought about preparing to be a good husband, he’d thought of it in terms of showing courtesy and respect to a client spouse from a noble family within the Federation’s borders. But — better he take the humiliation of kneeling to the Aquillian ambassador than see the Federation, and all the systems beyond it, fall to Proculus’s raiders. Better he let Varro take what price he would for Titus’s long-ago insult, if it meant that they would have Aquillian warships with their long-range rail-cannon and heavy compound shielding to help defend their borders.

But oh, gods of light, if only the price were not so high —

It was nearly sunset when Titus dragged himself back to the camp, and almost at once it was obvious that something was different. The camp was humming with a strange tension, and as he made his way farther up the slope and out of the tree cover, he could almost feel the odd anticipation in the air. Then, as he crested the low roll of the ridge dividing the makeshift staging camp in half, he saw the new ships docked in their bays, and it all clicked at once.

The Aquillian fleet had come.

He didn’t go immediately to the war room. Let Varro summon him if he wanted him, as he surely would — and as Titus had expected, he’d only been in his own rooms for a quarter of an hour before an out-of-breath message-runner appeared at his door, telling him he’d been summoned at the king’s command. Titus thought he might be sick at the thought of Varro’s presence, at the thought of how quickly their wedding would come now that the promised troops had arrived, and then hated himself for his weakness. He made himself step into the war room with his head held high and no sign of weakness in his step. Varro was not his husband yet, even if Titus only had a few more days before he was lost entirely to the ambassador’s claws, and Titus would not give him the satisfaction of letting his fear show. It was a shockingly well-constructed bravado, considering just how wretched Titus had been for the past two months, which was why it almost felt like a shame when he stepped inside the room to find a stranger instead of Varro, a young man dressed in the heavy plate and woven-steel mesh of the Aquillian gunners who turned from the table to eye him with a detached curiosity.

“You are the one the treaty names?” the young man asked, with an Imperial accent even more pronounced than Varro’s had been. At Titus’s wordless nod he snorted, not seeming to care that he was in the presence of the king and the second prince of the Licinian Federation. “Well, I suppose I can’t fault Varro’s taste.” He turned back to Claudius without further comment, leaving Titus unsteady with rage and utter humiliation. Bad enough to take that sort of crudeness from his betrothed; to have it from every rank-and-file soldier in the Aquillian fleet was unbearable. But he had to bear it. He had to bear whatever he was given, to keep this bastard with his cold eyes from turning around and dooming the entire Federation to a slow butchering by Proculus’s hordes. “I didn’t come expecting a wedding, so the marriage gifts will have to be whatever Varro already had here. I trust the three additional cohorts of small craft will satisfy any wounded pride on that score?”

Three cohorts of wing. Titus nearly forgot his offense, and his terror at the thought of the wedding for which the gifts had been brought, in the wake of his unbearable relief. The Aquillian dreadnoughts were a force to be reckoned with, but their light fighters, quick as dragonflies and bristling with armaments a thousand times more powerful than their size should ever have allowed, were the crown jewel of the Empire. He’d take far more than a few cutting remarks if it meant they would have Aquillian wing-fighters defending the orbits of Eporedia and Alpes Graiae from Proculus. Claudius was nodding so rapidly he looked like a sand-hen pecking for beetles. “More than enough, Your Highness,” he said, still nodding, and Titus startled a little, eyeing the Aquillian gunner a little more closely. A prince, then — he knew the Empire had a shocking abundance of them, twelve legitimate daughters and sons to jockey for power, but the only mark of rank he could see on the man before him was the little bar of gold on his shoulder below the stylized eagle of the Empire’s fighting forces, easily lost in his otherwise utilitarian kit. “We are of course grateful for your willingness to offer your empire’s aid —”

“Show your gratitude by not attacking our borders again, for a start,” the prince said, his voice thick with contempt that even Titus had to admit was well-deserved. Still, he was too raw from Varro’s promises to take the sins of the Federation out on his hide to take the rebuke without a bit of a flinch. Speaking of whom — he didn’t understand why he’d been summoned there, and why he’d been there for so long already without seeing Varro himself anywhere. Surely he wouldn’t have wanted to miss any chance to make sport of Titus, especially before his own king’s son?

“Your Highness,” he made himself ask, more calmly than he felt, and had the unpleasant honor of the Aquillian prince’s immediate attention. His eyes were a startling blue, like most of the Imperial citizens Titus had met before, and they were fixed on Titus at once with clear dislike. Titus told himself it was the least of his worries at the moment, and kept his spine straight. “May I ask why the ambassador has yet to join us?”

For the first time he saw the prince’s lips curl up into a smile, one even more savage than Varro’s. “Aulus Terentius Varro is drifting in five pieces in the depths of open space, for committing high treason against the house of his sovereign lord,” the prince said, slowly, clearly. “I hope you weren’t especially attached to your betrothed, because you’ll be marrying the man he tried to assassinate instead.”

Titus left the war room several minutes later in a daze. It was too much to truly grasp; his mind was still whirling again and again around the thought of Varro, dead, buried, dismembered, utterly beyond the threat of raising a hand to Titus again. The rest of it, he couldn’t bring himself to care about for even a moment. He was going to kneel for the Aquillian prince in two days; so what? The newcomer — Caius Aquillius Metellus, youngest son of the Aquillian emperor, commander of his finest cohort of light craft — clearly despised the entire Federation and its second prince in particular; so what? He was built like a mountain and, if his cock was proportional, could probably cripple Titus without much effort — so fucking what? Varro was dead. However cruel Metellus was, Titus refused to believe he could be worse than Varro. In fact, since he’d contented himself with only dismissive coldness peppered with the occasional biting comment, Titus let himself dare to hope that the prince might even be better, at least insofar as his contempt was less specific, less invested in breaking Titus in every possible way. He found himself grinning at everything and nothing; laughing at the clouds as the sunlight broke across his skin like absolution. Varro was dead, torn limb from limb in a traitor’s execution. From the sound of it, Metellus had been the one who dealt the killing blow, and if it was true, Titus would spread his legs for the man with a smile. Varro was dead.

For the first time in two months, Titus slept without dreaming.

Still, when he woke, there remained the somewhat sobering reality of his impending marriage to the Aquillian prince to contend with. He was summoned immediately to a private breakfast in Claudius’s quarters, where he was roundly ignored by Claudius, Metellus, and every one of the Licinian commanders who had also been invited to attend. Titus went where the silent, stone-faced attendant pointed him, and found to his immense dismay that his seat was directly between Metellus, sitting at Claudius’s right hand, and one of their heavy-craft generals who was staring into his tea with such blankness that Titus knew immediately he’d be getting no help from that quarter. Beside him, Metellus was working through his bread and cheese with quick, businesslike bites, seeming to pay no attention whatsoever to the low chatter around the table, but he at least looked up when Titus, taking his life in his hands, coughed slightly to get his attention.

“Am I correct in thinking Your Highness currently serves as a wing gunner within your own legion?”

Metellus gave him to understand, with a vaguely affirmative grunt and a scathing look, that this was both correct, and blisteringly obvious to anyone with eyes. That was true, but Titus felt that he had to try, if he would spend the rest of his life in this man’s household.

“The Aquillian wing cohorts are truly superb; I’m sure they’re a pleasure to fly.”

Another grunt, this one chased by half a mug of tea and a grimace that might either have been brought on by the inanity of Titus’s comment, or the quality of the Licinian tea. Either was possible, and Titus wasn’t about to ask.

“Has Your Highness ever flown as a pilot as well?”

Metellus set his cup down with a clack that made the entire table, including Titus, startle, and then the full weight of his gaze was turned on Titus. “I did, for some years, with my older sister riding trigger-side.” The Imperial accent was thick enough to break into chunks and build a house with, but the Aquillian prince seemed to be deliberately enunciating each word like a hammer-blow as he added, coldly, “Then we were shot down over Anderida by your people, and she lost the use of her hands in the crash. I’ve not flown since.”

Titus had been wondering, from the moment he stepped into the room, if the atmosphere could possibly be any more uncomfortable. Unsurprisingly, it appeared that it could. He finished his own meal in shamed silence, and after only a few more minutes Metellus pushed his chair abruptly back from the table and strode out with only the most perfunctory of farewells to the room at large.

The next morning Titus was woken even before the dawn change-of-watch claxons by an errand-boy sent to drag him out of the cot in his quarters to be prepared for the marriage ceremony that afternoon. Instead of the communal showers in the main barracks, he was hauled off to a full private bathroom in a different building of the camp, and Titus had the somewhat novel experience of being able to scrub himself down at his leisure in water that never went cold or ran out. The wretched cage was still locked in place; Titus had no idea what had happened to the key after Varro’s death, but maybe — maybe if he was a model husband, if he did his duty well enough and showed himself appropriately cowed and submissive, Metellus would find some way to remove it. It might not even be so difficult to pretend; for all his coldness, Metellus was still (so far) a significant improvement on Varro, and Titus found himself genuinely grateful for the change. Still, in the cold light of morning he did have to acknowledge that the Aquillian prince was a powerful man who did seem to dislike him immensely. Perhaps he didn’t have Varro’s creatively sadistic streak, but it would hardly take much effort or inventiveness on his part to make Titus’s life more than miserable enough.

It was even more sobering when one of the servants, a stern man with thinning iron-gray hair and an unsmiling mouth, handed him a small dish of something slick and clear and an unambiguously shaped lump of solid glass. At least he was allowed privacy while he worked the thing inside himself — and it was better, Titus told himself viciously, than trusting to his husband’s mercy. Somehow he suspected there would be very little of that to be found. When the entire length was buried inside him, he had to stop and breathe very carefully for a long moment before he could be sure he wouldn’t be sick, but — he remembered Varro’s letters. Remembered the threat of… other things, of knife hilts and wine bottles and lit candles. What he had to bear now was no more than would have been demanded of any client spouse, and while the shame of kneeling for any man still burned low in his gut, it was far kinder than he’d expected of his wedding day only a week ago.

He was at least allowed the small grace of trousers while the servants came to paint him with the symbols of his husband’s house. Instead of the bear and tree of Varro’s seal, the lines of deep crimson dye across his chest and shoulders traced out the broad-winged eagle of the Aquillian house, and around it the spearhead-star that served as the personal emblem of the second-youngest prince of the Empire. For a single moment Titus let himself mourn the idle dreams he’d once had of undressing someone on his wedding night to reveal his own raven in flight on their skin, stylized feathers swirling around the seal of the Licinians. Then he forced himself to let those thoughts go. His wedding night would be nothing like those vague imaginings, but it would buy protection for his people. The half-baked fantasies of a boy were nothing compared to that.

The wedding robes themselves were black and gold, and fit surprisingly well considering how quickly they must have been arranged. Varro’s colors had been red and black, and Titus could see, with some degree of bitter amusement, more than one place where a trim or ornament in one color had been hastily exchanged for another. He resolutely did not think of the dark glass of the thing buried inside him, shifting uncomfortably every time he so much as moved his weight from one foot to the other. After the robes came the jewelry, hung from his ears, woven into his hair, clasped about his wrists and ankles, draped around his throat and shoulders, and finally over it all the heavy black veil that he’d wear until his husband stripped it from him along with all the rest of his clothing once the feasting was finally done.

The ceremony itself would be held in the war room, for lack of any better location — and, Titus thought a bit bitterly, because Claudius had no compunctions about handing over his son to be broken under the Aquillian Empire’s heel, but he had enough pride left not to let his entire army watch it happen. Claudius himself would be there, to send Titus out into his husband’s house, and he knew from overhearing that one of the prince’s sisters had come with his fleet and would stand witness for their house. Titus didn’t really know whether or not to be grateful that Tiberia was still afield and out of comms range. He was under no illusions that the ceremony would be anything but utterly humiliating, but there was a selfish part of him that would have been grateful to know at least one person in the audience took no pleasure in seeing him treated so. The rest of the onlookers would be made up of a scattering of commanders and patricians of the Federation, as many as could be scraped from the staging camp, and Titus was fairly sure all of them would only be grateful that it wasn’t themselves or their own children paying the price for the Aquillian reinforcements.

The sole merit of the veil was that it hid his expression as he was led to the low building and Claudius escorted him before the auspex who would lead the ceremony. It hid the tightness in his jaw as he walked the gauntlet of openly gawking patricians and officers, and the furious flush in his cheeks as he heard some of their more poorly-hidden whispers. Most of all, it hid the way his eyes watered with pure helpless fury as he stepped onto the low dais beside the Aquillian prince and sank to his knees at his feet. He knew instinctively that the motion had been awkward and ungainly, and a part of him wanted to curse his own gracelessness even as the rest of him screamed that he hadn’t thought he’d need to know how to kneel. Distantly, he was aware his hands were shaking where they rested on his knees, and he had to knot them into fists to hide the tremors.

“Caius Aquillius Metellus, son of Marcus Aquillius Metellus, do you accept this man into your house, swearing to fulfill your duties to him as agreed in the contract marked with your seal?” the auspex asked.

“I do.” There was nothing in his husband’s voice, not even anger or amusement or scorn. Titus fixed his eyes on the blurry outlines of light and dark that were all he could see through the heavy veil, and forced himself not to think.

“By what god do you give your word?”

“By Mars Ultor, the Avenger. If I fail in my word, may my shot ever miss the mark, may my sight shatter as I aim, may my wing never answer again to my need. This I swear.” It struck Titus, with a distant sort of grief, that his husband truly was the sort of man to take pride in his work and in his skill. Maybe, if the Federation had never moved on Anderida all those years ago, Titus might have found his way to the same marriage as an equal, and maybe found true companionship there, if not love.

“Your vow is witnessed, before the god you name.” There was a growing roar in Titus’s ears, reaching such a fever pitch that he almost missed it when the auspex addressed him. “Titus Licinius Agrippa, son of Claudius Licinius Agrippa, do you surrender your name and house for this man’s, swearing to give yourself fully to him as agreed in the contract marked with your father’s seal?”

“I do.” He barely heard his own voice, but it must have been audible at least to the auspex, since he was not asked to repeat himself. He felt cold, cold all over, except the parts of him that were almost searing with pure shame. It all felt like some horrible dream, one he’d wake from just before the worst of it — but it had already been two months of the same nightmare, and there would be no escaping it save in death.

“By what god do you give your word?”

As the client spouse, it would have been most appropriate for him to choose Nerio, the lesser partner of Mars, or Honos, a minor god of chivalry and courage in the service of the greater Lord of Soldiers. Titus could count on his two hands the number of breaths he had left before his life was given over entirely to a stranger’s hands. For one moment, he would let himself have something of his own, and if his husband beat him for it after the ceremony was through, Titus would bear his thrashing without a hint of fear. “By Mars Gradivus, the Marcher. If I fail in my word, may my wing turn under me, may my lift fail me, may sun and stars hide my bearings from me all my days. This I swear.” He ignored the audible muttering from the audience as best he could. The vows were a formality anyway, at least on his side; everyone knew the real consequence of failing in his side of the marriage agreement would be punishment directly from his husband’s hand. For that little stunt, he strongly suspected he’d be getting a taste of that before the night was out, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to regret it — yet, anyway.

“Your vow is witnessed, before the god you name.” The auspex didn’t sound particularly pleased, but at least he let it go without causing a scene in the middle of the ceremony about it. “So your bond is sealed.” And then came the part Titus had been dreading all along. He shifted his weight on his knees, crossed his wrists at the small of his back, and lowered his head until the veil pooled over his husband’s boots and Titus’s forehead was nearly touching the floor. And then he waited, and waited, and waited, anger and rising humiliation tangling higher and higher in his chest as the Aquillian bastard forced him to stay prostrate before him. Gods-all, he might as well strip Titus to his skin in front of the whole room and call him a faithless whore while he was at it; even Varro wouldn’t have dared to go so long without raising him —

But his husband was a prince and a commander of the Aquillian Empire, and Titus was only the son of the king who had ordered repeated attacks on the Empire only to turn around before three years were out to beg for their protection. More than that, Titus had just defied him in front of all their wedding guests, naming one of the twelve great gods to witness like he was a patron or an equal, and not barely a step above a slave. Metellus could do whatever he wanted to Titus, even this, and all Titus could do was kneel with his head to the ground and take it for as long as his husband decided his punishment should last. There was no question about it now, he was grateful Tiberia wasn’t there to see it — not even for the sake of his own pride, although admittedly he was glad for that reason as well, but mostly because she would undoubtedly have challenged Metellus to a duel over it, and that would end in disaster for the Federation whether she won or lost.

After what must have been at least a minute, and felt like a small lifetime, there was some whispering overhead and then a hand on his shoulder, guiding him back to sit on his heels. The veil hid his face, and Titus was grateful for that, but it did nothing to hide the way he was trembling with poorly suppressed rage even as his husband urged him to his feet and led him out, still shaking, into the dying evening light. There would be a feast, which Titus wouldn’t be able to eat through the veil anyway, and dancing, which they’d be expected to lead, and singing at the end, which thankfully they would not have to participate in, and then — and then —

And then, Titus forced himself to think, with clinical detachment, his lord and master would escort him to their marital chambers and use his body for his own pleasure until Titus was screaming for mercy that he now knew wouldn’t come. At the very least he knew his husband liked seeing him on his knees, and it would be nothing short of a miracle if he was allowed off them at all that night. Maybe, if he was especially lucky, Metellus would drink enough during the feasting that he’d make it quick and messy, and leave it at that. If he was especially unlucky, Metellus would decide that humbling Titus during the ceremony was insufficient for the gravity of his offense, and he’d decide to reinforce the lesson again once they were alone. So far, luck had not gone with Titus at all.

The dinner smelled excellent. Titus sat motionless beside his husband while the portions passed by around him, trying to parse what he could only see as hazy blurs through the veil. He hadn’t eaten since the night before, and hunger was beginning to take its toll, all the more so the longer he sat there with the scent of food all around him. He’d at least been allowed to drink between preparations for the ceremony, but it had been hours since even that, and every time he tried to think about anything other than the feast in front of him, the only other thought that passed through his mind was indistinct imaginings of what his husband would do to him in their bed that night. It would be enough to make him sick, if he had anything in his stomach other than bile to be sick with.

It felt like an eternity before the dishes were finally cleared away and the musicians struck up. Metellus didn’t say a word as he took Titus’s hand and led him, blind and unsteady, out to the middle of the ground cleared for dancing, and began to spin him into the steps. It was a familiar enough song, one that he knew well enough to follow along to even half-blind and stifled in the formal robes, but he’d only danced the following part once in his life, as a boy before the war began. He’d slipped away with a handful of friends to join the mid-autumn festival in one of the farming towns at the far side of the core world of Augusta Praetoria, where no one had known they were patricians and princes, and a farmer’s daughter with a bright smile and warm, broad hands had led him through the dance with a gentle grip on his waist. Metellus had an even greater advantage of height on him, half a head at least and with several pounds more of fighting muscle from working the heavy wing guns, and Titus was as pliant in his arms as a toy. He was unbearably grateful for the veil now, as it hid the agony he knew was carved into the lines of his face. He was grateful it wasn’t Varro; he’d die grateful for that — but he didn’t want it to be like this either.

The song came to a merciful end, and they were not required to dance again. His husband led him back to the table, and Titus sat there, rigid and dazed, as the sounds of general merriment filtered through the veil. Every now and then someone approached their table to offer polite well-wishes — always to Metellus; Titus knew they were likely staring at him as well in morbid fascination, but no one addressed him even once.

Well. Almost no one. “How are you holding up?” he heard someone ask in the thick, rapid Imperial dialect, and his husband let out a bitter laugh just loud enough for Titus to hear. He wasn’t sure if they knew he could understand them, but he wasn’t about to announce it without being asked. (Although — he’d be going to his husband’s house. Presumably he’d live and die in Imperial lands; he’d either have to admit he knew the local tongue eventually or try to pretend he was learning it for the first time. Neither option seemed particularly appealing.)

“How do you think?” his husband scoffed, and then relented a little. “Not as bad as that. Not as bad as it’ll be when I have to send a report on all of this to the Emperor.”

“You know Father won’t give a damn about any of the rest of it when he hears what Varro was planning,” the other person replied, and Titus realized abruptly that it must be his husband’s sister. “Though he’ll be sorry to have missed your wedding.”

“Don’t remind me,” Titus’s husband said, sounding genuinely morose, and Titus had a single moment of strangling jealousy at the thought that, for him, it wasn’t such a humiliating affair that his family would be ashamed to witness it. “But Octavia’s was just last month; it was enough of a spectacle that maybe he’ll appreciate the lack of fuss.”

“Spectacle is the word for it,” the other prince agreed with a small laugh, and then, abruptly switching to the universal standard, she added, “I wish you every happiness, elder brother, on behalf of our house. And I offer the same with our warmest welcome to you, my brother’s husband.”

Titus was frozen with shock for so long that he almost forgot how to speak, but after a long moment in a daze he collected himself enough to incline his head and offer a quiet thank you. It was too far beyond the bounds of what he’d expected from his husband’s sister to even begin to understand, but maybe — he couldn’t allow himself to hope for anything but the worst, but maybe it might not be so terrible in time, if the younger prince was sincere in her good wishes. He had plenty of time to mull it over, anyway, since no one spoke to him again all through the end of the dancing and the start of the long rounds of poetry and music that would go on late into the night, long after his husband carried him off to seal his claim.

“Your Highness?” Titus’s head turned before he could help himself, before he could remember that he wasn’t the one being called, and never would be again. “They’ve finished preparing your, ah, your marital chambers, whenever it pleases you to retire for the night. We only ask a few minutes’ notice to gather the witnesses.”

“The witnesses?” Metellus repeated, bemused, as Titus’s heart sank in his chest. He’d nearly forgotten — that was a lie. He’d been fool enough to hope that they might forego the custom of having witnesses at the consummation; no one had mentioned it until that moment and he’d let himself wonder if maybe the wretched business had been dispensed with entirely. But by the sound of it, he’d have no such luck that night. “Witnesses for what?”

“For, ah, the consummation. Your Highness.”

There was a dead silence, one that somehow managed to put a pall even over the lively chorus coming from the center of the mess hall. Finally Titus’s husband said, in a voice that could freeze fire, “I am not going to have a committee of onlookers critiquing how I conduct myself in my own marriage bed. Tell your witnesses they can get in a circle and take turns fucking each other if they’re so desperate for something to watch.”

“Your Highness, it’s traditional, in a full marrying-out —”

“Shut up.” The messenger — probably a servant, maybe a steward of Claudius’s household — obediently fell silent. “Please inform the Licinian auspex that I would like a word with him.” Titus knotted his fingers together under the hem of the veil so tightly that he was fairly sure he could hear his knuckles crack. Somehow he hadn’t known it would be a full marrying-out. Of course he should have expected it; of course Varro would demand it, but he’d thought — he hadn’t thought even Claudius would send him out so utterly unprotected. Abuse and harsh treatment, he’d more or less expected, but his husband — his master could slit his throat in broad daylight and feed his body to his hunting birds, and be perfectly within his rights. A full marrying-out was the last resort of appeasement and abasement, the lowest depth of shame to which a noble house could be dragged, barring the punishment for high treason, and that was what Claudius had condemned him to —

Titus’s husband didn’t say another word until more footsteps approached the table, and Titus heard the reedy voice of the old auspex saying, “Your Highness, what seems to be the concern?”

“Does His Majesty of the Licinian Federation really expect me to engage in relations with his son in the presence of a dozen witnesses?” The edge to the Aquillian prince’s voice could cut glass. The auspex audibly choked.

“Ah — the marriage-customs must be upheld —”

“You speak as though the Federation is in a position to demand anything of the Empire.”

“Of course not, Your Highness!” There was a long pause, in which Titus gritted his teeth and prayed for — he didn’t know what. It seemed too good to be true, that Metellus might not want to subject him to the shame of being fucked until he screamed in front of twelve of his father’s advisors, but it was true, the Federation could only accept whatever terms the Empire allowed them, and if the prince would rather have his privacy when he broke Titus in, what could anyone truly do about it? “At the risk of repeating what Your Highness must surely already know,” the auspex finally said, very delicately, “the marriage is not valid without a witnessed consummation. Your Highness may of course choose to reject your spouse at your pleasure, but the young man’s honor will be lost either way. If Your Highness refuses him now, after the vows have already been made, he is not likely to find another match.”

…Titus hadn’t considered that, mostly because he hadn’t known it was a full marrying-out until the messenger had said so, and because he’d always known Varro was too eager to keep him as a toy to truly reject him. But he realized, suddenly, that he didn’t know the man who had replaced Varro as his lord and master, and he had no idea what the Aquillian prince might choose to do with him. Little as he liked the thought of a lifetime with the reputation of Metellus’s unwanted whore, it might be better than a lifetime as his plaything, though he also hated the thought of the shame and scandal that would follow Tiberia if he was refused.

The silence stretched out for so long that Titus was almost inclined to take it as his husband’s answer, but finally he heard Metellus let out a controlled breath, turning slightly toward Titus with an audible shift. “When were you planning to tell me about any of this?” he asked. His voice was low and tight with something very close to fury, and it chilled Titus to the bone. Maybe not so much better than Varro, after all, if he had so much cause to be angry with his new husband.

Titus had to swallow hard before he could force himself to speak, and when he did, it was a miracle he managed to keep his voice steady. “Forgive me, lord husband,” he answered, quietly. Never mind that he hadn’t even been informed of the true terms of his betrothal until five minutes ago, the fault was still his, and he was still the one who had to beg his husband’s pardon. The words tasted bitter on his tongue, but it was the least of what he was bound to do. “I had assumed His Majesty had made the details of the contract clear when you spoke with him on the matter.” Left unsaid was the fact that all those meetings had taken place without Titus’s presence, so how in the nine hells was he supposed to have known what his husband had or hadn’t been told?

“He did not. I would not have agreed to it, and it beggars belief that you apparently did.”

Titus had a horrible job not bursting into cackling laughter at that. As if he had a choice — he allowed himself a single breath to collect himself and to be sure he wouldn’t scream when he opened his mouth. “My lord husband is, of course, entirely free to declare the marriage void, at his discretion.” He couldn’t entirely keep the mocking lilt out of his voice, knowing he’d pay for it, but he was hot with fury that couldn’t be entirely drowned.

“Would you prefer that?”

The question had been rather coldly put, but to Titus’s surprise, it sounded sincere. From someone else, it might easily have been a taunt, a veiled reminder of all the power that the prince held over him, and just how little power Titus had left. In Metellus’s voice, Titus almost thought he was being offered a choice.

…Still, a choice in theory was often no choice in practice. It was Titus’s shame that was paying for the Aquillian fleet, and if he balked now, the negotiations would begin again, and the Aquillian prince might simply decide to retract the offer the traitor Varro had made on behalf of the Empire. It was a pleasant dream, but nothing more than that. “It is my lord husband’s decision,” Titus said, very evenly. “But if I had my will, I would have the marriage made final.”

He was very aware of the nervous old auspex watching them, doubtless wondering how in the name of all gods their wedding had turned into such a farce, but Metellus seemed to have no similar concerns. Titus could feel his full attention even through the veil, heavy as the weight of a star across his shoulders, without the slightest regard for the waiting auspex, and for a wild moment he wondered if Metellus might refuse him out of pure spite. But whatever Metellus might think of him, however bad it might be for the rest of Titus’s life, at least it seemed Metellus was not so cruel as that.

“One witness,” he said, his voice as unreadable as it had been as he spoke his vows in the war room. “One witness, and a screen between them and the bed. Is that enough to satisfy your wretched customs?”

“I — believe those allowances can be made, Your Highness. The appropriate arrangements will be made.” The auspex vanished in a shuffle of footsteps and a small shift in the blur of light and shadow filtering through Titus’s veil, probably unbearably grateful to be allowed to leave. Faced with a wall of freezing silence from his husband beside him, Titus could more than understand the impulse.

It wasn’t long after that before Metellus rose abruptly, and Titus hurried to follow him despite the horrible clenching terror rising swiftly in his gut. After two months of threats and nightmares and the whole dizzy relief and bewilderment of his abrupt marriage to another man, there was no more putting it off. Titus was going to be claimed, the first in what would likely be an endless parade of pain and shame until he died or his husband tired of him, whichever came first. Metellus led him with a firm had at his elbow through the laughing crowds until Titus saw the faint outline of the building set apart for the Aquillian fleet officers rising ahead of them, and then they were inside —

Distantly, he was aware his breathing had dropped to the shallowest of gasps.

“Your Highness, they’re still looking for a screen,” someone said meekly from just inside the door, and the Aquillian prince only scoffed. “The — the marriage gifts have been brought from the late ambassador’s things, if it would please Your Highness to look through them?”

“Oh, I’m sure that will be interesting,” Metellus laughed, sharply, bitterly. Titus was reminded suddenly that his husband had nearly as much reason as Titus himself to hate the former ambassador, and felt another odd twist of — grief? Regret? Under better circumstances, it might have been something to draw them closer together. As it was, all he could feel was suffocating dread at what the rest of the night would hold for him. “But they’re gifts. They belong to my husband, don’t they? Maybe you should be the one looking through them.” It was still a bit startling every time Titus found himself being directly addressed, and he hoped desperately that his little jerk of surprise wasn’t too plainly visible.

“And I belong to my husband, so it makes little difference.” Almost at once Titus wanted to slap himself, both for the thoughtlessness in the words and for how he couldn’t quite keep all his own bitterness from slipping through. “And — with the veil, I can’t see. There would be little point,” he added quickly, hoping to smooth things over somewhat. At the very least, his husband didn’t order him down for a whipping immediately, so maybe he was letting it slide.

“I see.” In the low lamplight of the room, Titus could make out a slight shift as Metellus crouched beside a dark mass of something in the corner. “I’ll just have to describe them for you, then. Pass the time somehow.” Titus let out a breath he hadn’t been fully aware he was holding, and quickly came to sit at the prince’s side, unsure of how exactly to position himself but knowing at least that he shouldn’t be looming over the man. “Collar and lead, more gold than leather. Crimson and black stones. You keep birds?” Titus shook his head, unable to force his voice into his throat through the sudden wave of nausea that rocked him. I’ll string you up by the throat, he heard Varro’s voice in his head, as clear as though the man was whispering directly into his ear, drag you before your father’s court on your knees in nothing but gold and leather. “Pity. Too small for a proper raptor, but it would look fine enough on a middling-size falcon, I’d imagine.” The thump as he tossed it back into the chest struck Titus like a blow to the chest. “Riding crop. Dark leather wrap. Engraving on the handle. Too dark to read it now, but if it’s his name I’m burning the fucking thing.”

“Rule by strength.” The words came unbidden to Titus’s lips, and for a moment he hoped he’d spoken quietly enough that Metellus would ignore him, but Titus saw the outline of his head turn like he was listening. “His — it’s his house motto. Rule by strength. He was always cruel to his cats.” Never mind that Titus knew, in his bones, that the crop had always been meant for him. He’d burned all the letters two nights before, when he’d known Varro was dead and never coming back, but the words were still seared into his head as though written in fire. I’ll fuck my whore of a husband until you’re so loose I can put my hand in you past the wrist, he’d written, and after you’ve begged my pardon long enough to satisfy me I’ll whip your worthless hole until it’s tight and do it all over again. He realized his hands were shaking again, and tightened them where they rested in his lap until the tremors no longer showed. Varro was dead, Varro died a traitor’s death and the man sitting beside him was the one to kill him. Varro was dead, and he’d never touch Titus again.

“That he was.” Metellus was silent for a long moment, and then abruptly he took the crop in both hands. The snap of the core breaking echoed like the crack of thunder in Titus’s ears. “Good fucking riddance, then.” He dug through the chest a little longer, and came up with something that chimed softly and glinted in the low light. “The hell — why are the straps on this bridle so short?”

Titus was saved from the mortifying choice between pretending at ignorance and admitting Varro had always wanted to see him with a bit in his mouth by the arrival of the screen, and then it hit him how rapidly he was hurtling toward the shame and agony of the marriage bed, and it took everything within him not to scream. Metellus stood abruptly, Titus half a second slower on his heels, as the attendant who had met them and the servants who had brought the screen began to set it up between the door and the indistinct mass of white that must be the bed, toward the center of the room.

“You’re the witness?” the prince bit out, and from the door behind them he heard someone answer in a muffled affirmative. “Very well. You stay on the other side of the screen until you’re told to go. If I hear a single sound from you, I will gut you like a fish. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Your Highness. I know my duty, and have no desire to exceed it.” Titus barely heard him, over the roar of blood in his ears. He was going to be stripped, pushed down in the sheets, split open on a stranger’s cock with another man watching mere feet away, watching so he could report faithfully that the second prince of the Licinian Federation had been mounted like a bitch in heat — he wanted to scream. He wanted to be sick. He did neither, and followed obediently when his — his master guided him around the screen with a firm hand at his elbow.

“Not how I thought I’d be doing this,” he heard Metellus mutter in his own tongue, and that was all the warning he had before the prince reached for the hem of the veil and tugged the entire thing away. The world burst into light, enough to make him blink and squint against it for a moment, and then he got his first clear view of his lord and master since their disastrous breakfast in Claudius’s rooms the day before.

He was fair-skinned and blue-eyed, with the short dark hair common among the Imperial citizens, dressed for once in finely embroidered layers of black and gold linen and wool instead of the heavy uniform armor he’d been wearing until then. For a moment Titus saw something almost like surprise cross his face, and then Titus abruptly remembered his place and lowered his head, biting back the instinctive apology rising to his tongue. Metellus was not Varro, and it was below even the little dignity Titus had left to show how afraid he was before anything had even happened.

“Why send you with all this gold just to cover it all up with the fucking veil?” Metellus muttered, flicking the opal pendant of one of Titus’s three necklaces with a broad, blunt fingernail. By some miracle, Titus managed not to flinch.

“I believe to give my lord husband the pleasure of taking it off me.” He knew even as he said it that the tone was wrong, too tight and too flat to hit the mark, but at least the prince seemed not to care. His hands were — perhaps not gentle, but at least courteous in their sheer efficiency as they relieved him of the ornaments around his neck and across his shoulders, and, well, Titus was all too aware now of the collar sitting in the chest beside the door. It could always be worse.

He was so busy reminded himself of how much worse it could be that he almost didn’t notice when Metellus’s hands moved instead to the fastenings of the first layer of robes, and then he realized all at once and flinched back in a desperate, graceless scramble. They both froze, as it occurred to Titus what exactly he’d done, and then he swallowed hard and stepped carefully back in range of his husband’s touch, hating himself for the flinch and hating himself even more for what he knew would come next. When he wasn’t immediately seized and struck, he bit his tongue hard and bowed his head, horribly aware of the silent presence on the other side of the screen.

“Forgive me,” he heard himself murmur, as though from very far away. “I meant no offense. Please forgive me.”

Titus had expected him to pick up where he left off, perhaps with a slap to make the lesson stick, the prince only sighed and took a step back. “You do yours,” he said, to Titus’s bewilderment. “I’ll do my own. Unless that’s another custom I’m not allowed to dodge?” Technically, it was, but not to the same degree as the witnesses. Titus only nodded, and set about unclasping the outer jacket with fingers that only shook a little. He didn’t let himself look as the Aquillian prince stripped down with brisk efficiency, shedding the layers of patterned coats and tunics one by one, and then — and then they were standing bare before one another. Titus could see the moment the prince noticed the dark crimson stains across his chest and arms, already deepened almost to a reddish-black that stood out clearly against the tan of his skin, and fought back a ridiculous and somewhat childish wail. He’d never thought he’d be the one coming marked to his wedding bed, but if that was what saved them all, if that was what would let Claudius hold the Federation together long enough for Tiberia to have a prayer of a chance at taking a throne that would last, then what right did he have to grieve it?

He saw, too, the moment the prince’s eyes fell on the little silver cage, judging by the way he went quite still all at once and his dark eyes fixed on Titus with a sudden intensity. “The gold suited you better,” he said, voice low with something Titus couldn’t quite parse, but he barely had time to absorb it before Metellus was closing on him, warm hands taking him by the wrists with a strange gentleness. “Breathe. The sooner we do this, the sooner we’re done.”

Titus allowed himself to be drawn down onto the bed, though from the first touch of Metellus’s hands he’d been shaking like a leaf in a high wind. There was a hand at his waist, and it took every inch of his will not to flinch from it, even though his husband had been nothing but gentle with him so far. “Breathe,” Metellus reminded him again, and Titus felt a horrible flush painting his cheeks; he’d been a soldier and a prince and he shouldn’t have needed such careful handling. It was better than Varro; he knew what Varro had meant to do with him, and this was already worlds better. There was no excuse for him to let his fear show so obviously. But gods-all, he was so afraid.

“On your back or on your knees?” the prince asked quietly. His palm was warm and heavy on Titus’s shoulder, grounding him, steadying him, and Titus thought that if he had to look him in the face while they were fucking he’d break into a thousand pieces. Wordlessly he turned, settling himself on his knees and elbows with his head lowered to the sheets. It was enough like the way he’d had to prostrate himself in the ceremony that his cheeks heated uncontrollably — but he couldn’t bear to look at his husband while he took him. Titus heard a soft indrawn breath from behind him, and then a cautious finger traced around the rim of the heavy glass plug buried inside him.

“Quick or gentle?” the prince murmured behind him, and for a moment Titus wished he would stop asking and just get it over with. In the abstract, though, he could appreciate the courtesy of it.

“Quickly, please,” he whispered. It made little difference; the prince would have the rest of Titus’s life to do as he pleased, but he’d seemed nearly as unhappy with the presence of the witness as Titus himself, and he was right — the sooner Titus was claimed properly, the sooner he could at least have some privacy for whatever he had to endure after. The prince made a little sound of agreement, tapping lightly against the glass inside him, and despite his best efforts Titus flinched a little.

“Peace, peace,” the prince said, like he was gentling a skittish cat, and ran his hands softly over Titus’s hips and the curve of his ass. “Quick it is, then. Try to relax.” Titus choked back a horrible little sound as he shifted the glass plug, working it out with a noise that sounded obscene in the otherwise silent room. “Breathe in, deep as you can.” Titus obeyed, biting down on his tongue at the light pressure of a fingertip tracing around the slick, swollen rim of his hole. “And breathe out.” As he did, the finger pressed in, circling firmly inside him, and then another quickly followed it, stretching him briskly. “Another breath for me.” As Titus sucked down another shaking breath, the fingers disappeared, and something hot and blunt-tipped and impossibly large replaced them. The breath turned into a little cry of terror, entirely against his will, as the prince pressed deeper and deeper. He was huge; even with the glass plug stretching him out for the better part of the day, Titus felt like he was being split in half. He couldn’t make himself relax into it, which made it hurt, which made it even harder to relax —

“Breathe in,” Metellus said, sounding a little strangled. Titus did as he was told, but he couldn’t help it, he was gasping almost at once, choking on the terrible sounds threatening to slip out of him. He wanted to kick, to struggle, to get away, but he couldn’t, his father had sold him for a fleet of dreadnoughts and three cohorts of wing and this was the price for it. “Breathe, breathe, Agrippa, you have to relax, I don’t want to hurt you. Breathe, please.”

It was the please that startled him into compliance. He was surprised enough, by that and by the name that he was meant to surrender, that he went limp under Metellus’s hands, and in that moment his husband pressed inside him until their hips were flush against each other. “I’m going to move,” Metellus said quietly, where he was pressed against Titus’s back, and Titus braced himself with a helpless shudder and a stifled groan. The slick sound of flesh was unbearably loud, and it only grew worse as the prince began to pick up speed, thrusting into him with a horrible rhythmic slap of skin. It still hurt, though not quite as badly as it had at first, and unconsciously he shifted his weight a little, searching for an angle that might make the agonizing fullness easier to bear. He didn’t quite find it, but as he spread his legs a little wider to balance himself, the blunt head of Metellus’s cock brushed over something inside him that made him gasp and tremble with startled warmth.

“There it is,” Metellus said softly, and he shifted too so that his cock dragged over the same bright little place each time. “There you are, it’ll be easier if it’s pleasant for you. Cry out if you need,” he added, and Titus let go of the last shreds of his tattered pride and groaned as sweet, unfamiliar pleasure built in his gut. He wished desperately, for the first time since Varro forced the cage on him, that he could touch himself; he could feel the need and the desire churning through the pain, and his cock ached and strained against the bars pinning it down. Behind him the prince was breathing more heavily, his thrusts becoming sharper and more ragged, and then with a groan he drove himself particularly deep and stayed there, shuddering.

For a long moment it was silent, save for the sound of their breaths. Then Metellus shifted against Titus’s back, one hand light on Titus’s hip for a moment before he pulled out. Something hot and wet trickled down the inside of Titus’s thigh and he gritted his teeth, cheeks burning. “Out,” Metellus said, cold and a little vicious, and for a moment Titus didn’t understand. Then he heard a shuffle from the other side of the screen, and the whisper of the door sliding shut, and they were alone.

“Where’s the key for that thing?” the prince asked, the edge in his voice tempered very slightly. He’d climbed fully off the bed, and Titus, slumped onto his side, closed his eyes for a long moment before opening them again.

“Drifting in the depths of open space, I would imagine,” he said quietly, and saw Metellus go very still.

“I’m not hunting all five pieces of him down to look for it,” Metellus finally said. He came back with — a towel? There was a hand on Titus’s shoulder, and he followed the pressure without thinking, letting Metellus draw him up from the sheets.

“Of course,” Titus agreed distantly. Varro had never meant to take it off either; he’d had two months to resign himself to the idea. “Perhaps my lord husband would like to have me gelded as well?”

“What — oh, fuck off,” the prince laughed, after a moment. Titus hadn’t entirely been joking, but he was glad it had pleased his lord anyway, in a vague, exhausted sort of way. “I’ll see if I can short the lock, and if not, my medics can cut the base off. I would have seen to it earlier, but I wanted that bastard out of the room as soon as I could.”

Oh, Titus thought, with a weary sort of warmth. Much better than Varro. He swung his legs off the edge of the bed — and then almost fell to the floor with a stifled yelp as his legs refused to bear his weight. The only thing that saved him was Metellus’s sudden arm around his waist, and then a broad shoulder came under his, helping him up. It should have felt like a threat, but Titus was too tired to feel more than gratitude as Metellus led him to sit on the lip of the bath and turned the tap to warm, stepping down into the pooling water. He felt like a courtesan, leaning back on his hands and spreading his legs wide enough for Metellus to come stand between his knees and work a small probe inside the slot for the key with a businesslike tenderness. There was something almost like a laugh bubbling up inside Titus as he watched, amused at the narrow crease between his master’s eyebrows as he stared down at Titus’s cock like it was a particularly fascinating puzzle, at the way the soft lights of the bath fell over his strong fingers as he held the cage still and thumbed at the dial of the probe, at the absurdity of him even caring.

With a soft click, the cage came apart, and Titus swallowed a little gasp of relief as his cock began to stiffen, responding to the warmth of his master’s skin where they were pressed very close to one another. Even the ache of need was a relief after two months trapped in the wretched thing, and when his master threw the cage over the lip of the bath and wrapped his fingers around Titus’s length, he let his head drop back with a low moan. It was all he was, now, he thought with a weary sort of acceptance; it was what he was for, and he was only lucky to have found himself bound to a master who wasn’t outright cruel. If his master wanted to give him pleasure, that was as much his right as the pain Titus had expected instead.

“Easy now,” his master murmured. The pad of his thumb ran over the slit of Titus’s cock, dragging a little whine out of the back of his throat. It had been so long — as a new recruit in the army he’d fooled around with his bunkmates as much as anyone did at that age, but between the war and his distaste for bedding anyone in his own command, it had been at least a year since Titus had had more than his own hand. “Relax. Don’t hold yourself back.” That was as good as a command, probably, and so Titus let himself thrust up into the warm circle of his master’s fingers and came with a choked cry.

He was too tired to do more than obey as his master gently coaxed him down into the deep pool of the bath and washed the last traces of their spend off him, even combing his hair out of its braid and teasing the heavy ornaments out for him. The dye didn’t wash away, but his master still ran the soap carefully over the traced lines as though he would have been willing to let Titus go unmarked if he had the choice, and the touch was light and undemanding even as it went lower, to clean his thighs and calves and even, carefully, his feet. Then he was wrapped in a towel, thick and warm and softer than he’d had in years, and somehow — it was all happening in flashes, now, farther and farther apart — somehow he was lying down again on clean, dry sheets, with a soft blanket drawn around his shoulders. It had been a very long day, with very little food and a great deal of fear and confusion, and he was only grateful that it seemed to finally be over.

It would all begin again in the morning, but for now he was in a soft bed, unharmed and seemingly even with some degree of his master’s favor despite his earlier punishment, and his master was putting out the lights one by one to fill the room with a quiet, gentle darkness. A rustle, a shift in the bed beside him. The soft sound of another living person breathing with him, and the briefest warmth of a hand on his shoulder, and then finally, finally, he tumbled down into the welcoming embrace of sleep.

Titus woke in the blue predawn light, swallowing down a gasp. He’d dreamed — he didn’t remember what he’d dreamed of, but the lingering edge of fear was sharp in the back of his mind. He wasn’t in his own quarters, and the sheets he was tangled in were far finer than his camp blanket. It took several dizzy seconds before it clicked, and he had to fight the urge to bury his face in his hands and cry. He was married, claimed and witnessed as such, the client spouse of the second-youngest Aquillian prince, and he would never be anything more again until he died. But better that than bound to Varro, he told himself, furiously, and made himself turn to regard the figure sleeping beside him in the bed. The youngest son of Marcus Aquillius Metellus was sprawled beside him, mostly out of the sheets. They were both still as naked as they’d been when they went to sleep the night before, and — ah. His husband was hard.

It wasn’t like Titus had been ordered to do something about it. He could turn over and close his eyes, and somehow he doubted his husband would punish him for it when he woke. But it was to be the rest of his life, and the Aquillian prince had been — kind? He’d been fair, at least, and Titus might be proud, but he wasn’t stupid. Whatever he was a week ago, whatever duty he had to the Licinian Federation and to his father, he could claim none of it now. If this was all he was —

He was grateful. He was grateful the prince wasn’t Varro. He was grateful that he’d been fair in his punishments, that he’d been lenient with Titus’s private insolence, that he could have made Titus bleed and scream when he bedded him, and chose not to. He was grateful for the kindness he’d been shown after the witness was sent away. He was grateful he was waking unbound, uninjured, without the golden collar around his throat or the bridle in his mouth. He was grateful.

His hands were shaking a little as he took the prince’s cock into his mouth, careful and a little awkward. He’d only done it once before, enough to decide he didn’t much care for it, but he was familiar enough with the mechanics that he hoped not to make too much of a fool of himself. The prince stirred slightly with a groan, and then a light hand settled on the back of Titus’s head, urging him farther. Titus breathed and tried to ignore everything he hated about the act, and focused on doing his duty.

“Eh — Agrippa?” The hand in his hair vanished abruptly, and Titus lifted his head, running the back of his hand over his mouth, hoping the miserable flush setting his cheeks and ears alight wasn’t too apparent. The prince was squinting down at him, a little hazy with sleep, but not immediately displeased. “Agrippa — what are you doing?”

That one admittedly threw him for a loop, along with his husband’s continued insistence on using his old name. “I — had thought that would be obvious? My lord husband,” he added quickly, because the prince seemed to like him a little insolent, but there was amusing insolence and there was true disrespect, and Titus wasn’t interested in toeing the line between them any more than need be.

“Caius,” his husband said, nonsensically, and then added a little more coherently, “call me Caius. Don’t call me that while you’ve got my cock in your mouth, gods-all.” He seemed willing to overlook the rest of it, anyway.

“Caius,” Titus agreed, bewildered but obedient. The prince seemed to have lost some of his interest as the conversation continued to wander, but there was an obvious cure for that, if Titus was allowed to get back to it. “You should — you really shouldn’t call me Agrippa either. I surrendered that name.”

“Titus,” the prince agreed after a moment, seeming to taste the word like an unfamiliar wine. “Titus. Why are you doing that?”

That was even more bewildering. “You married me?” he said eventually, half a question and half a statement. For a long moment they stared at each other, blue eyes meeting his with a sleepy frankness that Titus couldn’t help but regard with some fondness. Maybe he’d have the hide tanned off him for this when the prince — Caius — was more awake, but like this, he was only beautiful.

“I suppose I did,” Caius said at last. His voice was still a little rough and low, and Titus was forced to confront the fact that it wasn’t nearly as much of a hardship to serve him as it might have been if he hadn’t been nearly Titus’s own age, and beautiful and strong and a skilled gunner. “Well. If you want to.” There was no actual command in it, but Titus heard the implication and obeyed. It only took a few moments for Caius to regain his earlier arousal, and this time he was a far more active participant, combing his fingers gently through Titus’s loose hair and urging him on with soft groans and the occasional gasped word of praise. He’s pleased, Titus thought, a vicious counter to the distaste rising in the back of his throat, and flicked his tongue in a way that made Caius groan particularly loudly as he tugged on Titus’s hair. He’s pleased with you. That’s a good thing. Be grateful it hasn’t taken more than this to satisfy him.

“Titus,” Caius groaned, hips twitching, and then his grip on Titus’s hair tightened as he pushed Titus away with a gasp. “Enough, enough, I’m —” with a stroke or two from his own hand, he came abruptly across his stomach. “Gods-all. Well, come up here, then.” Bemused by the order, but well aware he had no choice but to obey, Titus shifted back to lie abreast of his husband while Caius wiped himself roughly down with the corner of the sheet. “Right. Hold still.” With that encouraging command, Titus could do nothing but watch in amazement as Caius slipped down to lie half atop him, warm breath and warm lips skimming across Titus’s bare thighs until he took the hint and parted his legs, still a bit uncertain. After two months restrained, his cock took an almost immediate interest, and when Caius’s mouth closed over the tip he couldn’t help the low, aching sound that spilled from him.

“Caius,” he gasped, and then clapped a hand over his mouth and gritted his teeth until he saw stars as a warm, wet tongue caressed the underside of his cock, flooding his whole body with impossible heat. He’d had this a few times before, when he was still a free man, but it had all been the inexperienced fumbling of young soldiers. Caius was better than any of them, devastatingly skilled. “Caius, off, off, I can’t —” He was panting, barely able to think through the rush of blood in his head, but he did know if he spent at the wrong time he could say goodbye to any chance of getting this again, and now that he’d had it, he couldn’t help wanting. Caius lifted his head for a moment, piercingly blue eyes meeting Titus’s with obvious amusement, and he pressed a small kiss to the very tip of Titus’s cock that made him shudder and groan, every muscle in his stomach tensing at once.

“Already?” he asked, with a single raised eyebrow, and then, even before Titus could feel shame at his own wantonness, he added, “Come when you please; I don’t mind.” And true to his word, he kept his mouth on Titus up to his peak and through the aftershocks, only pulling off to spit over the edge of the bed when Titus was loose and hazy underneath him.

The silence between them was a little more companionable as they dressed and made themselves ready for the day, and Titus let himself hope, just a little, for the first time since the wedding. He wasn’t an equal partner, and he wouldn’t forget it, but there were moments where he could almost pretend he wasn’t the defenseless plaything the contract bound him to be. His husband — whom he was apparently allowed to call by name, at least while he was serving him in their bed — had even seemed willing to treat Titus with a wholly unnecessary respect and graciousness, and Titus wouldn’t expect it to last, but — well. He’d let himself hope, just a little.

Caius — his lord husband, Titus reminded himself; he still needed to show him due respect outside their rooms — his husband led them both out to look for something to eat. Titus followed obediently, trying not to pay attention to the sidelong looks and whispers directed his way as they passed through the camp. It didn’t matter; that, too, was part of what he was sacrificing, along with his body and his name and his future, but in some part of Titus’s heart it still rankled.

It came to a head when they reached the mess-hall. Titus’s husband was a fighting man as well as a prince, very like himself, and by unspoken agreement they were both content to sit in silence by the far wall where the kettles were kept full and hot, and it was almost pleasant for several minutes. Then Publius Saturnina found them, and Titus went rigid with horrible anticipation. He’d hoped, stupidly, for a few hours where he could pretend to be more than his marriage had made of him, but of course Saturnina wouldn’t give him that.

“Your Highness, a pleasant morning to you.” Titus kept his head down. It wasn’t addressed to him, and he knew it.

“Hm. Your name, friend?” There was something oddly tight in the Aquillian prince’s voice, and Titus felt heavy eyes on him for a moment before his attention returned to Saturnina.

“Publius Junius Saturnina, senator for the southern grasslands of Alpes Graiae, Your Highness.” He sat a little awkwardly on one of the low mess stools beside them, and Titus didn’t think he was imagining the way his husband shifted to lean away from Saturnina. That was… something, maybe, something to bolster him a little against whatever was going to come out of Saturnina’s mouth next.

He’d thought he was prepared for it. He was wrong. “I confess we’re all rather surprised to see your husband accompanying you so freely this morning, Your Highness,” Saturnina said after a few moments. Titus closed his eyes on instinct, but it did nothing to hide the flush that must be rising in his cheeks already, and it did nothing to keep him from hearing as Saturnina added, with studied nonchalance, “Really, after that performance in the ceremony yesterday, I’m astonished he was even permitted to leave Your Highness’s bed.” Gods-all. If that was what Titus was going to be subjected to every time he stepped foot outside their rooms, confinement to their quarters might not be the punishment Saturnina was suggesting. He clenched his teeth in a desperate attempt to steady himself, and kept his gaze fixed firmly on the floor in front of him. It didn’t matter. A fleet of dreadnoughts; three cohorts of wing; a secure throne for Tiberia to inherit. It didn’t matter.

“And what exactly do you mean by that, Publius Junius Saturnina?” Titus has heard his lord’s voice warm with pleasure; he’d forgotten just how cold it could grow. It soothed at least a little of the horrible sickness in his gut, that he’d defend Titus at least inasmuch as he was defending his own privacy. Saturnina didn’t seem to realize his danger, and Titus selfishly hoped he’d overstep enough for the prince to make him regret it.

“Well, really, for a client spouse to name one of the twelve great gods in their vows? Your Highness was merciful indeed to let him up after only a minute. If my wife had disrespected me so, I’d have left her in her obeisance until morning.”

In the abstract, Titus knew it would have been worse under Varro. Varro might actually have done it, for one thing, instead of merely forcing him to hear it threatened from men who used to bow when he entered the room. It did very little to relieve the sick curl of shame in his stomach. He couldn’t bring himself to look up from the fire, but he felt his husband’s eyes on him almost immediately, searing in the back of his neck like a brand.

“Titus,” his husband said, quietly. Titus could read nothing in his voice. “As I saw the matter, you gave me no cause for offense, in the ceremony or in anything else. Have I offended you?”

Oh, gods-all. Titus couldn’t bear to look at him. He tightened his fingers around the plain bowl in his hands and swallowed hard, trying to summon his voice without letting it break. “My lord husband has acted entirely within his rights,” he said, barely above a whisper. Every inch of his wounded pride wanted to protest, but he couldn’t. He was grateful. The Aquillian prince had been fair; generous, even, to offer full absolution for Titus’s moment of defiance the previous day. Titus had no right in the world to take offense to anything he’d done.

A warm hand on his shoulder. Titus almost flinched, and then stilled at once; he couldn’t flinch from his husband, it was as good as disobedience and he wouldn’t ruin this for himself more than he already had. “Titus,” the prince said again. His voice was very low. “Have I offended you?”

He should brush it off. He knew, now, the full extent of the terms under which he was married out, and under them there was absolutely nothing the prince could do that Titus had any right to take offense to. And despite the power his husband held over him, he’d been almost kind — certainly never cruel, as Varro would have been. Saturnina was watching with clear fascination; Titus ought to save his husband what face he could and let them all move on from this horrible conversation. But he couldn’t force the words past his lips.

After several moments, he heard his husband sigh quietly. It should have made him afraid, but Titus was only numb. “Very well,” Metellus said, very quietly. “Your silence is answer enough. For the insult I have offered, though it was done unknowingly, I ask your forgiveness.” And then, to Titus’s horror and bewilderment, the prince sank off his bench onto his knees, and bowed his head nearly to Titus’s boots.

“You have it,” Titus said, desperately, dropping his bowl entirely in his haste to join the prince on his knees, gods be kind what was he thinking — “There’s no need — please get up. Please. You have nothing to apologize for.” Out of nowhere, his mind produced the image of Varro begging his pardon, and Titus had to swallow down a frantic burst of laughter at the absurdity of the idea. It was still several seconds before the prince allowed himself to be urged back up, not quite as long as he’d made Titus kneel but certainly an echo of it, and he didn’t even rise fully until he’d guided Titus back onto his seat first. When he did get to his feet at last, it was only to turn on Saturnina with steel in his spine.

“I’ll no more permit an insult to my husband’s honor than to my own,” the prince said, pure ice in his voice. “Not at my hand, and certainly not at yours. You’ll ask his pardon on your knees, or you’ll draw and pay for it in blood.” It was an absurd demand; even Titus knew it was absurd, and he could see the outrage bloom in Saturnina’s face almost at once, but the Aquillian prince was terrifying in his anger. It made something warm bloom in Titus’s chest, to see that anger turned to his defense.

“Your Highness surely cannot expect me to kneel to a client spouse,” Saturnina snapped, genuinely angry, which was — fair. It really was a ridiculous overreaction. Titus breathed, carefully slow, and tried not to react to that. He had his husband’s favor, far more of it than he’d expected, and that should be the only thing that had any bearing with him.

“I expect you to show appropriate contrition for the disrespect you have repeatedly shown to a prince of the Aquillian Empire, yes.” Titus eyes widened. Surely he couldn’t mean — “His Highness of the Licinian Federation has condescended to take my name for his own. An insult to him is an insult to me and to the ruling line of the Empire.”

It was an extraordinary lie, an outrageous length to go to just to make up for an accidental humiliation Titus had technically more than earned, even if his lord didn’t seem to think so. Still, all Titus could really feel was gratitude, as Saturnina’s face twisted into furious resignation and he sank stiffly to one knee. “My apologies,” he bit out through clenched teeth. It was inelegant, but Titus didn’t want to push, not when Saturnina hadn’t really done anything wrong.

“Accepted,” he said quickly, and Saturnina got to his feet at once and fled. And then they were alone again. Titus couldn’t bring himself to look at his husband, but he felt his presence like a looming thundercloud beside him.

“I am sorry,” the Aquillian prince said, after a long moment. His voice was quiet again, without the implacable fury he had turned on Saturnina only minutes before. “It seems there is much I did not understand about the terms of our union, and I am afraid my ignorance has already harmed you beyond forgiveness. I would… I would like to understand, though, if you’ll allow me an explanation.”

They shared a silent walk back to their quarters. Some rumor of the incident with Saturnina seemed to have already spread, because they were given a far wider berth as they returned, and there were far fewer whispers as they passed. The awkwardness remained as the prince drew the door shut behind them, and for a long moment they simply stared at each other, wordless.

“In the Empire,” his husband finally said, quietly, “we do not have… what is the word he used for it? Client spouses. We marry for dowries, for titles, for land and inheritance, but once the vows are said we are equals. But here they — they treat you like a beast and not my husband. Why do you not protest this?”

Why — Titus stared at him in wide-eyed disbelief. “I cannot,” he said, and winced a little at the ragged edge in his own voice. “I have no right; there is nothing to protest. It is a full marrying-out; the contract is sealed and I have given my word to abide by it.”

“Abide by what?” the prince demanded, impatience coloring his voice for the first time. Titus closed his eyes, averted his face from the clear anger before him. “I signed the contract unchanged; you would have taken this from Varro without a word?” And that, of all things, stung Titus’s temper back to life.

“This and more,” he snapped, furious, “because the Federation will fall without the forces you have brought, and for my sister and my people I would have worn the collar he made from my throat and borne the lash he made for my back and let him bridle me without a struggle. That is what I am bound to, and what Saturnina expects of me, and I will bear it from you without complaint if you choose to claim your rights now that you know of them.” The Aquillian prince reeled back as though Titus’s words had been a slap full across the face, and Titus realized with some bitterness that he’d rather put the lie to his offer of submission in the very outburst in which he made it. Rigid with shame and disgust with himself, he dropped to his knees, head bowed. “Forgive my insolence. I beg my lord husband to mete out whatever punishment he sees fit.”

“Stop,” the prince rasped from above him, and Titus obediently shut up, shaking a little. “Titus, I am sorry. I am sorry. I would not — I did not understand. Please rise.” Titus obeyed, because he had no idea what else to do, but he was still bewildered. He risked a small glance at his husband, and to his surprise, he saw grief and regret in his face. “I’m sorry,” the prince said again, very softly, and Titus found he even believed him.

They were back where they started now, the awkwardness even heavier between them. Finally Titus’s husband moved to sit at the edge of the bed and gestured for Titus to sit beside him. “I thought it was a trade marriage, like any other,” the prince said very quietly. “The import terms, the militia, to pay for our protection, and your hand to unite our houses and prevent another attack. I was — it is not an excuse, I should have asked, I should have tried to know — but I was angry, and I had not forgotten what crest was on the fighters that shot me down with my sister over the seas of Anderida. I knew something was wrong, when they insisted on the witnesses, but I didn’t realize —” he fell silent, and Titus stared at his hands in a daze as his whole world swayed around him. “I didn’t realize the power I held over you,” the prince said, a long moment later. “If I…” he shifted on the bed, the soft sound moving cloth, and Titus opened his eyes to see the hilt of a slender knife held out to him. “If I forced you. If you thought I would force you to lie with me. In the Empire, that is an offense for which you may demand blood, and I will offer it if you ask.” Titus’s gaze snapped up from the knife to the prince’s face, astonished, but there was no mockery in his face, only a bone-deep shame.

“It was your right,” he began, but his husband only flinched, shaking his head sharply.

“Not that. Never that. Titus, if I forced you, in what I did last night or what I let you do this morning, let me pay for it.” His hand, as he held the knife out by the blade, was trembling slightly.

“You did not.” Titus’s voice felt strange in his throat; nothing had felt real from the moment he woke that morning. “Last night — I do not think it was your choice either, to take me like that. And this morning I chose, not out of fear of you, but of — of my own desire.” He took the knife, where Caius still held it out to him, and set it carefully on the ground at their feet. “I would not have you reproach yourself for something I willingly took on myself, at no urging of yours.”

“Willingly,” Caius repeated, wearily. “Very well. I suppose I should be grateful not to have that on my conscience.” But he sounded only tired, the sort of weary endless exhaustion Titus had been feeling for days on end, and something in his heart warmed at it. Cautiously, he rested a hand on Caius’s shoulder, taking a little courage when it wasn’t immediately thrown off.

“Caius.” His husband finally looked at him, and Titus mustered a small, somewhat tired smile. His husband, who had no desire to hurt him or humiliate him, who took no pleasure in his fear. It was a staggering thought, after so many weeks of thinking of marriage only as a threat and a prison.

“I don’t blame you if it takes more than my word to convince you,” Caius added, breaking in on Titus’s spiraling thoughts. There was still that rough note of shame in his face and his voice, but before Titus could offer any platitudes to the contrary he went on, “but I’ll — I would like to try, if you’ll allow me.”

“It is hardly a question of my allowing anything,” Titus said without thinking about it, and then felt guilty as he saw Caius’s expression pinch a little. “Yes, of course. And truly, even from the first I knew you would be better than Varro; it’s only… instinct, I suppose. He was a cruel man.”

“That he was,” Caius agreed, but he still looked vaguely sick, and Titus hadn’t the faintest idea how to reassure him, still a little too stunned by the complete upending of his entire world to put together the words he would need.

They sat in awkward silence for what felt like a small eternity, and then Caius said abruptly, “Fly with me,” and Titus’s head snapped up without his permission to stare at him, bewildered. “You said — yesterday morning, you were asking about the Aquillian wings. You should come try one for yourself.”

Titus was about to protest that he’d been stripped of his flying rank, and then he remembered that he belonged to his husband’s house now, and no one in the Licinian Federation had the right to tell him what he could or couldn’t do in an Aquillian fighter. “You should fly; you know your own craft better,” he said, in a last-ditch attempt at holding onto propriety, but Caius flapped a dismissive hand at him.

“I’m a gunner now; you’re the pilot. Come on, you’ll love it — I promise you, there’s no better wing in the galaxy. Handles like a dream with all the power of a solar flare at your back.” Titus thought about protesting more, but at the end of the day he really did want to be persuaded, and, well, if his husband was offering —

His own flight suit had already been returned to the quartermaster’s reserves, but Caius unlocked a cabinet in the hanger set aside for the Aquillian light craft and tossed him a set in the sleek synthetic and steel mesh of the Imperial uniforms. Titus had to admit he hardly minded the idea of going up in Aquillian colors — in his husband’s colors, when it came down to it, and then Caius was waving him up to the pilot’s seat in the low, sleek cockpit as he climbed up behind him to the wider gunner’s perch, where the body of the wing swelled out to make room for the heavy machinery of the guns.

“Send her up at will,” he heard Caius’s voice come through the comms link between their cockpits, a little grainy over the short-range transmission but still quite clear, and the controls under Titus’s hands came alight as he eased the wing into gear and the low-altitude lift hummed to life beneath them. The wide braced windows dimmed slightly as they shot out into the low sun, and the wing banked smooth and slow and easy as Titus guided them up and away from the staging camp, pulling the throttle open and engaging the long-range lift as they rose quickly up toward the higher layers of the atmosphere. He could feel Eporedia’s gravity beginning to fall away, the tell-tale hum of the atmospheric drag dying as they shot up into free-falling orbit. He’d gotten quite good at teasing performance out of the old, shaky Licinian wings that he’d flown for years, but the Imperial craft was truly in a league of its own. Titus didn’t even feel as though he was piloting a craft; the Aquillian wing felt like an extension of his own body.

“You handle her well.”

Caius’s voice, breaking in suddenly over the quiet comms link, was startling as much because of the quiet, gentle tone as the interruption itself. Titus flushed a little, grateful that his back was to Caius’s side of the wing.

“Thank you,” he said, maybe a little stiffly, but hopefully the short-range interference over the link would hide it well enough. It only took a few touches to ease them up even higher, stabilizing again into steady orbit as the wide grasslands rolled away underneath them. A little way ahead and above them, Titus could see the faint outline of the jump ring, gleaming in its orbit in the light of Eporedia’s faraway sun. For the first time since he’d learned of his impending marriage to Varro, Titus found he could look at it without dread.

“If you wanted,” Caius started, and then trailed off. Titus blinked.

“If I wanted?”

“To fly.” Titus was about to ask what the hell it looked like he was already doing, when Caius added, even more stilted, “With my unit.”

Flabbergasted, Titus sat back in the cockpit and stared unseeing at the glittering expanse of space before them. “With your unit,” he repeated, feeling like an idiot, but apparently there was no room for anything in his head but flat repetition. Not merely a coddled spouse, not just an unwelcome burden Caius felt he had to indulge and placate — Caius didn’t seem the sort of man to trifle about the management of his own cohort, and Titus knew that if the positions had been reversed it wouldn’t have been an offer he’d have made idly. He hoped, desperately, that it was true of Caius as well.

“Just… think about it, yes?” Caius said, like he thought Titus somehow needed convincing. Ahead of them the jump gate was falling into Eporedia’s shadow, the last rays of the nearby star gilding its rim for a moment before it slid away and only the guide lights around the warp frame were visible, blinking softly into the night.

“I will,” Titus said quietly. “Thank you, Caius.” Then they too slid into the shadows, but even there — alone in the dark, with a man who held Titus’s life in his hands — he couldn’t even begin to be afraid.