“Clear the room,” Plotina ordered. “It’s unfitting for him to go to the gods in such a crowd.” Sabina began to argue with her, but the freedmen were already streaming out, and I trailed after them. I couldn’t watch—couldn’t look at that waxen figure on the bed, couldn’t bear to hear that slow rasp of breath, couldn’t bear to see my Emperor die. My Emperor, the man I’d followed to Dacia and Parthia and hell too if he’d asked it of me…

Half the soldiers were already weeping, unashamed. A handsome secretary stood outside the now-closed bedchamber door, bent nearly double, shoulders heaving. I just stumbled away, out of that nameless little house. Such a small place, too small and ordinary to contain the last breath of a man like Trajan. Why couldn’t he die on a battlefield? The last arrow of the last battle, while subduing the last enemy on the last unconquered province in the world? Why this dead and dusty little town full of ghosts?

I stumbled past a series of ruined shacks, over a road missing half its paving stones but still leading up a mild slope toward a temple now roofless and godless. A beautiful day, the sea sparkling distantly, the sun shining. Shouldn’t it be raining? Shouldn’t the skies weep when an emperor dies?

I lurched up the cracked mossy steps of the temple. A temple of Jupiter, maybe, or some unknown god. Now it was just a few crumbling columns on a mossy foundation. One of the columns seemed to come at me, hitting me in my wounded shoulder, and I leaned against it. Clutched it, my hands shaking against the stone. My shoulder burned. My eyes burned. Shouldn’t a soldier weep when his general dies?

I don’t know how long I stood there, trembling against the column. But I picked my head up, looking around me aimlessly, and I saw Sabina. Standing across the temple in the crumpled shift she’d worn day and night as she tended Trajan, dwarfed by the columns. Her eyes were bright with unshed tears. I took a step toward her, another step, lurching like a drunk.

She opened her arms and I dropped into them, crashing to my knees. “He’s dying,” I said against her waist.

“Ssshh,” she said, her fingers running through my hair.

The first sob tore out of my throat. “He’s dying. He’s dying—”