To Bend the Light: A Hellenistic Rivals-to-Lovers Romance

He can prove what the light will do. The other man has to make it do it. Alexandria, 245 BCE. Theron of Kos has demonstrated, twice, in front of men who nodded and drank the king's wine and did nothing, exactly what shape the mirror behind the Pharos fire must take if the light is to reach a ship at sea. The harbour authority's only reply was a request that he draw the figures larger. Then a ship goes onto the rocks in the dark with sixty aboard, the palace takes a sudden interest, and Theron - a foreigner with no citizenship, no land, and nothing to his name but a royal stipend and the argument itself - is ordered to hand his proof to a man who works with his hands. Nikias of the Kibotos casts bronze by the inner harbour, feeds eleven people out of a furnace and four apprentices, and holds the royal contract for the mirror. He knows things about metal that no geometer has ever set down, and he has read, in Theron's own published hand, exactly what Theron thinks of men like him. They are given one summer, one commission, and the top of the tallest building in the world. Neither of them is required to like the other. Neither of them is prepared for what happens on the ninth night, when they stop arguing about the curve for long enough to notice they have not been arguing about the curve for some time. There is no scandal in this city in two men sharing a bed. There is enormous scandal in a geometer conceding a point to a mechanic. And there is no form at all, anywhere in the Greek world, for what these two are quietly building: not a patron and a boy, not a season, but two grown men choosing each other and meaning it permanently. To Bend the Light is a steamy, open-door m/m historical romance set in the intellectual hothouse of the Library of Alexandria. Rivals to lovers, forced collaboration, he-falls-first, and a petty academic feud that turns into the best thing that ever happened to either of them. Guaranteed happy ending. Book One of The Scholars of Alexandria. Every book in the series is a standalone romance with its own couple and its own war of astonishing pettiness. They can be read in any order.