One went down as Densus’s short sword plunged through his neck and out again, but Cornelia went down too, tripping over the first of the temple steps. A guard lunged at her, and Piso gave a cry and flung himself at the man. Blood bloomed on his sleeve.

Densus booted the first man off his sword and turned on the second, slashing his knee out from behind. The man shouted, crumpling, and Piso staggered back, staring in disbelief at the blood on his arm. Cornelia seized his hand, screaming something, dragging him up the stairs. Densus half-turned, pushing at them both and shouting, and then they took him from behind.

A tall tribune with an ugly stub of a knife found the gap between Densus’s breastplate and back plate and drove the blade in deep. Densus doubled over gasping, but he lunged at the tribune and they tangled drunkenly on the steps. Two more Praetorians lunged around them, grabbing for Piso. One missed, but the other caught the bloody trailing end of Piso’s toga.

Whooping, they yanked him back, reeling him in like a fish, and his last motion was to shove Cornelia ahead of him up the steps. Marcella caught a glimpse of her brother-in-law’s terrified white face, his mouth opening in a square hole to say something—to beg or plead, or maybe just scream. Because even though a patrician was supposed to die proudly, there wasn’t much pride in being an emperor’s heir for five days and then being butchered on a staircase like a stray dog.

The blades slid into his chest and out again. Unhurriedly, they hacked at him until he looked like a bundle of red cloth.

Cornelia shrieked on a rising note that cored Marcella’s ears. She wrenched loose of Diana’s grip, stumbling out from behind the pillars and running down the steps toward her sister. She hauled Cornelia back desperately and saw the two remaining Praetorians turning with grins. A strangled sob sounded behind, and suddenly Lollia was there, wide-eyed and terrified, lunging forward with a bronze bowl in her hands, a sacred vessel of some kind. She emptied it with a wild swing, and a cloud of burning ash gathered from Vesta’s eternal hearth scattered down the temple steps toward the Praetorians. Glowing embers scattered everywhere; the two soldiers fell back a moment, shielding their eyes, and one collapsed with a gurgling shriek as Densus came lurching and bloody up the temple steps and buried a knife to the hilt in the nape of the Praetorian’s neck.