“What is?”

“She’s pregnant.” Diana said. “Mares get that same look. Edgy.”

“Why didn’t she tell me?” Marcella complained.

“You never tell anybody anything,” Lollia pointed out. “Why should we?”

“But she’s my sister!” Marcella accosted Cornelia as soon as she returned the following day, her eyes soft and shining. “You could have told me your news, Cornelia.”

Cornelia looked puzzled. “Why?” But Marcella forgot to be annoyed with her when Cornelia relayed some different news: Vitellius, beyond all shadow of a doubt, was dead. “No one seems to know quite how it happened,” Cornelia winced. “He hid in the stables and a mob tore him to pieces, or he was paraded out on the palace steps and beheaded—but however he died, they threw his body down the Gemonian Stairs. Drusus saw it.”

Marcella saw Diana bow her head. And later, she went out with a black veil over her hair and came back with a somber face. “What have you been doing?”

“I bought a little medallion for the Blues,” said Diana, “and I buried it at the foot of the Gemonian Stairs. Vitellius would have liked that.” She scrubbed her hands down the front of her dress. “He’d better appreciate it—that’s the first and last time I ever buy a Blues medallion. Maybe we’ll race our teams together in the afterlife.”

“So what did Vitellius say to you before he died?” Marcella urged.

Diana gave her a long contemptuous look.

“I’ll just get it from someone else, you know.”

“Not from me,” said Diana, yanking the black veil off her hair and stamping off.

Vitellius gone, Marcella thought. He’d lasted the longest of all three emperors that year, and now there was a fourth. The Senate had certainly wasted no time acclaiming Vespasian, and all the provinces were united behind him. His brilliant elder son, little Flavia’s father Titus, was marching to take control of the chastened eastern legions, and Vespasian himself was supposedly only weeks behind. Domitian was already being feted as a prince of Rome at the Domus Aurea. Marcella saw him two days after returning to the city, striding like a conqueror through Lollia’s atrium with six Praetorians marching smartly behind.

“I heard you were back.” His eyes flew past the slaves, whom Marcella had been supervising as they swept up the broken tiles of the mosaic. “I had my guards watching for you.”

“As you can see, I’m safe.” Marcella waved the slaves away, giving Domitian a curved smile. “And so are you.” He’d survived, she heard, by skulking in the Temple of Isis among the worshipers until the violence was over. Not terribly brave, perhaps, but prudent.

“I’m prince of Rome now—did you hear?” He had the Imperial purple stripe on his tunic already. “I told you I’d be prince someday.”