“You—” Vix sounded as if he’d eaten arena sand. “You said you’d let her alone.”

“Oh, but she came to me. To beg for your life, of course. Which must have taken a great deal of courage because—tell him why, Athena.”

I pitched my voice low and unsteady. The best performance I’d ever have to give, and there wasn’t even any music. “Because I fear you.”

Domitian set his foot against my shoulder and shoved me sprawling. “Make your son believe it. Make him see.”

“All right!” I reared up on my knees, biting down hard on my tongue to bring the tears springing to my eyes. “All right, I’m terrified! Is that what you want to hear? Every time you touch me, every time you look at me—I can’t think, can’t breathe—and I hate you! Hate you—hate you—” I collapsed into sobs, rocking back and forth on my knees. But my eyes burned dryly against my hands.

Domitian threw his head back and laughed as if he’d just heard a good joke. I heard Vix lunge, but the Emperor just snapped his fingers, still chuckling, and two Praetorians grabbed my son at the elbows. “Aren’t you the dutiful son, Vercingetorix.”

Vix wrenched at the grip on his arms, muscles bunching like snakes under the skin—and stopped. Because I shot him a look between my splayed fingers, a look of pure iron. Vix, you never obeyed me in your life, I prayed. Obey me now.

“You fear me.” Domitian petted my hair as he would have petted a dog.

“Yes, Lord and God.” Dropping my face instantly back into my hands.

“Take your hands off her!” Vix howled.

Domitian frowned. Dropping my hair, he crossed the room and belted Vix twice across the face. His fists fell like Vulcan’s hammers. “Quiet now,” he said. “I’ll get to you later—what?”

The Emperor whipped around, following the flick of Vix’s eyes, but only saw me shivering beside the sleeping couch. It had taken just a bare instant while Domitian’s back was turned and the guards struggling to hold Vix: a bare instant to flash my hand under his pillows and draw out his dagger. Another instant to flick it spinning below the couch, and then I was rocking and weeping again: a threat to no one.

Domitian crossed back to my side. “So. Where were we, Athena?”

The guards hammered at Vix to still him, and I longed to leap for the dagger. Not yet. So I crouched and cried as my son sagged bloody-nosed between two Praetorians and the Emperor pulled me onto his lap on the bed.

“Crying,” he said. “You’ve never cried easily.”

I found it quite easy now.

“Perhaps I’ll take you again, one more time—for old times’ sake, shall we say. Your son here can watch. But afterward, my dear, I don’t think I’ll bother watching you die. One dead Jewess is very much like another, after all.”

“Sir.” A double knock at the door; Paulinus’s voice. I’d never heard anything so welcome in my life. “A moment?”