She looked unexpectedly like Sabina, bored and pretty and very young. “Come to a dinner party tonight?” Paulinus offered impulsively.

Her blue eyes flicked up to his. “A party?”

“My cousin, Lappius Maximus Norbanus. You’ve probably never met him—he doesn’t bother with us much; thinks Father’s a terrible bore, I’m afraid. But he’s just been made governor of Lower Germania, and he’s hosting a huge farewell banquet.”

She gave him a slow open-lipped smile, and he could see suddenly why the Emperor had taken a second look. “Really?” She danced across the room, standing on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. “What should I wear?”

“It doesn’t matter.” He bowed over her hand with all the gallantry he could muster. “You’ll still be the most beautiful woman there.”

THEA

A party like any other. Tinkling laughter, jeweled guests, wine in silver cups and grapes in golden bowls, couches heaped with tasseled cushions and musicians plucking softly at lyres. I waited in the anteroom until I was summoned, in the lull between the cakes and the cheeses, and then I swirled forward with my warmest professional smile: Athena, the nightingale of Brundisium’s fashionable set.

A good crowd. Brundisium’s patricians weren’t always polite; I’d been to parties where my voice was drowned out by the buzz of conversation, and parties where the men whistled at my bare arms and didn’t listen to a note of the music I’d worked so hard to prepare. But this was a polite gathering, and they listened appreciatively as I strummed the first chords on my lyre and launched into “Song of Eos.” In the second verse I saw Paulinus on the far couch, a female figure in blue beside him, and I knew then what a professional Larcius had made of me. My voice never quivered when I laid eyes on Lepida Pollia.

She was staring at me with those peacock-blue eyes I remembered so well. A great lady now, her silks draped with a flair she’d never achieved as the daughter of a games organizer. Sapphires about her neck the size of grapes. Her lacquered fingernails twitched once on the velvet cushion, and then her smooth smile blinked back into place. I remembered that smile as she tugged the curtains of her litter shut, the scarlet print of my hand marking her face.

Somehow I finished the song, and the next.

“Marvelous!” Paulinus led the clapping as I bowed. They came to me afterward with congratulations, as I laughed and chatted as Penelope had taught me and Lepida reclined on her couch, her blue eyes never leaving mine over the rim of her wine cup. I longed to cross the room in one long stride and smash her pretty face into the mosaics.

“I believe you have never met my stepmother, Athena.” Paulinus tucked my unwilling hand into his arm, bringing me to her couch. Such a dear boy—so many patrician men talked over my head as if I were a statue—but why did he have to be so polite now? “Lady Lepida Pollia.”