Hell’s gates, it had been good to feel a sword in hand again. The easy flow of feet back and forth, the comfort of muscles working warm and smooth, the flash of the swords and the whisper of steel as blades crossed and touched and crossed again. I’d missed that: the pleasure in a good fight. I’d been having too much fun to lose; not to those patrician boys, not even to Trajan. He might be good, but even the Emperor of Rome hadn’t been lucky enough to be trained since the age of eight by Rome’s greatest gladiator.

The old restlessness stirred in my chest again. Sabina had stilled it for a while—nothing like the pleasures of the flesh to distract you at nineteen—but it was still there. My eyes fell on the other two guards, grousing amiably at each other over dice in the far corner of the kitchens. Would that be me in thirty years, getting fat and ogling the slave girls and telling the same old story about how I’d once crossed swords with an Emperor?

“Let me have some wine,” I said abruptly to Gaia.

“Oh, now you want a favor?” She raised her eyebrows. “I thought you were too good to mingle with the slaves these days, Vix. Certainly haven’t seen you hanging around my door lately.”

I got free of her, stole a dish of honeyed cakes and a flagon of wine, and thumped back to my own chamber. I could still hear the guests in the atrium, chattering in their long patrician drawls, but I had no more desire to watch the festivities.

Tribune Hadrian’s distinctive deep voice came clearly to my ears as he droned on about something, showing off for Sabina and anyone else who would listen. He’d been at the other guards earlier, pressing coins into their hands and asking if Sabina favored any suitors over him; if her father disapproved of him and was that why she hadn’t accepted his suit yet. “Her father thinks you’re a long-winded bore,” I’d volunteered unasked. “Here’s some advice, Tribune—give up on Lady Sabina. She’ll never have you.”

I’d hoped he would flush or clench his fists, but he just gave me a superior glance. “What do you know, bodyguard?”

It was on the tip of my tongue to list a few of the things I did know about the girl he was courting—how she arched her back when I kissed the hollow of her neck, how she closed her eyes and gasped when I kissed something else—but I didn’t. I just gave an insolent smile and watched him and his gold goblet and his supercilious gaze move off.

He looked ready to cut your heart out and fry it, that skinny boy Titus had told me, for making them all laugh at him.

Hell with him. I wasn’t sorry.