They don’t need us, he thought. They’ve created a whole world without us. A good world.

“Have you seen everything you wished?” His guide returned, tilting her head up at him.

“Yes.”

His Praetorians marched outside, but Paulinus found himself lingering in the entrance. His guide seemed content to linger with him, hands folded at her waist. Her lashes were pale—probably her hair, too, under the veil. “You’re happy,” he asked suddenly. “Aren’t you.”

“Yes. Are you?”

“Me? Of course.”

“Of course. Will you be returning here, Prefect?”

He hesitated. He’d abandoned his note-taking halfway through the tour of the temple, but every image was stamped clear. There was no corruption here, no hidden vices, no oath-breaking. But—“Yes,” he said. “Yes, I’ll be returning.”

She did not seem surprised. “Until we meet again then, Prefect.”

“Paulinus Vibius Augustus Norbanus.”

“I am the Vestal Justina,” she returned.

“I’ll be back.” Formally. “Without my guards, next time.”

“I am always here.”

PAULINUS spent his summer in a saddle. Riding out to the Praetorian barracks to supervise training. Carrying the Emperor’s dispatches back to the city. Journeying to Tivoli for long fireside evenings at the Villa Jovis. Those summers alone at the villa were good for the Emperor, Paulinus thought. He looked happier, more relaxed, lounging easily on his luxurious couches and rarely far from a smile. Thea’s influence, probably. She was constantly at his side in Tivoli.

“She’s a wonderful girl,” Paulinus said enthusiastically one evening after she’d gone to bed.

“Correct.” The Emperor’s eyes turned inward, gazing at the lamps. “She’s a slave and I dislike slaves; she’s a Jew and I dislike Jews; she’s full of secrets and I dislike secrets . . . still, there is something about her, isn’t there?”

Paulinus smiled to himself. The words were harsh, but he heard the affection behind them.

“I’m glad he has you,” Paulinus told her the next morning after the Emperor disappeared into the tablinum with his petitions and ledgers. “You’re good for him, Thea.”

“So I am.” She twisted a spray of jasmine from the bush that climbed around the atrium pillars. “He leaves all his shadows for me, leaving the sunlight for the rest of you. He’s very sunny when he wants to be, isn’t he? Even to me sometimes. Just now and then, he’ll go back to that brusque soldier I first met . . .” A shrug. “Disconcerting.”

“He relies on you, you know.”

“I hope you don’t want me to beg favors for you, Paulinus. Domitian might rely on me, but he never takes my advice. He didn’t even take my advice on his treatise about hair care.”

“What did you advise him?”

“That it didn’t become an Emperor’s dignity to write a manual about hair.”

Paulinus laughed. “Maybe he doesn’t take your advice, but I can see why he loves you.”

Her head turned, and for a stunned instant he thought he saw savagery flick across her eyes. But it disappeared so fast . . . and then she threw her head back and smiled brilliantly. “Oh, yes,” she said. “Yes, he loves me. Who could doubt that? And I hear he’s found a bride for you, now.”