“Are you afraid?” he asked, and his eyes were those of a curious child’s.

My toes scrabbled on the bare edge of the terrace. “No.”

“You’re lying.” His hands hardened on my throat.

“Maybe.”

“You’re terrified.”

“No.”

“Do you know what I do to liars?”

I was beginning to get a fairly good idea. We swayed on the bare edge of a fifty-foot drop. I was going to fall.

And fall I did—on my hands and knees, on hard marble as he swung me away from the edge. I dragged air through my bruised throat in rattling breaths. I looked up at him.

He regarded me for a moment. Then he smiled, that charming Flavian smile that softened his grim face. “You’ll admit it,” he said cheerfully. “You’ll admit it—that you’re afraid. Time for bed.”

He scooped me up in one hard soldier’s arm.

I woke slowly. Bruises. Pains. A man’s hand on my bare shoulder. I wrenched away, nearly tumbling off the bed. But the man was a fair-haired Greek in a slave’s rough tunic, and he smiled at me in a friendly sort of way. The Emperor was nowhere in sight.

“Who are you?” My voice rasped in my own ears.

He just smiled again and began to straighten up the room, putting the pillows and sheets back in order. He paused when he picked up the dress I’d left on the floor, wrinkling his nose at the stains.

“Throw it away,” I said.

He looked at me with such immense sympathy, standing there with the ruined dress in his big hands, that I turned my face away. He’d probably seen it all before. I didn’t protest when he picked me up. I doubt I could have walked alone.

He carried me into the little green marble bathhouse that adjoined my bedroom. The pool was already steaming hot; someone had lit the coals. He dunked me in the warm water and bathed me like a baby, scrubbing me with a soft cloth and combing camellia oil into my hair. His fingers were gentle on the bruises.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

He smiled, and lifted me out of the pool. Patting me dry with a towel, he wrapped me in a robe and carried me outside. I shook my head quickly.

“No, I don’t want to go—not the terrace—do you know where the Emperor—”

He made reassuring noises, gesturing around the empty terrace. There was only one couch drawn up, only one bowl and goblet laid. Below the marble edge, the mist was rising up off the silver river—Jupiter coming to Danae. Beautiful.

I covered my face with my hands.

Dimly I felt the big slave settle me on the couch. He gathered up my wet hair, and I felt the teeth of a comb stroking through the damp strands.

I rocked back and forth in the warm May sunshine, my eyes squeezed shut against my palms.

“Hello, my dear.”

I looked up so sharply I nearly fell off the couch. But it wasn’t Domitian. It was a little rotund man of about thirty, round-faced, a fringe of ironed curls over his forehead.