Beneath the Laurel Crown

She woke up in a body that was not hers and a name unfamiliar to her tongue.

Antonia suddenly finds herself as a servant working in the halls of the Roman Empire's Palace after a team-building trip gone wrong. After using her knowledge of modern-day medicine, Antonia finds herself stuck to the Emperor's side, serving the Roman Empire as an apothecary.

With attempts on her life, mystic forces calling out to her from a distant future, and more importantly with the pressure placed upon her hands to heal the dredges of Rome, how will this heroine survive in a time unfamiliar to her?

• • •

"If the gods wished to speak," he said at last, addressing the entire banquet, "they would not whisper through the hands of a servant. They would speak to me."

His voice rang clear, slicing through the lingering unease like a blade. Some nobles nodded. Others shifted uncomfortably.

Then, with the ghost of a smirk, the emperor lifted his goblet. "A toast," he declared, raising it high. "To Rome. And to men, not omens, shaping its future."

The hall hesitated-but only for a moment. Then, as if shaking off a spell, goblets were lifted, voices murmured their agreement, and the banquet resumed.

But I did not move. I could not. Because as the emperor took his first sip of wine, his gaze flickered-just for an instant-toward the door where the Augur had vanished.

And though his smirk remained, there was something else in his eyes.

Something that told me the omen had not been ignored.

Not truly.