"Move, whore, you're blocking the light."

I fought down the thousandth urge to touch my puffy, purpled cheek, in the place just under my left eye—the bruise had formed there the night before, and it would be there tomorrow night, slowly healing. What had happened had happened: I did not need a bruise to confirm it.

Shifting my fingers a little on the corners of the papyrus scroll I was holding open against the table, I stepped to the side, knowing full well a shadow was nothing to Master's unnaturally superior vision, but I had learned long ago that it was best that I did as I was told without objection. Long considering the day I was sold as the day of my birth, I had been fifteen for a few months now, but Master's insults had rarely changed, and I suspected they rarely would in the future. To say they no longer hurt me would be a lie, for I knew the truth in them: I submitted to my master as a whore did his or her client, and therefore I was as he named me.

The candle's glow revealed the contents of both the aged scroll I held open, which had been stored on a high shelf on the other side of the library in which we were stationed, and of the new vellum scroll which Master had propped open with a few polished stones. (I carried these, along with a few styluses, several reed-pens, and a set of small jars of black and colored inks in a special box, which Master required me to bring for him to his various places of work. I had accidentally dropped that box once, perhaps a year after I had been sold to him, and his fury at all the things I had broken had haunted my dreams for weeks.)

From my first few nights in his presence, I had known that my master's line of work was to copy and embellish illustrated books that might be considered distasteful—even by the people of our nation. His clients, whether human or of his kind, were almost always wealthy, for Master would work with only the finest materials, and he expected a great profit from his great expense. Even my untrained eye could see his talent, and I had long hated him for it: a man who could be so terrible to me and yet so pleasant to everyone else should not deserve to be given such artistic ability by the Muses.

The piece whose colors he was finishing up now—a labor of the past week—was nothing short of erotica. Around the elegant script of the story—a manual of instruction as much as a tale of debauchery—was a variety of creatures, human and half-human, in various labeled sexual positions. A few of these oversexed beasts possessed the upper body and genitals of a man, joined to the legs and tail of a goat; these creatures possessed the cone-shaped ears of a goat, sticking straight out from either side of their heads, also. I had seen similar images and statues of these goat-men throughout my life in Rome, but it seemed I could not remember what they were called... Had Master taken their name from me, knowing the absent memory would be such a great frustration to my curious mind?

My gaze wandered over the rest of the work. The intercourse itself that was depicted in this book would not be found objectionable by most: examples of it were everywhere throughout the city. But the blood, and the fangs Master had added to some of the mouths of the lovers in his copy of the work, would drive away many of those who enjoyed the violence at the Colosseum—even if this particular copy was not being made for a member of Master's own species, or if their laws did not demand that the very existence of that species be kept secret.

On any other night, I might have fidgeted or tried to otherwise disobey Master's orders to watch him at his work. But, whether because of what happened to me the night before or not, tonight I could not look away.

Master had deemed me responsible enough to buy my own food for the day at the nearby market—without trying to run away—since I was ten years old, and therefore I was no longer tied up, unless I had been especially unruly in his eyes. Aside from these trips for food, my schedule had been largely nocturnal for years, and so when I woke yesterday evening, the sky was pink with dusk.

I had been given a thin blanket to keep me warm during the cool nights of the winter months—though it never grew terribly cold here, Master would have thought my freezing to death a waste—and I remained lying under it for a moment, thinking on the soldier I had accidentally brushed shoulders with in the market earlier that day. His dark hair, his aquiline nose, his strong jaw, his muscular limbs... A peculiar thrilling sensation had rushed upward through my belly when we had, for that instant, made contact, and I felt it again now. I wondered how far beneath his tunic those muscles extended...

I felt a stiffness slowly form in my groin. I sat up, pulled down the blankets, loosened the belt of my tunic and pulled up its skirt, and stared at the change in my body. Though I had possessed features associated with the groin of a grown man for at least a year now, still I could grow no beard, and never before had physical desire risen in me. Apparently the gods thought I was not as unworthy of this as Master—and, therefore, I—had thought.

Abruptly I yearned to explore something that would surely have been forbidden had Master been awake. My heart racing, I pulled off my tunic and sat on my blanket with my knees slightly bent, and allowed myself to imagine the soldier at his bath. My fingers trailed down my chest and belly as he poured river-water over his head and the liquid droplets descended his body. I grasped the place of my pleasure as he rubbed the water into his skin—he was a mere foot soldier, so he would not have been able to afford soap or even olive oil to wash with—and a gasp was torn from me when I allowed my hand to move back and forth around it.

The sensation felt better than I had ever wondered.

Soon I grew lightheaded, and turned to lie on my belly upon the blanket, and trembled. A sweet warmth filled me. My hips began to rock slightly, against the rhythm my hand had taken, and as my head tipped back and my eyes fluttered halfway shut and my mouth fell open with the gasping sounds that flew from between my lips, the rest of the world fell away. There was only this sensation of weightlessness, of physical affection, and it was so—so—

I cried out as my pleasure reached its height, the space behind my eyes throbbing once with a feeling release in my groin, and for a moment I thought consciousness would leave me.

I came back down into myself slowly. I became aware that I was still panting slightly, and aftershocks of warmth were still flooding me in small pulses, and I was still trembling.

I had never felt so good in all my life.

Then I was lying flat on my back, my cheek burning, and I realized what had happened only as I saw Master draw back his fist from the point where he had struck me. He was panting, his lips drawn back from those painfully sharp teeth, and the look in his eyes turned my blood to ice.

I shrank away from him, suddenly desperate to make excuses I knew he would not heed—

"Look!" He grabbed me by the back of the neck and shoved the wet section of my blanket in my face with his free hand, like a man showing a dog the bad deed it had done by urinating on the floor. But what I had expelled was not urine. "Look at the mess you've made, you slut! Look at it, you stupid whore!" He hit me again, in the same place, and a small scream escaped me before I could stop it.

"Do you want to be fucked? Is that what you want?" Master yanked on my shoulder so that I fell on my front on the floor. I watched him loosen his belt out of the corner of my eye, and did not resist, knowing that doing so would only worsen the experience. He knelt over me and entered me roughly. Each hard thrust was more painful than the one before it.

"Perhaps I've let you grow too old," he muttered.

I squeezed my eyes shut, wishing lust had never come to me. I knew from then on that it would only result in guilt and pain, and I was wrong to feel it.

And I was more determined than ever to end my master's life.

A slap on the sore side of my face brought me back to the present. "I said I was finished here!" Master snapped, and I hurried to carefully gather his materials in their box. The lustful book had dried during my reminiscence; carefully I rolled up the scroll and handed it to my master. Carrying the box of implements in both hands, I followed him out of the library at his beckoning gesture, knowing that the librarian here—who was of the same kind as my master, and who had allowed us entry to the building—would soon be along to put the old scroll in its proper place.

The next night I accompanied Master to a party that his current client was holding. The event had been announced a couple of weeks ago, in order to give Master enough time to finish the book, so that it might be unveiled tonight at the gathering.

The scroll in question was in my hands as we stepped into the atrium. The slight smile on Master's face had my stomach in knots. Was he merely looking forward to the silver he would be paid tonight, or was he also planning some new misfortune for me?

I stared at the pool of water in the middle of the room, lit by the few lamps that had been hung from the ceiling so that I and the few other humans present could view and envy the splendor around us, and I wished I could drown myself in it.

"Servius!" The booming call belonged to a large, fleshy man with a red face that I knew was often given to smiling—even when beating his own slaves. He had been a repeat customer of my master's—it seemed as though he requested a new work every few months—and Master's satisfaction with his payment was a blessing to me, for within the gleam of denarii I was sometimes, if not often, invisible.

"It is good to see you again, Domitius," replied my master as they shook hands. I had not yet figured out whether he honestly viewed Domitius as a friend, or merely tolerated him because of his generous payments.

"Excellent, it looks lovely!" Domitius cried as his gaze lit on the rolled vellum in my hands, which Master had tied closed with a length of blue cord.

"You've seen nothing yet!" Master laughed—the sound, although it was no different from any other man's laugh, turned my stomach—as he allowed himself to be led past several closed doors and a small garden to the dining room. I followed close behind them, removing Master's sandals when we reached the room, and stood behind his dining couch as he reclined upon it. The couch opposite his groaned as Domitius lay back; the other two, completing a square, were occupied by another, if smaller, man, and lastly a dark-skinned woman who must have been of Master's species as well, because when a quartet of slaves brought out goblets for the guests and their host, the liquid in them was the unmistakable dark red of blood.

The sight of it might have once nauseated me, but Master had long ago ensured that I would be far too accustomed to its presence for it to sicken me now.

"Show us your master's latest creation, boy," said Domitius, nodding to the scroll.

I hoped my sweat would not leave marks on the vellum as I glanced to my master, who gave a short nod. Cautiously I untied the cord and, ensuring the inside would be facing the client, unrolled the scroll.

There was a quiet, collective gasp as everyone gazed at the contents.

Domitius, thank the gods, was beaming. He was always pleased with Master's works, but I have found that it is never unwise to anticipate the consequences of a customer's dissatisfaction. He held up his goblet: "To a new story, and a new sexual adventure!"

Master took a sip of the blood along with the others. A dark brow rose. "It has a very nutty flavor. What did you feed this human?"

"He ate nothing but almonds from the time I announced this party would occur. He was a beautiful Greek boy, just on the cusp of puberty." Domitius took a gulping swallow. "Delicious."

Now, thinking of my own sexual maturity two nights before, I felt dizziness threaten the edges of my consciousness. But I could not give in to it: I must keep my wits, or else I would be punished later.

Two more courses of blood were brought out—one served in goblets as before, the third a kind of soup—before the small man protested he could not hold any more, and Domitius was forced to wave the servants away when Master and the dark woman agreed with him.

Domitius beckoned me forward; I handed him the scroll. He read softly to himself, and when he had finished the tale he handed it to his sole female guest to peruse. He removed the purse from his belt and, briefly glancing at the coins inside it, tossed it to Master with a lazy motion of his arm; Master's hand blurred to catch it. "That's more than your original price; the work is beyond exquisite."

Two large fingers pressed against Domitius's lips. "Would the rest be sufficient payment for me to have your boy help me try out some of these new positions you've painted in my book?"

I glanced back at my master, my heart pounding. He had often shown himself to be a selfish man—surely this trait of his, that my hungry belly had cursed so many times, would now save me from humiliation?

That hint of a smirk was back. "As his master, I reserve any beating or partaking of his blood as my right alone. Otherwise, each of you can use him as you wish."

So he had been planning a new misfortune.

But perhaps Domitius, out of some insecurity for his own less-than-fit body, would take me in private. Master had hit me in public many times, but he had confined his worst punishments to our apartment. My disgust and embarrassment for my bruised, branded, ugly body—which Master had, of course, instilled in me from a young age—were expressions viewed by the sun alone. Did these people really wish to view them on my face as they raped me?

Domitius snapped his fingers. "Remove your clothing, boy."

Slowly, I bent to undo my sandals, slipping them from my feet, and set them aside. I began to untie my belt. The woven cords were slick in my sweating palms.

I knew I would not be able to meet the eyes of my audience once I was naked. The lust in them was the last thing I wanted to see.

I thought of the discipline of soldiers standing at attention. I fixed my gaze on a point high on the opposite wall—and swallowed when I saw a pair of the goat-men who had pestered my thoughts the night before. Their red cheeks were as vivid as those on Master's book. They were dancing with a group of nymphs, kissing the female figures' slender necks and cupping their breasts in their hands. The bright, staring eyes of the goat-men caused an inexplicable shiver to ascend my spine, but I held my gaze, silently daring them to leap from the wall and kill me.

I would count my death as a blessing from the gods.

Finally, I pulled my tunic over my head—so conscious of how it revealed my skin, inch by insufferable inch—and it slipped from sweaty fingers to the floor.

My naked body prickled with the sweeping gazes of four pairs of eyes.

"Where did he get those markings?" Domitius, of course; I watched his finger trace the air over my tattoos out of the corner of my eye. He rose to his feet with a grunt and circled me, slowly; I allowed my eyes to glaze over in an expression of submission when his gaze flickered to mine.

I did not have to see Master's smile to know it was there. "I commissioned them. They're of Gaulish origin—little reminders of his place in our world."

Domitius's finger pressed against the circular brand on the back of my right shoulder, tracing the maze within it. I suppressed a shudder: his touch was perhaps even colder than my master's. Was temperature—or, rather, a lack of one—an indication of how old a member of their species was?

I hoped I would not live long enough to confirm this observation.

"He's a little old for your tastes, isn't he?" the dark woman asked Domitius, gesturing to the evidence of my physical maturity.

"I think he's at a perfect age," Master interrupted before his host could reply. His tone was harsh, and I resisted the urge to cower at the sound of it. Did he feel guilt because he had not yet killed me? "He's beardless, but if you wanted to be penetrated, he could be the one to do it. I caught him touching himself the night before last. When they're old enough to do that, the services they could provide only get better and better. He's become my skilled little helper in trying out new positions, and I can tell you now that each of those on that scroll is excellent."

Now the small man and the dark woman were regarding me with gleaming eyes.

A smile suddenly began to lurk at the corners of Domitius's mouth. "What does he like?"

"He's partial to soldiers," Master replied, and I knew he was smiling also. "He wants to become one when he's old enough—can you believe it?"

It was as though someone had taken a knife and dragged it straight down my chest, cutting it in two.

Had Master's ability to hypnotize taken even my most closely guarded secret from me?

Domitius laughed as he reclined once again on his dining couch. "With how small he is? The armor would be much too heavy for him." Then, seeming to notice my fixed gaze, turned his head and looked at the lustful goat-men before returning his eyes to me. "Have you ever seen a satyr, boy?"

Ah, yes, that was what they were called!

I made sure to keep my satisfaction behind the walls of my face as I answered him, "No, sir."

"They work in service to Bacchus—make sure he's worshipped properly and all that. They can take on the shapes of any creature they wish, in order to better fulfill their duties—even one of us, if it's convenient. All they have to do is see someone, or a likeness of him, and they can take his shape. I've never met one, but this story—" he gestured to the scroll, now in the hands of the diminutive man "—seems to give an excellent account of what they're like. Did your master have you read it?"

"Yes, sir."

Domitius gestured with a large hand. "Recite."

I swallowed, my heat racing. I suspected, because of the story's contents, why Domitius would have me tell the story aloud when everyone here had already read it themselves. But, although the story was originally Greek, Master had retold it in Latin. Because of this and the familiar, icy gaze I could feel boring into my lower back, I was powerless to refuse him.

"An old man had traveled with his young daughter to the city of Argos, so that they might make their living there. But Neptune, angry at Hera for claiming the land as her own, had dried up even the smallest springs. The old man knew he could not live without water, but, being too tired from his journey to search for water, sent his daughter to look for some instead. So the girl took up her father's spear and set out in search of water.

"Now, the girl's name was Amymone, and she was as beautiful as Helen of Troy, with long, golden tresses and bouncing curves. A servant of Dionysus, whose name was Tityroi, saw the young woman as she walked through his wood and lusted for her. He changed his shape from that of a man and a goat to a deer, and lay down in a clearing. Amymone saw the antlers of the stag and knew he would make a fine meal for her father's table.

"But, just as she threw her father's spear, Tityroi regained his true form and caught her weapon, tossing it aside on the ground. Erect with lust, he caught her in his arms, attended to have sex with her.

"But she screamed and begged the aid of Neptune, the very same god who hid the water she sought to find. He appeared in the clearing as a giant soldier, twice the size of a mortal man, naked but for a cloak, helmet, and spear..."

I felt my groin begin to harden. Several snickers from Domitius and his guests reached my ears.

"Go on," said my master's host.

"Seeing the might of Neptune, the satyr ran away. Neptune made himself small, as tall as a mortal man, so as not to frighten the girl. He asked Amymone why she was wandering the wood unattended, and she replied that her father had sent her to seek out water, for without it they would surely perish. Neptune, seeing how pretty the girl was, promised to return water to the land if she would lie with him. She agreed, and he lowered her to the ground—" I stopped. The rest of the tale was instructional—surely I would not need to finish it?

"That's enough," said Master's host, his eyes on the space between my legs, and untied his belt. He pulled up the end of his tunic, patting himself. "Hop on, then, boy, and show me the rest."

I swallowed bile as I straddled his hips with my back to him, and closed my eyes as he thrust upward into me. I rolled my hips slightly as I moved on him, as Master had taught me, and prayed to Venus that it was sweat and not tears that I felt rolling down my cheeks.

Author's Note: Godric's flashbacks will most likely be skipping around in his life from here on out, depending on which memories the events of the present bring up, as I decided this would make more sense than having them merely go in chronological order. Rest assured that I will make sure to try and lessen any confusion this might cause by telling you how old he is, or if a current memory has happened before or after a previous one, but if you still have questions, feel free to ask, whether by PM or review!