BACK in their rented tenement room, Thea lay rigid in Arius’s arms. He clung gratefully to her tense body, closing his eyes in her hair. He couldn’t get away from the images, images that left the ash-taste of horror in his mouth: Vix stumbling and stalling, Vix straightening and lunging, Vix taking his first kill . . .

Behind the horror, the demon was quietly taking the Emperor apart limb by limb.

“We’ll have to kill him.” The sudden harsh voice made him start, so unlike Thea it took him a moment to recognize it.

“The Emperor?” Of course the Emperor. The demon purred agreement.

“He did it to get at me.” Thea stared ahead, unseeing. “He knew I’d be watching. He’ll throw Vix back into that arena until he dies. And he will die. Maybe you trained him, but he’s still just a child.”

“Yes.”

“And even if we could get Vix away, Domitian would find us. Wherever we ran.”

“Yes.”

“So he’s got to die. That’s all there is to it.”

“I’ll kill him,” said Arius quite calmly. “You and Vix flee Rome.” He wanted to live, but if it was the only way—

“No.” For the first time her body trembled. “No.”

“But—”

“I said no!” She turned in his arms, taking his face hard between her hands. “There’s a man I know—we’ll go to him. He’ll manage something.”

“Thea—”

She crushed her body fiercely against his, and for a while there was no more talk.

WHAT’S on your mind, Paulinus?” Marcus asked as soon as the library door closed behind his son. Sabina had been very poised through her first games, not crying or wincing at the blood-shed, but she’d unexpectedly had a seizure in the litter on the way back, and Calpurnia was tending her now. Marcus would be tending her himself, if his son hadn’t stridden unexpectedly into the atrium.

“Paulinus?” Marcus paused. “I’d have thought you would be at the palace.”

“The Emperor already had me take Vix back.” Paulinus’s hands bunched at his sides.

“The boy?” Marcus grimaced. “Children fighting in the Colosseum now. Barbaric.”

“Oh, the boy’s all right.” Paulinus jerked. “Shaking, doing his best not to cry. Said he’d kill me if I laughed at him. Never felt less like laughing in my life.”

Paulinus’s eyes skittered over the pool in the atrium floor, the columns about the roof. Marcus regarded him a moment. “Perhaps you’d better come into my study, Paulinus.”

“Yes,” Paulinus said in a rush. “I must talk to you. I need your advice.”

“What is it?”

Paulinus came to parade rest. “Sir.” He fi xed his eyes on the wall over Marcus’s shoulder, and recited in the tones of a reporting legionnaire. “I have come to the conclusion that Emperor Domitian is unfit for the office he holds.”

Marcus blinked. He lowered himself into the nearest chair. “Go on.”

“He exiled his niece Lady Flavia Domitilla and executed her husband and children, all without just cause.” Eyes still fi xed stonily on the wall. “I have reason to believe him guilty of torturing his mistress Athena, and his niece Lady Julia. Julia he—he also murdered without cause. I believe he is a monster.”