Alex
Rome
48 AD
“HE’S A BASTARD!”
I was used to the word.
It was tossed in my face during every waking moment that I saw my father, though he wasn’t my father by blood.
One look was all it took.
He was ugly.
Wearing his sin and darkness on the outside, like a cape wrapped around his body, his every step was cloaked with a heaviness of despair as if one faulty stumble would cause his overly large body to fall to the earth, cracking the marble floor in half with a resounding slice.
He limped toward the balcony, my mother followed, her ever-present smirk in place.
She was horrible.
A disgusting human being who fed off others’ pain the way that most humans were taught to feed off love.
She manipulated.
And she was good at it.
It was why the immortals cursed her with me.
I was a curse.
Though, at the time, she had thought I was a blessing, it made sense after all, the immortals blessing the most beautiful of the Emperor’s wives with a son who was prettier than most males should be.
As I walked through halls of gold, males and females alike stared at me with wide-eyed curiosity, I needed only to look at them and know that they wanted me in every physical way possible.
I never acted on it.
They weren’t worthy of my love.
Nobody was.
And sharing my body with a human would mean love, wouldn’t it?
Nobody had taught me about love.
Except my best friend.
A serving girl.
She’d held my hand.
And even though I was a bastard — I was royalty.
And she’d dared to touch me.
So my father slit her throat.
Blood still stained the dagger he held in his hands. My mother thought it funny. “Claudious, really, she was just a girl.”
“No girl will touch him.”