This couldn't be happening.
Marcellus was alone in his villa and not out finding somewhere to get drunk and party for once. How could he be? Augustus was about to die, the uncle who had raised him throughout his teenage years and into adulthood.
And he was about to pass the power on to his general, not him.
He pounded his fist into the cushion full of feathers that he had bunched in his lap in the sitting room. This place, it smelled faintly of the light perfume Julia used. Julia, the daughter of the emperor, the one who had been given to him in marriage because Marcellus was the one who should be ascending to the throne. What had been the point of all that if Augustus was just going to give the authority to Agrippa instead!
He couldn't believe it. Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa the commone
