“You look lovely,” Marcella said as the maid took the veil off for brushing, but her voice was halfhearted. She looked the same as ever in a pale-green stola, bare-armed, unjeweled, and calm in the wash of winter sunshine through the window of the bedchamber, but she’d been very quiet lately. Lollia didn’t press her—with Marcella, it was better not to. She’d learned that the day she’d asked a few too many questions about the incident with Emperor Nero. Marcella could cut you up and down with that tongue of hers as good as any gladius, if she was in the mood.

“Which one?” Lollia said brightly, holding up two different eye pencils, but Marcella just shook an indifferent head. The cosmetician came forward, and Lollia closed her eyes for the application of kohl. It was nice being back in her grandfather’s house again: the airy lofty spaces, the jewel-like rooms, the slaves who had known Lollia since childhood and now clucked over her like a baby. But something still felt different, like a shadow at the corner of her eye that faded away whenever she turned to look at it. Something felt off. Maybe it was just the feeling in the streets of Rome, as the plebs slunk through their days looking half excited at Otho’s gleaming future and half ashamed of Galba’s bloody past. Lollia had never seen anything like it.

“Uncle Paris promises you a bust of your new husband soon,” Marcella said, fiddling with the beaded fringe on a cushion. “Salvius Titianus.”

“Is that his name?” Lollia sighed. “I keep forgetting.”

“What do you think of him?”

“He seems decent enough.” She’d met him twice: a tall elegant man of forty, graying at the temples, with a lean handsome face very like his brother’s. “He has this habit of cracking his knuckles, though . . .”

“An emperor’s brother can have all the faults he wants,” said Marcella. “Your grandfather certainly has friends in high places, if he can bag an Imperial husband for you.”