“‘Empress of Rome,’” I said at last, tasting her new title. “Who’d have thought?”

She gave me a wan little half smile. “At the very least, it will be interesting.”

“That’s the spirit.”

“Interesting or not, I’d trade it for another chance to go back to being eighteen and stay in my father’s house forever. Never get married at all.”

I should have stayed in her father’s house too. Stayed a bodyguard, never joined the legions. If I had, I’d still be living my uneventful life walking Senator Norbanus back and forth from the Capitoline Library, not sitting in a weed-choked temple at the arse-end of nowhere.

“Maybe my father can help.” Sabina’s voice was bleak, and her hands twined each other around her knees. “Perhaps he can challenge this mad charade Plotina put on to get Hadrian adopted…” She shook her head, as if arguing with herself. “Gods, I can’t go to my father. He’s so frail now.”

I thought of my own father. He’d be Trajan’s age by now, if he was even still alive. The last letter I’d managed to get from my mother had been more than two years ago; all had been well, but a great deal could happen in two years. Was he still rooting ineptly in his garden, with hair as gray as Trajan’s? Or had he too died gasping for breath in bed, before I’d ever had a chance to see him again? Suddenly I wanted to go home.

Brigantia. Was it even my home? Or did I have a home at all anymore?

What does it matter? I thought. Wherever home was, Hadrian would never give me leave to go there. My father and mother would die, and I’d never see them again. Not since I was eighteen and I left with so many dreams of glory.

“All my life—” Sabina’s voice was ragged, and I realized she was weeping. I’d never seen her weep before, not once in all the years I’d known her. The tears slid down her still face and dripped off her little chin. “All my life I thought I could go adventuring, just because I wanted to. I could do my duty, do some good in the world, but I could have the life I wanted doing it. But that wasn’t true, was it? I got to go adventuring because my father let me, and then Hadrian let me, and then Trajan. Any of them could have stopped me anytime they liked, and now Hadrian is stopping me. No adventures for the Empress of Rome.”

I could think of endless times over the years when I’d ached to see that serene shell of hers cracked in half. See her weep, see her break. Now I was seeing it, and the only thing breaking was me.