The Laurel and the Blade by Livia Valentine

In a city built on power and silence, one glance is all it takes to start a rebellion.

Book 1: The Arena Between Us
Cassia has been trained to play her part—silent, polished, obedient. The daughter of a Roman senator, she knows her place: at her father’s right hand, soon at her betrothed’s side, never near the bloodied sands of the arena.

But when a new gladiator arrives in chains, everything shifts. Ronan is not loud, not brash—he’s watchful. Controlled. A boy with violence in his past and a future measured in breaths. The moment their eyes meet, the rules begin to blur.

What begins as stolen glances grows into something slower, riskier—an intimacy built on silence and secrets, in a world that rewards neither.

As Saturnalia approaches and the lines between servant and citizen dissolve for one night, Cassia takes a single step out of obedience. One moment that costs her everything.

Now Ronan is fighting for more than freedom. And Cassia must decide what she’s willing to risk—for herself, for the boy who should have remained a stranger, and for the truth they were never meant to hold.

The Arena Between Us is the first novel in The Laurel and the Blade—a slow-burn historical romance series set in the heart of Ancient Rome. With lyrical prose, forbidden longing, and high emotional stakes, this is a story of two souls colliding in a city built to keep them apart.

Book 2: Beneath the Laurel Moon
Cassia thought surviving the arena was the hardest part. But freedom, it turns out, comes at a cost.

Now engaged to a man she does not love, confined to a life chosen for her, and silenced by the very name she bears, Cassia walks a line between obedience and defiance. Every smile is a mask. Every step, a calculation. And every night, she whispers a name Rome wants her to forget.

Ronan is no longer a slave—but he is not free. Hidden from the public eye, erased by decree, he remains a symbol too dangerous to kill and too powerful to release. But Cassia remembers. And Ronan—scarred, silent, still burning—remembers her.

As rebellion simmers beneath the marble surface of the empire, Cassia must decide if love alone is worth the fall. Because some vows are spoken. Others are carved into the soul.

Beneath the laurel moon, nothing stays hidden forever.

Book 3: The Empire We Burn
They didn’t run. They didn’t bow. And now, they don’t wait.

The arena is quiet. The emperor is watching. And two voices—once meant to vanish—have stepped into the light.

Cassia was raised to be ornamental. Ronan was trained to be obedient. But together, they’ve become something Rome never expected: a memory that refuses to die.

In the aftermath of a single act of defiance, the city begins to tremble. Words once whispered spread like fire. Symbols appear on walls. And in the streets and schoolhouses and kitchens of the empire, people begin to listen.

But rebellion carries cost. With every step forward, Cassia and Ronan risk not just their lives, but the fragile hope they’ve sparked in others. And when the empire responds—not with swords, but with silence—they’ll face the question no one wants to answer: Is survival enough? Or must something be lost to make room for what’s next?

The Empire We Burn is the searing final volume of The Laurel and the Blade—a quiet revolution of love, memory, and the kind of resistance that carves itself into stone.