“Never occurred to me.” I drank again, blocking out the image of the figure in white approaching from the other end of the atrium.

Moonlight splashed across her face from the open roof. “Do you need a hand up?”

“Maybe I like it in here.” I splashed a wave of water at her, wetting her white hem.

“Gods,” she sighed, “but you’re a child sometimes.”

“I wasn’t a child when I was screwing you.” Tilting my head up at her.

“Go home, Vix. You’re drunk.”

“And you’re a bitch.”

She turned away, back toward the half-open doors where music and rowdy shouts eddied through. My hand shot out, seizing the hem of her dress, halting her.

“You said this morning you didn’t want to follow my stars, Lady. Fair enough. But at least I’ve got stars. What have you got? Following whatever looks interesting, as long as it’s forbidden? There’s a word for that, you know.” I bared my teeth up at her in something that might have been a smile. “They call it slumming.”

With the moonlight falling over her white dress she looked like another marble column. “They should call it ‘duty,’ Vix. I’m not as free as you seem to think I am. Maybe I would rather stay with you; spend my life ‘slumming,’ as you call it. But I still have a duty to others. To Hadrian, who’s always been fair to me. To Rome, for giving me a good life. To the world—because if I get to spend my life seeing it, I should spend my life improving it too, in whatever way I can. I push my limits as far as I can, get away with as much adventure as I dare, but there’s still always duty waiting.” She looked at me, level. “When did you ever feel a duty to anything but yourself?”

“I have a duty to Trajan,” I shot back. “I owe everything to him—he’ll be the next Alexander, he’ll conquer the world, and it’s my duty to help him do it.”

“That’s rot, Vix.” Sabina’s voice was tart. “You’re in this for the adventure, and don’t try to pretend otherwise. If your duty to Trajan meant sitting behind a desk day after day, you’d be a lot less keen to serve him. Real duty means giving up the things you want. I’ve had to walk away from you twice, but you don’t hear me whining about it.”

“You’re all about patrician duty now, are you?” I spat. “Where was that the last few months you spent in my bed?”

“I didn’t hear you complaining, Vix. Not as long as you got what you wanted.”