The short hair was too slippery with blood to hold, so he hooked a thumb through Piso’s gaping mouth and carried the head that way. Densus blinked, still struggling to hold his blade up halfway, and the Praetorian chuckled again as he sauntered past the still bodies at the foot of the stairs. “You’re a tough bastard, Densus,” he said over one shoulder. “But I knew five of us could do for you.”

He jogged up the street, whistling.

Marcella felt air start to flow into her frozen lungs again. She became aware that she was still crooning to her sister, but the woman who had nearly become an empress just stood staring at her husband’s truncated body, still as marble.

“Tell me this is a dream,” Lollia said behind them. “Please tell me this is a dream.” She turned and vomited over the stone steps. Diana put an arm around her, sheathing the little knife.

Densus gave a quiet cough. The gladius clattered unnoticed down the steps, and he reached around and tugged the knife from his own side. He looked at it a moment, gray-faced under all the gore, and he collapsed, breathing harshly up at the purple sky. One bloody hand found Cornelia’s ankle, and he gripped it. “They turned on me,” he muttered thickly. “They turned on me.” He spat out a basinful of blood, but he never let go of Cornelia.

Marcella found herself staring back up at the Temple of Vesta. The roof no longer vented its usual plume of smoke—the eternal hearth must have died. She hoped the Vestals wouldn’t be punished for letting the sacred flame die out.

Five

Five

IF you’ve had four weddings by the age of nineteen, Lollia reflected, you have to do something to tell them apart.

Initially, of course, came the First Wedding, when the red veil and bridal wreath still seemed terribly fresh and exciting. Little did I know. Then there was the Drunk Wedding, when Lollia’s second husband-to-be had swilled down so much wine at the feast that he had to be carried to their new house and laid out on the bridal couch like a corpse. The longest wedding night on earth, getting waked every hour by snores. Then there was the Ancient Wedding, just a few months back, with Flaccus Vinius and all his wrinkled, balding friends hissing disapproval at anybody younger, which was everybody. Not that it stopped us having a good time.

But this wedding, Lollia thought, looked like it was destined to be the Quiet Wedding.

“Scandalous,” Tullia sniffed when she heard the news that Lollia was to marry again barely ten days after being widowed. “Before poor Senator Vinius’s ashes are even cold!”