No. No. NO.

“Lepida, I will not strip you of everything. Keep your slanders away from Paulinus and Sabina, and I’ll withhold my charge of adultery and leave you your dowry.”

My dowry? What good was money if I had no husband? A Roman woman without a husband is nothing. Even if Marcus didn’t blacken my reputation in court, what man of patrician stature would marry me after Marcus so unceremoniously divorced me . . . if Domitian really had abandoned me?

I began to shake.

Marcus had already turned back to Calpurnia, discussing Senate debates as if nothing had happened at all. Sabina leaned on the marble railing over the arena, watching as slaves darted out to rake fresh sand over the bloody patches. Paulinus outlined training tactics with Trajan. Up in the Imperial box, Aurelia Rufina had slipped from the arm of Domitian’s chair into his lap.

Divorced. I had been divorced. Just Lepida Pollia, instead of Lady Lepida Pollia the senator’s wife and the Emperor’s mistress.

Dimly I heard a roar from the crowd and looked up at the Imperial box. Domitian had just given his signal for the next act, a trident fighter against an armored Gaul.

He could not have tired of me already. He could not. Thea had lasted nearly five years. I had reigned supreme for barely seven months.

The trident fighter died quickly. The crowd roared for the next duel, the young Barbarian against a famous Syrian, and I had time for a fleeting hope that Thea’s horrid son would die slowly with a sword in his gut. Then I began planning exactly how I would oust the pretty little Aurelia from the Imperial box in the next interlude . . .

And how I would make Marcus and Paulinus pay.

THEA

THEY’D given Vix his father’s old armor, resized to fit. The mail sleeve, the blue-plumed helmet, the shin plates. His face, in the shadow of his helmet, was set like stone. They set him against an enormous Syrian, and my heart crawled into my throat. I’d always thought him big for his age, but I was wrong. He looked so terribly small beside the Syrian’s hulking shoulder as they bowed before the Emperor.

It took a moment to realize, through my fog of terror, that Vix was holding his own.

The Syrian launched an overhand swing, the clean ring of steel on steel vibrating through the arena as the blades met. He took a compensating step as Vix disengaged and ducked back, then parried as my son’s sword flashed out with a slow looping ease.

“That Syrian’s never fought a left-hander before.” Arius looked gray and lined, scared as he had never looked during his own bouts, but he spoke calmly. “Vix’ll keep turning him to his weak side.”

Close, duck, disengage. Close, duck, disengage. Sensible, I thought, trying to breathe. Don’t close with a stronger opponent; wait it out. My son seemed to hear me, crouching and circling as if he had all the time in the world. His chest was pink with sunburn, and the helmet turned his eyes to dark slits.