“My wife, Caesar,” Marcus had introduced me at my first Imperial banquet. “Lady Lepida Pollia.”

I curtsied very low. “Lord and God.” That was how he liked to be addressed: Lord and God. I wouldn’t mind being addressed as Lady and Goddess. Yes, I would like that very much.

I watched him all night, while Marcus droned on about taxation. Domitian was not unattractive. Tall. Heavy-shouldered. Ruddy-cheeked. A military air, but not so stiff-necked as Paulinus. Distant with his noble guests, laughing with his generals. As for his Empress, well, she might as well have been a statue for all the attention he paid her.

Not that she was my only competition. I’d heard the rumors about Domitian and his niece. If the rumors were true—if she had drawn him away from his once madly adored wife—then she had to have something remarkable.

Well, I watched her all evening and saw nothing fascinating. A wispy child: flaxen-haired, straight-bodied, wide-eyed, and silent. How pathetic. And how strange. After huddling on her couch like a rabbit for nearly two hours, she suddenly got up and wandered to the far end of the dining hall, muttering to herself. Conversation came to a complete halt as the Empress rose, took hold of her arm, and led her back to the couch. “Eat, Julia,” Domitian ordered impatiently, and she attacked the plates like a starving dog, cramming food into her mouth until her cheeks puffed. Never taking her round colorless eyes from her uncle, as if she feared he’d stab her with a table knife. Domitian turned back to his generals and didn’t glance her way for the rest of the evening. I ignored Julia after that, too, and soon she was hardly coming to the Imperial dinners at all. The little freak.

Marcus had an inexplicable sympathy for her. “She was always frail,” he said after one evening when Julia had spent the entire meal coughing into her wine cup and gabbling nonsense words whenever anyone tried to talk to her. “Poor Julia.”

“Poor Julia,” I agreed. A freak, and mad. Even if the Emperor ever had been interested in her, he certainly wouldn’t be now. High time for someone new to move in. He had many mistresses, but none who lasted.

I’d last.

“Lady Lepida.” His dark eyes focused on my purple silk stola, just a shade lighter than his own Imperial cloak. “How regal.”

“Thank you, Lord and God.” Instead of demurely dropping my gaze, I boldly stared back at him.

“Do you sing, Lady Lepida?” He addressed me abruptly across a roast peacock later that evening.

I savored the little lull in conversation as heads turned toward me. “No, Lord and God,” I said in the low, rich voice I’d practiced in the atrium as a girl.

“Pity.” He turned away, snapping his fingers for the wine decanter, and I leaned forward to call after him.

“They say gods have keen ears for music.”

His eyes lingered as I turned away casually, sliding over on my back and bending all my attention, all my charms on the dining companion at my right hand, a young tribune who nearly upset his goblet in his eagerness.