“I didn’t know you still had a sword,” I said.

He hefted it a moment, carving a figure eight in the air, and a flash of light from the blade cut across his eyes. The Barbarian’s eyes.

No, the sword wasn’t gone. Neither was the blackness in his gaze.

“Ready?”

I scooped up the dog and ducked out of his hut. I risked a quick glance toward the villa, hearing the shatter of pottery even from a distance. Domitian’s guards had already come once, no doubt to take anything valuable for their master, but now they were back to complete a more thorough destruction. The possessions of all traitors were forfeit to the Imperium, their fields no doubt sown with salt and their names never spoken again. For a man who hated Jews, Domitian certainly had a streak of Hebrew vengefulness.

Arius cut straight through the vineyards, holding back the branches for me not out of courtesy, but because I would slow him down if I had to fight my own way through. That was how he had been since he’d seen my strange bruises, since I’d flinched away from him. Silent. Cold. He hadn’t tried to touch me again.

With the blackness reappearing in his eyes, I didn’t want him to.

The dog yapped shrilly at the orange glow of flames licking toward the sky from the roof of the villa. I closed my hand around her muzzle and followed Arius’s broad back straight toward Rome.

Toward our son.

Twenty-nine

ROME

JUSTINA turned away from the little window of her dank cell. “Why,

Paulinus. I believe that’s the first time you’ve ever shouted at me.”

“Shouted at you?” he shouted. “Shouted at you? The story’s all over the city! The Vestal who stepped in front of the Praetorians and granted a goddess’s mercy—”

She looked at him calmly. The frantic anger shriveled. “Justina—Justina, I don’t know what he’ll—”

“Sssshhh. It’s in Vesta’s hands, now.” She smiled, a thin smile that quivered at the corners, and pulled her veil down over her face. “Take me to him.”

He stared at her a moment, trying to find her eyes through the barrier of pale silk. Vestal Virgins, he remembered, veiled their faces at only one occasion.

At the time of sacrifice.

So,” said Domitian. “This is the Vestal.” He was sitting at his desk with a pile of petitions and maps and letters, Thea’s son cross-legged at his feet as he always was these days. The boy was nodding; Domitian himself looked sleepy, genial, barely interested in traitors after a long day’s work at his desk. Paulinus felt an instant’s flicker of hope.

Then Justina pulled off her veil. Pulled off her whole Vestal’s headdress, shaking loose a head of fine pale hair. She smiled at the Emperor. “Hello, Uncle.”

For an instant there was silence so absolute that Paulinus thought there would never be sound again.

Vix opened his eyes, turning a puzzled gaze on the Vestal. So did Paulinus, looking for the girl he loved—