“Oh, I’m not eating my heart out.” Titus’s voice in the shadows was airy. “‘If you would marry suitably, marry your equal,’ as Ovid would say. And we’ve never really been equals, have we? I’d have bored you senseless if we’d married.”

Maybe. But Sabina felt a pang of loss at the thought. Married to Titus? I wouldn’t be standing in a cold house in an uncomfortable dress with a husband who hates me, that’s for certain. “I’m sorry,” Sabina said again, but hardly knew what for.

Titus bent and kissed her again, once on the lips and once, briefly, on the slope of her bare breast. “Good night, Vibia Sabina.”

“Good night.”

She stood on the balustrade, watching as Titus sauntered off whistling through the darkened garden. He didn’t look back once, but Sabina watched until the darkness had swallowed him up.

When she turned, she saw Empress Plotina standing in the archway behind her, a look of cold loathing on her handsome marble face. “I saw you—” she began furiously.

“Oh, go get stuffed,” said Sabina, and stalked off.

CHAPTER 21

VIX

“It’s like this, Centurion.” The grocer I’d been paying for the past few years to keep Demetra’s son shuffled from foot to foot, clearing his throat. “I can’t keep the boy no more. My wife’s gone, my own boys are going to live with their aunt, and she don’t have room for another, and—”

“You’re trying to drop this on me now?” I scowled. “I’m marching to Parthia in a fortnight!”

“I know.” The grocer cleared his throat. “I like the lad well enough, but I can’t keep him no more.”

I looked down at my charge. Seven years old now—I’d hardly recognized him when I stooped through the low door of the grocer’s shop in Mog. A handsome boy, tall for his age, with fair curly hair and an open, eager little face. He looked pale and shuttered now, standing between me and the grocer, head turning between us as our voices batted back and forth.

I folded my arms across my breastplate, looking down at him. “Can you fight?”

“No,” he whispered.

“Shoot a bow?”

“No.”

“Use a knife?”

“No.”

“Hell’s gates.” With all that curly hair and those eyelashes, he looked like a girl. I looked back at the grocer. “Keep him another fortnight. I’ll find someone else to take him on before I march.”

I heard the boy’s breath catch when I turned away. But I was busy—very busy. I had a century to ready for war, and just a fortnight to do it.