He turned his gaze on me. Thea stopped screaming, stared with huge eyes.

I smiled. No wonder the boy looked familiar. “He’s Athena’s son.”

Thea moaned.

“Sir,” said Paulinus rapidly. “Sir, if you’ll just stop—stop and listen to me—”

The Emperor stood looking back and forth. “Her . . . son?”

The boy stopped struggling suddenly, frozen wide-eyed between the guards. Domitian didn’t look at him. He looked at Thea; took one slow step toward her and then another. “Well, well.” Softly. “You said you had a child. You didn’t say you’d trained it to kill for you. You said, in fact, that you hadn’t seen it since it was born.”

“No—no, I don’t know who he is; I don’t know him—”

“She called him by name,” I added helpfully. “ ‘Vix,’ wasn’t it?”

“Lepida!” Marcus’s eyes drilled me. I poked my tongue out at him and giggled.

“So, Athena.” Domitian drew a finger down her bruised cheek.

“What shall I do with him? This precocious son of yours, who has just tried to kill me.”

She stood, her bloody lips trembling, a bruise darkening the side of her face.

“Shall I kill him?”

“Go ahead,” the boy snarled from his huddle of guards. “Just make it quick.” He was shaking, but he bowed his head like a gladiator awaiting the death blow.

“How touching.” The Emperor, turning away from Thea. “The little warrior bravely awaiting execution. How noble.”

“Not that noble,” the boy said, and moved like a snake. He got an arm free, just an arm, but it was all he needed to sweep a knife from a guard’s belt. He lunged forward.

And staked the Emperor’s foot to the floor.

Domitian howled, doubling over.

A shield smashed across Vix’s head and he went down. He yelled in pain but grabbed the shield and pulled it across himself. A short blade stabbed where his neck should have been, and then Thea fell on the guard, wrenching at his arm.

A female voice cut through the din, halting the guards. “Wait!”

The cry came from Lady Flavia, who had crouched in the corner with her children and her husband through the madness. She stepped forward, a smile pasted over terror, and laid a placating hand on the Emperor’s arm.

“Uncle—not in front of my boys.” Cajoling. “Allow me to take them home—and my husband—it’s no place for them. And the slave boy, he’s nothing, he’s certainly no son of Athena’s. I’ll take him home and see that he’s punished harshly. Flogged. Let me take him—” She had her own sons halfway to the door, wide-eyed and terrified, as she gestured at Vix. “Uncle, please—he’s not worthy of an Emperor’s vengeance.”

Domitian straightened, the bloody knife in his hand, blood welling under the arch of his foot. “But a child is needed, Flavia,” he said reasonably. “A child is needed. So if not Thea’s, yours.”

He whirled, pointing at her eldest son. “Seize him. In fact”—consideringly, as Flavia cried out—“seize them all. I’m tired of this whining woman and her brats.”