I left great claw marks on the skin of his arms, thrashing from side to side as a choking blindness filled my head. Guards would come, they would kill Nessus, they would take me to the Emperor—my hair came down in tangled snakes; I’d be a mess when Domitian saw me—

“Ganymede.” Squeezing. “Ganymede.”

My throat was a mass of flames, and numb little flickers of pain trickled down my limbs. No. This could not happen. I was Lepida Pollia, Lady and Goddess of Rome—I was beautiful, and Fortuna loved me—

“Ganymede.”

I feel the blood pump through my neck between his hands.

“Ganymede,” he says. Blood runs down his arms from my scratches. I bat weakly at his hands, and the red of my lacquered nails mixes with the blood on his arms.

I summon all my strength and scream. Nothing comes out—nothing but a single strangled gasp as my eyes darken and my limbs go numb.

“Ganymede,” he whispers.

I sag against the wall, feeling my tongue protruding. The astrologer’s contorted face comes to me dimly through the black flowers blooming across my eyes. Who, I try to say, who, who—but I have no breath left.

Who is Ganymede?

Thirty-five

MARCUS walked home, and with every uneven step the thought repeated itself.

My son is dead.

He’d been unable to go home and wait when Arius and Thea left for the Domus Augustana. He’d found some pretext for loitering outside the palace gates . . . so he’d been one of the first on the scene when the blood was done flowing and the panic set in. One of the first to see Paulinus’s gaping throat, the loose-tangled limbs, the outflung hand.

“Leave him, Marcus,” the Empress had said. “We’ll prepare him for a hero’s funeral. The Emperor’s friend who died trying to defend him.”

Paulinus is dead.

Marcus stared at his own gate a moment before recognizing it. Slowly he struck the latch, limped through the garden, stepped into the dark empty hall.

Paulinus is dead.

He turned his head away from the thought, and his eyes fell on the atrium. A shadowy figure stood there in the moonlight, leaning against a pillar. “Calpurnia?”

She started, whirling around. Her eyes were huge holes in a white face. “Marcus,” she whispered. “Oh gods, Marcus.” She took three running steps across the atrium and flung her arms around him.

He opened his mouth to tell her, and drew in a confused breath of her scents: herbs, crushed mint, bread rising sweet in the oven; and then the pain kicked sharply, swelling through him until he thought he would die. He turned his face into her shoulder, dimly hearing her dismiss the curious slaves.

“You’re all right.” Her arms closed tight around his neck, her cheek pressed against his hair. “I can’t believe it—waited for hours—didn’t know where you were—and I don’t want to know, but you’re all right; you’re all right and that’s all I want. Oh gods, Marcus, don’t leave me.” She kissed his mouth and his eyes and his hands, over and over. “Don’t leave me again, I can’t bear it.” She couldn’t stop kissing him, and her mouth tasted like all good things on earth.