She looked at me, her face white and wet and ravaged. “I never had any freedom at all, did I?”

“Most of us don’t,” I said.

“‘Vibia Sabina, Empress of the seven hills.’” She gave her new title a bitter twist. “When you come right down to it, an empress is just another wife. Nothing but that.”

I wondered if I’d ever see my wife again. Mirah’s reddish hair, her neat sashed waist, the way she gestured with her chin when her hands were full. My thumb found a tiny corner of the blue scarf tied under my greave, caressed the worn cloth. Why hadn’t I begged a transfer to a legion in Judaea, given Mirah the life of honor and respect she wanted as the wife of Masada’s last living heir?

I banished Mirah from my mind. I couldn’t think of her, not when I already hurt inside like I’d been gutted with a spear. “Maybe Empress only means wife,” I said to Sabina. “But Praetorian means assassin. That’s what I am now. I’m to stop off on my way back to Rome and kill all your husband’s enemies for him.”

“All his enemies?” Sabina’s voice was bitter. “That’s too long a list for one man. Even you.”

“His top five enemies, anyway.” I hadn’t gotten the list until this morning. Celsus and Palma, two former consuls. A former governor of Dacia. Lusius Quietus, my former cavalry commander… my heart had lurched when I read that, and then died entirely in my chest when I saw the final name.

Titus.

I remembered one of his absurd quotations, Ovid or maybe Juvenal; something Titus had trotted out to me once when I was gloomy over some failure. Be patient, and tough, he’d said with his gentle expression. Someday this pain will be useful to you.

But how could this pain ever be useful? The pain of knowing I had to put a sword through the heart of the best man I’d ever known?

“Maybe I’ll just put a sword through my own heart instead,” I said aloud. “What I should have done when Trajan died.”