“I will never speak to her again,” Cornelia said under her breath, but she couldn’t help looking across the triclinium where Domitian and Marcella, after a rapid reshuffling of guests, had been given the couch of honor. Cornelia had accompanied her sister to a hundred banquets; Marcella always lounged on one elbow with an untouched wine cup in her hand, watching the other guests and smiling faintly. But now she lay at Domitian’s side, lashes covering her eyes as she drank deep from her goblet. Utterly still. Utterly silent.

“I’m not sure,” Diana said at length, “that we have to do anything.”

“What do you mean?” Cornelia blinked.

“I have just had the most interesting chat with Marcella!” Tullia bustled up, her embroidered flounces fluttering. “So good to see her at last! One might have thought she’d have invited us to the palace by now, but I daresay she’s been busy with her new duties. Really, she and Domitian could have managed their wedding with a trifle less sensation, but these impetuous young men!” Tullia addressed herself mostly to Lollia, since she could still not approve of Cornelia’s marriage, and could never bring herself to speak directly to Diana. “Just think, an emperor’s son for our Marcella!”

“You hate Marcella,” Diana observed.

“—so, she’s looking after Titus’s daughter Julia now, such excellent practice for her when she has her own babies, and she’s even asked my advice about planning a menu for an Imperial banquet next week. Oh, and she’s quite given up writing those wretched histories! I always knew she’d settle into a proper wife if she had a husband who took a firm hand with her—”

“Cornelia, I must congratulate you on your wedding,” a quiet voice said behind Tullia. “I’m so happy for you.”

Marcella, marble-carved and bejeweled, looked nothing like herself. Up close, Cornelia could see that her heavy bracelets had been stacked to hide a bruise on her wrist.

“I brought you a wedding gift,” Marcella continued, holding out a scroll bound up with ribbon. “I had Nessus draw up your horoscope—he says the baby will be a girl, and you’ll have two more girls and a pair of sons too . . . of course Nessus just tells people what they want to hear, but it’s a nice fortune for all that.”

Cornelia made no move to take the scroll. Marcella finally handed it off to a hovering slave.

“I thought perhaps you might call on me at the Domus Aurea,” she said, chin rising as Cornelia just stood looking at her. “Domitian doesn’t—that is, it isn’t suitable for me to pay visits outside the palace.”

“I fear I am quite busy,” Cornelia said coldly.

“So am I,” said Lollia.