“Don’t say things like that. You make it hard.”

“You’re beautiful. Silk, soft hands, no more calluses—”

“I’m not allowed to do anything anymore.”

“Except wait on the Emperor?”

“. . . Don’t.”

“Why can’t I touch you?”

“He’d smell you on me.”

“He’s not a god.”

“But I wear his eye . . . Arius, he’ll never release me. Once he puts his mark on something, it’s his forever.”

Silence. He reached for her.

“Arius—Arius, don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t touch me.”

“What’s wrong? You’re shaking.”

“No, I—I—just don’t try to kiss me. Please.”

“I need to know you’re real. You look like a dream, and I’m old and ugly.”

“Never that. Never that.”

“Thea, we’ll run. Take Vix, get out of Rome—”

“Arius, there’s nowhere I could run where he couldn’t find me.”

Their hands touched diffidently on the bench between them. Tangled. Kneaded mutely.

ROME

I don’t know what to think.” Paulinus rested his elbows on his knees, interlocking his fingers. “But sometimes—sometimes I think she’s right.”

“Lady Flavia?” Justina’s voice was a murmur around the marble walls.

“Yes.” Over and over he kneaded his hands. “Because lots of things don’t add up. Not quite. Things about the Emperor. That banquet the night of my betrothal. The Empress. Julia’s death. The treason trials . . .”

“Do you believe Lady Flavia?”

“I don’t know!” Raking his hands through his hair. “He’s my friend! Gods, whatever Lady Flavia says about him, I can’t see it. I just see him, pouring me wine and asking me questions about the army and—and joking about lazy legionnaires and incompetent governors. But as soon as I make up my mind to forget it, I think about the way Thea weaves when she comes out of his rooms, like she’s drunk only she never drinks as much as that—and I start to wonder all over again.”

“So what will you do?” The words were quiet drops of water into a pond, spreading ripples through the room.

“I don’t know.” He let out a ragged sigh. “I can’t do nothing. Not now that Lady Flavia’s waved it in front of me. But what proof do I have? Whose word stands up against the Emperor’s? Thea’s a slave. Julia’s dead. Flavia’s hated him since her sister’s death; she already goes against him in her little child-rescuing business—”

Justina looked inquiring.

“Lady Flavia saves children from the Colosseum and the prisons,” Paulinus explained tiredly. “Jews, Christians, other heretics; she’s been doing it for years. She bribes the guards to let them out of the cells, brings them back to her villa as slaves, and finds them families among friends and tenants. The Emperor says let it be since it keeps her busy and who cares if a few children escape the lions?”

“He’s the one who sentences them, isn’t he?” Gently.

Silence.

Justina tilted her face toward him. “So if you doubt Lady Flavia’s word, and if Julia isn’t here to speak for herself, then whose word will you trust? Who has the best judgment of anyone you know?”