The Alpha Emperor's Courtesan

Cold

Rin left me alone in the room, with no words beyond ‘your bedroom’.

My head was filled with a thousand different thoughts: I wondered where the two women who had been sold to work as slaves were now, and what their rooms were like, and what had happened to Jax after I was taken away by the soldier. Despite everything that I was thinking of, and all the things I assumed I would never know the answers to, I couldn’t take my mind off my encounter with the Emperor.

I had decided that I would never call him that - he had introduced himself as Caius, and that is what I would call him. I did not want him to feel like he was superior to me, or to give him the satisfaction of hearing a woman from a conquered tribe refer to him by that title. But I did want to see him again…

I was angry at myself for that, but the memory of his fingers on my skin sent a shiver through me, which was somehow both revulsion that he had touched me and a desire for him to do it again. He was attractive, and he was charismatic enough that even when he was unpleasant and patronizing, I found him appealing on some level. But he was also the man who had taken everything from me, and the reason I was alone in this room, a lifetime away from everything I had known and loved.

I tried to think about whether I could be happy here, and how I could try to bring some joy into this new life.

I didn’t even know what I was expected to do here, and the only things that Caius had told me did not instill me with confidence. He had, apparently, decided I would be his companion at events I did not want to attend with people who spat in my face and called me a savage.

A gentle breeze rustled the drapes of fabric covering the window in my room, and a moment later, a chill went through me.

The sheer dress was pleasant in the balmy heat of the evening, but as the temperature dropped I started to get cold.

I looked around the little room, searching for something to cover myself with. There were no other clothes - there was a pile of cushions on the floor, which were similar to the ones the girls had been sitting on as they ate their meal downstairs. I guessed that was supposed to be my bed, and that I would have to spend tonight freezing in this stupid dress.

I wondered if it was a test - if perhaps I was supposed to show them I was brave enough to go and get something to cover myself with or to tear down one of the drapes. Or if they wanted to know if I was compliant enough to shiver in silence.

Maybe they would report back to Caius so he could decide whether I was acceptable or not.

In the end, I couldn’t stand the cold. I was alone, and the building was eerily silent - I suppose the other women were all out with whoever had paid for their company for the evening.

I decided that trying to find something to keep myself warm was worth the risk of being reprimanded for leaving the room. Rin had only said ‘your bedroom.’ She had not told me to stay, or that I was a prisoner there.

I was still cautious about it as I stepped out of the room - the huge man who had taken us to the Emperor seemed to be some sort of guard, and I didn’t want to risk him getting angry at me.

The hallway was empty and silent. There were a number of other rooms, but two of them had heavy drapes covering them, and I realized that all of these rooms were bedrooms. I thought that the rooms with the drapes may be the ones other women were sleeping in at the moment, but when I looked back at my own bedroom, there was no drape for me to use to give myself some privacy. Maybe those women were prostitutes - perhaps they were allowed the privacy of a drape because it was necessary for them to perform their jobs.

I wondered whether Rin was behind one of those drapes, or if she had her own room somewhere else. I also questioned whether she was just another courtesan, or if her role was something different. She was older than the others, but I did not know anything about this life or the people I would encounter in it.

I moved quietly to the top of the stairs and peered down - there didn’t seem to be anybody down there. There was no sign of flickering lamps illuminating the rooms, and no noise indicating a hushed conversation.

I was tempted to explore further, but I was worried that they might think I was trying to escape, even though the idea of running through the streets of Rome in this see-through gown with no weapon to defend myself was laughable.

Eventually, I turned away from the stairs and went into one of the unoccupied bedrooms. It was clearly the room of one of the other girls, and there was a piece of polished metal on a table so that she could apply her cosmetics and style her hair. There was clothing folded neatly in a small recess in the wall, and a number of expensive-looking items like vases and cups, which I assumed were the spoils of her more fruitful relationships with clients.

I picked out an item of clothing from the pile and hoped that whoever this woman was, she would be forgiving of the fact that a newcomer with absolutely nothing had borrowed something to keep warm overnight.

That was probably my first real mistake - slapping Caius had not ended in any retribution, but if I had known what the consequences were for taking that gown to keep myself warm... I would just have suffered through the cold.