Spoiler Alert (Spoiler Alert #1)(2)

More swings of the sword. Some connecting, most not. And then the fatal moment came: He fended off her last, impassioned attack, inadvertently shoving her onto the green-tipped rubber sword of one of his own men.

The VFX department would fix the sword and blood later. The audience would see a fatal wound where only muddy silk existed now.

Tears. Final, whispered words.

As he knelt in the field, she died in his arms.

When she was gone, he took one last, wet-eyed look at the battle all around him. Saw that the forces of Tartarus were losing, and his men no longer had need of him. Then he gently laid her on the ground beside his own sword, a cherished gift from Dido from their time in Carthage, strode into the chaos, and allowed himself to be fatally stabbed by one of the dead.

“In the Elysian fields, I’ll see you once more, my beloved,” he murmured with his final breath.

For that extended stretch of time, Marcus was gone. Only Aeneas, disoriented and desolate and dying and hopeful, existed.

“Cut!” the director called, the order echoed by other crew members. “I think we got everything we needed this time. That’s a wrap for this scene!”

As the director and production manager turned away to discuss something, Marcus surfaced, blinking back to himself. His head floated above his shoulders, buoyant and uncluttered, as it sometimes did after he’d truly slipped his own skin and lost himself in a character.

Bliss, in its own way. For so long, the sensation he’d lived and labored for day by day.

It wasn’t enough. Not anymore.

Carah recovered more quickly than he did. Levering herself up out of the mud and to her feet, she heaved a heartfelt sigh.

“Thank fucking Christ.” She held out her hand to him. “If I wanted mud in my ass crack, I’d pay for one of those full-body detox treatments, and that motherfucker would smell like tea tree or lavender, not horseshit.”

He laughed and allowed her to steady him as he stood. His leather armor seemed to weigh as much as Rumpelstiltskin, the Friesian the horse master was now leading away. “If it’s any consolation, you have a healthy, just-been-stabbed glow.”

“A goddamn shame they did all the close-ups in earlier takes, then.” After sniffing her armpit, she wrinkled her nose and gave a resigned shrug. “Shit, I need a shower pronto. At least we’re done for the day.”

Carah generally didn’t require much response. He simply nodded.

“Just one more scene for me,” she continued. “Back at the studio, later this week. My sword-training montage. How about you?”

He sounded out the words in his head, checking for falsity.

Somehow, they were true. “No. This is it. They filmed my immortality scene before the Battle for the Living.”

This scene would be his own last memory of filming Gods of the Gates, but for the television audience, Aeneas’s ascension to full-god status would be their final glimpse of the character. Ambrosia and nectar and a healthy swallow from the river Lethe, rather than blood and filth and despair.

After said swallow, Aeneas would forget Dido and Lavinia both. Poor Anna too.

And after the final season aired, fans were going to slaughter R.J. and Ron—the series’s head writers, executive producers, and showrunners—online and at cons. For a multitude of reasons, since the abrupt reversal of Aeneas’s character arc was only one of many storytelling failures in the last episodes. Marcus couldn’t even estimate the number of pointed, aggrieved fix-it fics that would appear after the finale.

Hundreds, definitely. Maybe thousands.

He’d be writing at least one or two of them as Book! AeneasWouldNever, with Unapologetic Lavinia Stan’s help.

Squinting through the residual smoke, he eyed the swords on the ground. Bits of torn costume. A plastic water bottle hopefully hidden from the camera’s view, behind a dummy dressed as a dead member of Aeneas’s fleet.

Should he take something from the set as a memento? Did he even want to? And what on this filthy field could both encompass more than seven years working on the show and smell acceptable enough for display in his home?

Nothing. Nothing.

So after a final, heartfelt hug for Carah, he headed empty-handed toward his trailer. Only to be stopped by a palm clapped on his shoulder before he’d gone a dozen steps.

“Hold on, Marcus,” an all-too-familiar voice ordered.

When Marcus turned around, Ron beckoned several cameras closer—they were rolling again, somehow—and called back Carah and all the nearby crew.

Shit. In his exhaustion, Marcus had forgotten this little ceremony. In theory, a tribute to each main series actor at the end of their last day on set. In reality, a behind-the-scenes extra to tempt their audience to buy physical copies of the show or at least pay more to stream the special content.

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.