Chrysate had waited for this day.

The scry showed that the horizon was scarlet. Soldiers marched overland, searching not for battles but for those like Chrysate, who trafficked in dark magic. Rome sought allies, but the Romans had no notion of what Fates they tempted. No notion of what ancient things they drew.

In chaos, there was opportunity for change, opportunity for reversals of power. Hecate, who had been trapped for centuries, her influence limited, might be released. She’d lived far longer than the gods who now presided over Hades, and her powers were as simple and deep as those of the Earth herself, the scalding of lava, the ice of winter storms. Hecate’s heart was made of lust and hunger, of murder and rapture. The powers Chrysate saw in the scry were similarly ancient. If Chrysate could find a way to channel such power, Hecate might rise up, and her priestess with her.

Chrysate worked her opal ring, engraved with the face of the goddess she served, over her twisted knuckle and dropped it into the basin, breaking the scry. She’d seen enough.

She glanced quickly about her cave, her gaze flicking over the heap of bones in the corner. She took only a few things in tiny leather pouches, balms made of rare ingredients, some beeswax, a knife so ancient and well used that its blade was a mere whisper of metal.

Murmuring to herself in Greek, she walked barefoot down the rocky trail and toward the soldiers.

As she made her way into their path, the knots in her hair untangled themselves. Her slender body became curvaceous, her crumpled skin silken, and her eyes greener and more glimmering.

By the time she reached the legionaries sent by Marcus Agrippa, she looked almost human.

2

The ship tossed in the storm, the wood singing and creaking, salt water seeping through the cracks. This was a transport bringing goods and slaves from Africa to Italy, and beneath the deck, wild animals destined for combat at the Circus Maximus could be heard howling and shifting. Once they were delivered to Rome, they’d be housed in tunnels beneath the city, and the sounds of beasts would be heard, faintly, by pedestrians walking above them, as though Africa had become Rome’s Underworld.

The sailors trod the deck, uneasy, trimming the sailcloth and swarming the ropes, peering out into the night, suspicious of omens. Swallows had nested in the rigging, and a monster had been sighted off the stern. Its dark shadow and sharp fin trailed the vessel, not deep enough in the water to be harmless. The sailors had felt unsafe since they’d left port, what with their shrieking, roaring cargo. And those whose duty it was to feed and tend the animals felt more nervous still.

Something was not right in the darkness there, and lanterns were not enough to illuminate the corners.

A goat skittered across the deck, its white fur standing out in wet tufts.

A swallow wheeled and twisted in the air.