“Don’t quell her,” Otho said. “She’s an original, and I like originals. I see you are an original as well, my very great lady.” He captured Cornelia’s hand, which she withdrew when he pressed too warmly.

“Lady Statilia, how lovely to see you—” Cornelia moved on to the ladies and praetors and tribunes in Otho’s party, each of whom she knew by name and family, and Piso, who had been hanging awkwardly in the background, was now hanging on his wife’s arm, making himself known to all, and Otho frowned. Especially when he noted the Praetorians at Cornelia’s back too, who scurried to her lifted finger like obedient slaves.

“Pity Cornelia can’t be Emperor,” Marcella mused aloud to no one in particular, and Otho’s sharp ear caught it.

“Very true, Lady.” He gave a bow, eyes raking her face. “Cornelia Secunda, isn’t it? I believe I know you already.”

“We’ve never been formally introduced, Senator.” Marcella tilted her head quizzically.

“No, but I remember that Emperor Nero once found you beautiful. I am not surprised to find him right.”

A cry from Diana as the Blues pulled ahead in the fourth lap. “I’ll die if they win,” she whispered, eyes following the storm of sand. “I’ll die—” Half of Otho’s tribunes were clustered about her, shouting down at the arena, but Marcella’s ears had blocked out the din.

“I don’t care to discuss that night, Senator,” she said finally. “What’s done is done.”

“Then you are a courageous lady—and one who holds my admiration.”

Marcella sipped at her wine, not tasting it. She had seen the former Emperor often enough, from a distance: waving to the cheering plebs with a gold wreath perched on his false curls, reciting his own poetry to properly respectful courtiers, whispering in the ears of beautiful women who were not his various ill-fated Empresses. But up close? That warm night at Lollia’s party this spring, she had seen a man with ruddy, pleasant features . . . and eyes that gleamed at all times, as if with a fever.

Marcella blinked as one of the Green teams went down on a hairpin turn, and the crash penetrated the buzzing in her ears. Even Piso, who had found someone important to bore at the back of the box, turned around. The horses staggered clear, dragging the charioteer behind them, still strapped to the reins, and a team of arena slaves rushed out behind to clear the wreckage of the chariot. The charioteer finally cut himself loose from the maddened horses, rolling limp and bloodied in the sand as they careened away, and the arena slaves rushed to pull him to the sidelines.

“Good,” Diana blew out a relieved breath. “If the Reds ran over him, they’d foul their wheels and lose half a lap.”