Lollia’s grandfather appeared then, tugging his wig into place, and glowered at them all. Tullia subsided with a disapproving sniff, and Lollia came forward to kiss little Flavia, who beamed from her great-grandfather’s arms with a wreath of festival flowers in her curly hair. Juno’s mercy, Cornelia thought, Flavia’s the only one smiling. The wedding procession toiled grimly out the door.

“Would you like to walk with me, Paulinus?” Cornelia asked, since his mother was utterly ignoring him.

“Yes, please,” he said sunnily, slipping his hand into hers. “My mama hates weddings.”

“Does she?”

“Maybe she just hates Aunt Lollia’s weddings.” He considered. “Or Aunt Lollia.”

“Quando tu Gaius, ego Gaia.” Another wedding. Cornelia made a saddle of her hip for Paulinus to sit on, watching Lollia’s rubies blink in the sunlight like dozens of crimson eyes, watching the priest look irked as the absence of Lollia’s husband-to-be held up the ceremony, watching Fabius Valens bound up the steps at last with a band of his officers and German auxiliaries behind him. What a strange lot they all were, rough provincials with shaggy hair and scarred arms and rough-edged Latin. So different from Galba’s entourage of sober toga-clad senators and Otho’s crowd of elegant courtiers. Hardly Romans at all—but however rough Fabius Valens might be, he and his men and their accents, they were now the kingmakers of Rome. Yesterday he was nobody, Cornelia marveled as Lollia’s newest betrothed repeated his vows with a wink at his men. Just an ordinary legionary commander. Today everyone’s bowing and scraping in his presence. What strange times they lived in.

Fabius Valens was a handsome man at least—Cornelia was glad of that, for Lollia’s sake. He stood tall and dark and well-built in the breastplate he had not bothered to remove for his wedding, forty-six years old but as vigorous as a man half his age. His eyes resting appreciatively on Lollia’s rubies, he grinned his way through the ceremony. The sacrificial bull panicked on the steps of the altar and required three strokes of the knife before the neck could be opened. A bad omen, but when were any of Lollia’s weddings well-omened?

Cornelia felt her sister at her side, silent and indifferent in pale green embroidered with jade beads. “Are you all right?” she whispered.

“Of course,” Marcella said, bland. The same look she gave everyone else in the family when they pried, only she used to follow it with a private wicked glance behind their backs that was all for Cornelia. But Cornelia couldn’t see any sign of that sisterly gleam now. Since when did she start lumping me with them? Just another family member to be tolerated?

“Gaius!” Tullia’s hissing whisper came behind them. “Why didn’t you buy me those sapphires I wanted? Everyone else is jeweled to the skies!”