“Nessus isn’t a charlatan! He said I’d be a great general and a prince of Rome and—”

“I’ve had my stars read a dozen times,” Cornelia broke in, bitter. “Not one of them ever told me I’d be a widow. And now I’m supposed to rejoice because supposedly a new man is coming along?”

“If you were a widow, I could have you.” Domitian’s fingers dug hungrily into Marcella’s arm again as Cornelia gave a blind shake of her head and moved off. “All to myself.”

“I doubt there’s room in your cradle for me,” said Marcella.

“I’m not a child!” he flared. “Don’t ever call me that!”

More wine as night fell; more golden globes of light being lit under the sculpted trees. Otho still held court, a brilliant sun surrounded by lesser moons. Nessus read more palms, making plump rouged matrons giggle. Lollia stood dutifully with her new husband, and Diana still sat high above everyone on her marble horse, rather like the goddess in her moon chariot up in the sky overhead. Gaius came to squawk at her for a while, but a troop of acrobats had just begun performing in the atrium to the rhythm of a dozen drums, and Diana cupped a hand to her ear as if she couldn’t hear Gaius’s complaining. He went off muttering.

“You’re always watching everyone,” Domitian scowled at Marcella.

“It’s what I do.”

Cornelia had returned to her pillar, taut and fierce in her black, rigidly rotating a gold-and-ebony bracelet around one wrist. A Praetorian paused to square his shoulders before approaching her—Centurion Drusus Densus, apparently restored to health at last, though he still looked drawn. He said something to Cornelia, or tried to before she brushed past him. So Otho restores the gallant centurion to duty in the Praetorian Guard, Marcella thought. Nice to know that loyalty is sometimes rewarded. “Centurion,” she called cordially as he stumbled past. “I’m glad to see you recovered from your wounds.”

He looked puzzled. “I’m sorry, Lady—do I know you?”

“You saved my life.” He looked blank. Marcella had been to thank him on his sickbed, but he’d been half asleep from a poppy draught and clearly didn’t remember her visit. “I am Cornelia Secunda,” she enlarged as Domitian scowled to see her talking to any handsome man who wasn’t him. “Lady Cornelia’s sister? There are four of us—you saved us on the steps before the Temple of Vesta. My cousin Lollia over there too, and Diana. The one on the statue.”

Recognition then. “I remember Lady Diana—the hair.” He gestured at the white-blond locks slipping Diana’s gold combs and tumbling over the horse’s marble mane. “Only it was bloody.”