Careful, big boy, Hercules rasped in his head. Careful.

The gate railing cracked in his hands.

“Arius?”

He whirled, hand leaping to his knife. But it was just Vix. Vix standing there looking unaccustomedly dazed and small.

“Born after I was sold,” Thea had said sometime in that hour of recounted years. “I never told him—didn’t think he’d ever see you.”

He looked at Vix with new eyes. “Tell your son there to leave my horses alone,” a drover had snapped to Arius two weeks ago, unloading barrels at Flavia’s storeroom doors. “Not my son,” Arius had said, amused. “Not that little devil.”

He’d never dreamed of having a son. Never thought he’d live long enough.

Now he saw what the drover had seen. Vix’s russet hair, his light eyes, his strong left hand. The reflexes, the strength, the vicious skill.

Even my own weaknesses. Why didn’t I see it?

And Thea had named him Vercingetorix.

The world tilted. The woman he loved was alive, hope existed, and he had a son.

Vix took a step forward. “Who the hell are you?”

“Come here,” Arius said thickly. “Come here.”

He gripped Vix’s shoulders between his hands, and began to talk.

Twenty-six

LEPIDA

TWENTY-EIGHT. Twenty-eight. Gods, what an age. Almost old. Almost thirty!

I threw a scent bottle at my maid, ripped my rose-silk veil in half because it had a grease spot, and threw myself down in front of the polished steel mirror. At least I didn’t look twenty-eight. My hair gleamed like ebony, my skin was white velvet, and I could show as much bosom as I liked without a qualm. Lady Lepida Pollia, although twenty-eight, had nothing to fear from the younger beauties of Rome’s court. She still reigned supreme over all.

I scowled, dabbling among my rouge pots. The trouble was, I was bored with reigning supreme over all. I’d reigned supreme over all for years. I had only to walk into a room to have the men slavering and the women slit-eyed. I had only to give my slow smile to a man to have him at my feet. When I wore blue, everyone wore blue. When I laughed at a joke, everyone found it funny. I stood at the pinnacle of patrician society.

So what was the point of it all? If I couldn’t go higher, then what was the point? And I could go higher, if it weren’t for . . .

Unfair. Unfair! She always ruined everything, and now she was turning the Emperor into a recluse. He’d never shunned society before. He may have been a dour guest, but at least he’d been a guest. For this whole summer, though, he’d hardly gone anywhere except to the villa where his pet Jewess waited. He took other women to his bed, yes, but none lasted as she did.

“Surely she’s put a spell on the Emperor,” I wheedled Paulinus. “Jew magic—you could have her executed!”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Paulinus said stiffly, and wouldn’t be moved. He was taking her side now? Could he and she be . . . Paulinus and Thea . . . of course they’d been lovers before, back when she’d been just a common singer . . . I could tell Domitian that little piece of news! But no—it might rid me of Thea, but it might also rid me of Paulinus, and to have my stepson as the Emperor’s best friend was very much to my taste. Anyway, I doubted there was anything between Thea and Paulinus. Even Paulinus wasn’t so stupid as that.