I Enslaved The Goddess Who Summoned Me

Chapter 447: The Daughter of House Junii

That night, the moonlight filtered softly through the silk-draped windows of one of Rome’s most opulent estates. Gilded marble columns gleamed in the faint light, and fountains whispered in the distance, their waters dancing with the scent of blooming laurels and jasmine. Within the grand atrium of this magnificent residence—second in grandeur only to the private palace of Marcus Crassus—Servilia Junia sat hunched in quiet reflection, her figure cloaked in the heavy folds of a deep violet stola.

The villa was silent but not asleep. Its quietude was more akin to reverence than slumber, as though every stone and statue recognized that this house was home to a woman unlike any other in Rome.

Servilia—the only daughter of the late Patriarch of House Junii—was more than a noblewoman. She was the living legacy of one of Rome’s oldest and most venerable bloodlines. Her father, a man known for both his wisdom and his iron will, had adored her beyond reason. While many Roman men of his stature might have lamented the absence of a male heir, he had never once considered adopting a son or taking in an ambitious boy from another family to carry on the Junii name. The very thought disgusted him.

“To give power to a stranger is to give death to my blood,” he had once said with a thunderous certainty that left no room for debate.

Instead, from the moment Servilia had taken her first breath, he had poured his love, his dreams, and his legacy into her. He raised her not as a girl destined for marriage and motherhood, but as a sovereign in her own right. And Servilia had never disappointed him.

Though pampered in her youth with every luxury Rome could afford—pearled dresses from Alexandria, emeralds from the East, and poets to lull her to sleep—Servilia never succumbed to the decadence that devoured so many daughters of the elite. No. She had taken her father’s teachings with a seriousness that belied her years. She learned not only the art of statecraft but the soul of Rome itself.

By the age of ten, she could recite Roman law better than most senators. By twelve, she debated philosophers and outwitted seasoned orators. Her tutors—carefully selected Stoics, Platonists, and historians—spoke of her as a once-in-a-century mind. And by fourteen, she had become a shadowed power in the political world, consulted in secret by men who feared to be seen begging wisdom from a woman… yet came anyway, unable to resist her insight.

She was, quite simply, unchallengeable.

In time, Servilia grew into a woman who inspired both awe and unease. Her beauty was striking—cold and commanding rather than delicate—with light green eyes that saw through deception and a voice that could melt a crowd or silence a room with equal ease. She was the kind of woman whose presence made Rome’s most powerful men glance away first.

It was said even the Pope of Athena’s Church had traveled in person to bless her—a gesture never before extended to a mere mortal. Crassus himself, that lion of Roman wealth and ambition, had once declared at a banquet that “Servilia Junia is Rome itself—impossibly proud, dangerously brilliant, and completely untamable.”

But no matter how high she soared, one truth never changed: the foundation of it all was her father.

He had been her teacher, her guardian, and her only family. He had never asked her to be anyone but herself. And when the end finally came, when the fever took him and he lay pale and weak upon his bed beneath the carved lions of the Junii tomb hall, his final words had not been of wealth or legacy.

He had simply held her hand, his once-commanding voice reduced to a whisper, and said, “You shouldn’t be alone, my daughter. Find someone… not for power, but for your heart. A man who will not take from you, but give. Find a family you can love.”

Then, as though waiting for her promise, he closed his eyes and exhaled his last breath.

Servilia mourned him for a full week without food or rest, shrouded in black silk, her household veiled in mourning. Rome paused with her. Senators sent tributes. Generals offered prayers. But none of it could mend the hollow space in her chest.

When at last she emerged from her grief, it was with new resolve.

She would honor his wish.

She would try.

But what man in Rome could possibly match her? What noble son, what golden boy, what ambitious patrician could stand at her side without being crushed beneath her intellect or overshadowed by her presence?

She had met them all.

All lacking.

And so, in the end, Servilia did something none expected. She turned away from the glimmering heights of Roman high society and chose a man from the lesser echelons of political life—a quiet, unassuming youth, the son of a low-ranking senator whose name was barely known outside the forum walls.

She had picked him herself.

There had been no grand ceremony, no declarations of eternal love. It was a calculated decision, driven by duty more than passion. She had reasoned that if she could not find a man to match her, then she would find one who could be molded. Someone who would not fight her. Someone submissive. Harmless.

And submissive he was.

At their wedding, he could barely hold her gaze. When she spoke, he lowered his eyes like a servant before a queen. He stammered when addressed, and though he tried to carry himself with dignity, it was clear to all that this was a marriage of convenience—of power, not love.

Servilia had not been surprised.

Nor was she disappointed.

Love was not something she expected… but perhaps, over time, she thought, she might build something from the ashes of obedience. Or so she hoped.

The night she gave birth to her son—the only child she ever bore and the only time she ever shared a bed with the man who was, by Roman law and name, her husband.

That single moment of unity, brief and emotionless, had produced something infinitely more precious than the man himself. The boy… her son… Brutus.

The first time she laid eyes upon him, red and fragile in the arms of a midwife, something within her cracked open. Something she had not felt since her father’s passing. A smile—soft, pure, and unfamiliar—had curved her lips that day. For the first time in years, her heart had beat with warmth instead of steel.

Brutus became her everything.

Her light, her purpose, her legacy.

She raised him with a devotion that rivaled the Gods themselves, instilling in him the same discipline, the same ruthlessness of intellect, and the same unyielding pride her own father had once cultivated in her. If anything, she was even stricter—unyielding in her expectations and merciless in shaping him into a future titan of Rome.

And as for the man who had helped conceive him? He had quickly faded from relevance, a flickering candle extinguished by the dawn. Timid and weak-willed, he had never once tried to stand beside her as a partner. In truth, he had barely dared to breathe the same air in her presence. After Brutus’s birth, he found every excuse to escape the estate—to travel, to retreat, to vanish for days under the flimsiest of pretenses.

Servilia had been bitterly disappointed.

Not because she desired his affection—but because she had expected, at the very least, courage. The dignity of fatherhood. But he offered neither.

Brutus, too, had sensed the absence. A boy’s heart, hungry for a father’s affection, grew heavier with each passing day of silence and avoidance. And so, seeing her son’s sorrow and recognizing her husband’s cowardice, Servilia had cast the man out.

Not with anger, nor scandal—but with cold finality.

To the man himself, it had been a relief. He left eagerly, even gratefully. And yet, within a week, the city whispered of his fate. He had been found dead in an alleyway near the Forum. A dagger in his ribs. No one claimed the body for days.

Assassinated, most likely, by one of the many enemies House Junii had earned over the decades—those who hated Servilia’s strength, her intellect, her very existence. His death sparked little public interest. Rome moved on.

But Servilia had done her duty. She attended the funeral in solemn silence, standing beside young Brutus, her green eyes dry and unreadable. He was still the boy’s father, however useless he had been.

And it was there, among the incense and solemn chants, that Servilia first met him.

Julius Caesar.

She had heard the name whispered before—an upstart rising swiftly through the ranks of Roman politics, far too quickly for his youth. Handsome, intelligent, dangerously charismatic. But Servilia was not the sort of woman impressed by appearances or flattery.

She had met too many hollow men wearing pretty masks.

But Caesar… he was different.

He didn’t try to woo her. He didn’t kneel or posture. He spoke to her as though she were an equal, as though he understood her. And even more surprising—he adored Brutus. He would tousle the boy’s hair, speak to him as if he were already a man, offer small gifts and stories of war and conquest. Brutus, starved of a father’s presence, began to glow under Caesar’s attention.

And so, little by little, Servilia’s guarded heart cracked once more.

Caesar visited often. Sometimes under pretense, other times without one. He brought laughter into her cold estate. Light into her controlled life. He spoke to her not of poetry or vanity, but of power, philosophy, and the shape of Rome’s future. And without realizing it, Servilia fell.

Not like a foolish girl—but like a woman who had long abandoned the idea that love could exist for someone like her.

In time, she became not only his secret lover but his staunchest ally. She offered him the full strength of House Junii—its wealth, influence, and silent connections through the Senate and the temple halls. She helped raise him higher, ever higher.

Blinded by love… she gave everything.

And now?

Now, everything had turned to ash.

Two years. Two beautiful, cruel, fleeting years… gone.

The silence of her atrium was suffocating. The moon above seemed more mocking than comforting. She sat motionless beneath the open ceiling, her gown draped around her like spilled ink on marble, her fingers gripping the edge of the fountain beside her.

“When did it all begin to fall apart?” she whispered aloud, though no one was there to answer. “Was it the day I let myself hope? The day I believed…?”

Love. That sweet poison.

She had tasted it once. And it had burned everything.

A single tear traced down her flawless cheek. Then another. Silent and slow, like a queen mourning a kingdom she could no longer touch.

Her voice broke, no louder than the breeze.

“Father… I have disappointed you.”

She lowered her gaze, the weight of shame settling over her like a shroud.

And then—suddenly—the light changed.

The moonlight, which had bathed the atrium moments before in silver clarity, was abruptly dimmed. Something large moved overhead. A shape. A presence.

Servilia lifted her tear-streaked face… and froze.

High above, standing at the edge of the open ceiling, cloaked in the moon’s glow, was a figure—a man.

Not a man of this world.

He was tall, his white hair cascading like snow down to his shoulders, and his crimson-red eyes stared down at her with an expression unreadable, unknowable. He stood effortlessly balanced at the atrium’s highest edge, a silhouette of elegance and power against the backdrop of stars.

Servilia did not move. Her breath caught in her throat.

A shadow had come to meet her sorrow.