Ron’s hand was still on his shoulder. Marcus didn’t shrug it off, but he tipped his face toward the ground for a moment. Gathered his thoughts and braced himself.

Before he could finally leave, he had yet another role to play. One he’d been perfecting for most of a decade, and one he’d wanted to leave behind with greater fervency as each of those years ticked past.

Marcus Caster-Rupp.

Friendly. Vain. Dim as that smoky battlefield surrounding them.

He was a well-groomed golden retriever, proud of the few tricks he’d miraculously learned.

“When we began looking for our Aeneas, we knew we had to find an athletic actor. Someone who could portray a leader of men and a lover of women. And above all else . . .” Ron lifted a hand and pinched Marcus’s cheek, lingeringly enough that he might have felt the flush of sudden rage. “A pretty face. We couldn’t have found prettier, not if we’d searched for another decade.”

The crew laughed.

Marcus’s stomach churned.

Another pinch, and he forced himself to grin smugly. To toss his hair and shed his armor so he could show the unseen audience the flex of his biceps, even as he moved out of Ron’s reach. Then the showrunner and the crew were urging Marcus to say something, to make a speech in honor of all his years on the series.

Impromptu speaking. Would this fucking day never fucking end?

The role, though, surrounded him like an embrace. Familiar. Comforting, if increasingly claustrophobic. In its confines, he knew what to do. What to say. Who to be.

“Five years ago . . .” He turned to Ron. “Wait. How many years have we been filming now?”

Their boss chuckled indulgently. “Seven.”

“Seven years ago, then.” Marcus gave an unembarrassed shrug, beaming toward the camera. “Seven years ago, we started filming, and I had no idea what was in store for all of us. I’m very grateful for this role, and for our audience. Since you needed”—he made himself say it—“a pretty face, I’m glad mine was the prettiest you saw. Not surprised, but glad.”

He arched an eyebrow, settling his fists on his hips in a heroic pose, and waited for more laughter. This time, directed and deliberately elicited by him.

That bit of control settled his stomach, if only a little.

“I’m also glad you found so many other pretty faces to act alongside.” He winked at Carah. “Not as pretty as mine, of course, but pretty enough.”

More smiles from the crew and an eye roll from Carah.

He could leave now. He knew it. This was all anyone outside his closest colleagues and crew members expected of him.

Still, he had to say one last thing, because this was his last day. This was the end of seven damn years of his life, years of endless hard work and challenges and accomplishments and the joy that came from doing that work, meeting those challenges, and finally, finally allowing himself to count those accomplishments as worthwhile and his.

He could now ride a horse like he’d been doing it his whole life.

The sword master said he was the best in the cast with a weapon in hand and had the fastest feet of any actor she’d ever met.

At long last, he’d learned to pronounce Latin with an ease his parents had both acknowledged and deemed a bitter irony.

Over his time on Gods of the Gates, he’d been nominated for five major acting awards. He’d never won, of course, but he had to believe—he did believe—that the nominations didn’t simply reward a pretty face, but also acknowledged skill. Emotional depth. The public might believe him an acting savant, able to ape intelligence despite having none of his own, but he knew the work he’d put into his craft and his career.

None of that would have been possible without the crew.

He angled away from the cameras to look at some of those people, and to obscure the change in his expression. “Finally, I want to thank everyone behind the scenes of our show. There are nearly a thousand of you, and I—I can’t—” The sincere words tangled his tongue, and he paused for a moment. “I can’t imagine how any series could have found a more dedicated, knowledgeable group. So to all the producers, stunt performers, location managers, dialect coaches, production designers, costume designers, hair and makeup artists, VFX and SFX people, and so many others: Thank you. I, um, owe you more than I can express.”

There. It was done. He’d managed to say it without stumbling too much.

Later, he’d grieve and consider his next steps. Now, he simply needed to wash and rest.

After a final round of embarrassing applause and a few claps on the back and hugs and handshakes, he made his escape. To his trailer for a quick wash at the sink, and then to his generic Spanish hotel room, where a very, very long and well-deserved shower awaited him.

At least he thought he’d made his escape, until Vika Andrich caught up with him just outside the hotel lobby entrance.

“Marcus! Do you have a minute?” Her voice somehow remained steady, even though she was jogging over from the parking lot in sensible heels. “I had a few questions about the big sequence you’re filming now.”

He wasn’t entirely surprised to spot her. Once or twice a year, she’d show up wherever they were shooting and get whatever on-site impressions and interviews she could, and those articles were always especially popular on her blog. Of course she’d want to cover the end of the series’s filming in person.

Unlike some other reporters, she’d respect his privacy if he asked for space. He even liked her. That wasn’t the problem.

The other qualities that made her his favorite entertainment-blogger-slash-paparazzo also made her his least favorite: She was friendly. Funny. Easy to relax around. Too easy.

She was also smart. Smart enough to have spied something . . . off . . . about him.

Offering her a wide smile, he stopped inches short of freedom. “Vika, you know I can’t tell you anything about what’s happening this season. But if you think your readers want to see me covered in mud”—he winked—“and we both know they do, then feel free to take a picture or two.”

He posed, presenting her with what he’d been told was his best side, and she got a couple of shots.

“I know you can’t tell me anything specific,” she said, checking the images, “but maybe you could describe the sixth season in three words?”

Tapping his chin, he furrowed his brow. Playacted deep thought for long moments.

“I know!” He brightened and turned a pleased grin on her. “Last. One. Ever. I hope that helps.”

Her eyes narrowed, and she studied him for a beat too long.

Then, confronted with the blinding gleam of her own innocent smile, he had to blink.

“I guess . . .” She trailed off, still smiling. “I guess I need to find one of the other actors to ask about how the show’s ending deviates from both E. Wade’s books and, of course, Homer’s Aeneid. Aeneas ended up married to Dido in both those stories, but the show might have taken a different approach.”

Homer? What the fuck?

And Dido was long, looooong dead by the end of the Aeneid. By the final page of the third Gods of the Gates book, she was alive but decidedly no longer interested in Aeneas, although he supposed that could change if Wade ever released the last two books in the series.

Somewhere, Virgil was probably uttering Latin curses as he shifted in his grave, and by all rights, E. Wade should be side-eyeing Vika from her lavish compound in Hawaii.

He pinched his forehead with a thumb and forefinger, absently noting the dirt beneath his nails. Dammit, someone needed to correct such grievous misapprehensions.

“The Aeneid wasn’t—” Vika’s brows rose with his first words, and her phone was recording, and he saw the trick. Oh, yes, he saw it. “The Aeneid isn’t something I’ve read, sadly. I’m sure Homer is very talented, but I’m not much of a reader in general.”

The last bit, at least, had once been true. Before he’d discovered fanfic and audiobooks, he hadn’t read much besides his scripts, and he’d labored over those only until he’d learned them well enough to record them, loop the recording, and play the words back to himself over and over.

She tapped her screen, and her own recording ended. “Thank you, Marcus. It was kind of you to talk to me.”

“My pleasure, Vika. Good luck with your other interviews.” With a final flash of a vapid smile, he was finally inside the hotel and trudging toward the elevator.

After pressing the button for his floor, he leaned heavily against the wall and closed his eyes.

Soon, he was going to have to grapple with his persona. Where it chafed, how it had served him in the past, and how it served him still. Whether shedding it would be worth the consequences to his personal life and career.

But not today. Fuck, he was tired.

Back in his hotel room, the shower felt just as good as he’d hoped. Better.

Afterward, he powered on his laptop and ignored the scripts sent by his agent. Choosing his next project—one that would hopefully take his career in a new direction—could wait too, as could checking his Twitter and Instagram accounts.

The only thing that definitely needed to happen before he slept for a million years: sending a direct message to Unapologetic Lavinia Stan. Or Ulsie, as he’d begun calling her, to her complete disgust. Ulsie is a good name for a cow, and only for a cow, she’d written. But she hadn’t told him to stop, and he hadn’t. The nickname, one he alone used, pleased him more than it should.

He logged on to the Lavineas server he’d helped create several years ago for the use of the lively, talented, ever-supportive Aeneas/Lavinia fanfic community. On AO3, he still occasionally dabbled in Aeneas/Dido fanfic, but less and less often these days. Especially once Ulsie had become the primary beta and proofreader for all Book!AeneasWouldNever’s stories.

She lived in California, and she’d still be at work. She wouldn’t be able to respond immediately to his messages. If he didn’t DM her tonight, though, he wouldn’t have her response first thing in the morning, and he needed that. More and more as each week passed.