Rome made him a beast. She's the first person to see him as a man.

Vali was a chieftain's son before the Romans took him. Fifteen, captured, sold — not to the mines or the galleys, but to the bedchambers of wealthy matrons who wanted a savage they could use and discard. Years of it have taught him exactly what he is: filth. A trained animal. A thing that sometimes enjoyed what was done to it, which is the part he can't forgive.

Then a desperate senator buys him out of a gladiator school, frees him, and gives him one mission: get my youngest daughter to Pompeii before her mother sells her to the Emperor.

Anniana has spent seventeen years as a shadow in her own household — invisible to a mother who sees her as currency, silent about a brother whose cruelty she can never unsee. She is patrician, sheltered, and utterly unprepared for miles of open road with a Norseman who won't meet her eyes and flinches when she touches him.

He thinks he's unfit to breathe her air. She's starting to realise that the so-called barbarian is the only honourable man she's ever met. And the road between Rome and Pompeii is getting shorter while her mother's assassins are getting closer.

Then Vesuvius erupts, and the mission changes from escape to survival — across the burning edge of an empire, into the wilds of Britannia, and toward a life that has nothing to offer except freedom and each other.

While two scarred strangers join forces to follow them: Ninia, Anniana's handmaiden, desperate to save her mistress from the beast she knows Vali to be, and Braxus, ex-gladiator and mercenary, sent to take a missing daughter back to her power-hungry mother.

A slave who believed he was broken beyond repair. A patrician who threw away a throne to prove him wrong. And a volcano that burned away everything except what mattered.

Romance where love is the hardest choice — and the most necessary one.

What readers say about Nhys Glover's Roman Historical Romances:

"This is a very good romantic adventure with well-developed characters that held my interest until early into the morning"

"I LOVED this book (note the shouty caps). This is a beautifully written novel with strong engaging lead and secondary characters and a gripping story line that kept me in suspense right until the end."

"Interesting story line full of adventure and romance. Can't wait for more books by this author."

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