The last dolphin drops. The Blues come in five long seconds after, the Greens and the Whites trailing at the end, and by that time the Reds are halfway around the track again on their victory lap. They pull Diana’s blistered hands to ribbons before she can get them to walk. They keep breaking into a trot, throwing their heads up, preening, and for the first time Diana hears the screams of adulation raining down from the stands, the rose petals drifting down on her head. Red rose petals. She puts her hand out, dazed, and catches a handful as two hundred fifty thousand people scream their delight. “Reds! Reds! Reds!” The plebs are overflowing the stands now and flooding into the track, running after her, scooping handfuls of sand for souvenirs, stretching for a hair from Zephyrus’s tail or a chip of paint from the chariot’s axles. Hands brush at her tunic, and her ears are ringing from the shouts. “Reds! Reds! Reds!” The world comes slowly back into joint as she realizes it.

She’s won a race at the Circus Maximus.

DIANA pulled the chariot up at the finish line, where a mob of jubilant grooms in red tunics waited. She dropped the reins as they rushed forward to seize the bridles and realized her hands were trembling. The tug of the horses had pulled the reins so tight around her waist the knots were almost fused, and she had to cut herself free. She staggered as she stepped down from the chariot, and the world tilted dizzily overhead, but the grooms were surging around her, shouting gleefully. “Lady! Lady!” They all seemed to know she wasn’t Siculus.

She stripped off her gauntlets, seeing the huge blisters that had broken open across her hands. She was shaking all over now, not just her hands, but she staggered around the chariot to where the Anemoi were being unharnessed. They were trembling too, knees vibrating, noses drooping toward the sand. No horses should ever run the way they had just run; they tapped every reserve of strength and speed and then went deeper when she asked it. They wouldn’t be fit to race again for weeks, maybe months, but that was all right. If it was months before they were asked to lose to the Blues again, then it wasn’t too long. They won today and that was enough. They won today and they knew it, her brave four winds.