“I-I can stay,” Domitia said, casting a quick glance to Elena.

Elena nodded encouragingly.

“That would be most brave,” Cassius told her gently. “However, I wish you to know you don’t have to if you don’t wish. Ian will be ready to escort you out.”

“I will stay,” Domitia replied, struggling to lift her chin and square her shoulders.

But in the end, she did it.

“I will wait to see him sentenced,” Cornelia stated.

The fact she spoke at all caused Cassius some surprise, for he had never known any of his father’s wives to be communicative, outside Horatia speaking for them all when the occasion arose, and thus he regarded Cornelia a moment before he looked to Elena.

She gave him a slight nod.

He again turned to Cornelia. “I am sorry you must endure this, for I am certain this will be difficult for you.”

“This will be the easiest thing I’ll have endured in my marriage,” she replied.

He hated to hear it, but he had little doubt.

He had not protected these women. He had lived amongst them and been so deep in his own grief, wallowing in self-pity, he had done naught to help them.

“I am sorry that I did not—” he began, his eyes moving between them both.

“He hates you,” Cornelia declared.

Cassius fell silent at hearing words said out loud he knew to the depths of his soul.

“When Trajan was alive, and he had an heir, he would have used any excuse to be done with you,” she informed him. “It is not kind, but it is true, that your grief for your wife saved you. He thought you weak, the love you had for her. And he despised that weakness. He wished you, and her, cast out. Connived to find some way to make that so. When she was gone and you became alternately detached and combative, only then was he able to stomach you, for these were traits for which he held some respect.”

This did not surprise him, the things he liked least about himself, his father liked the most.

“But even if you knew what befell us,” Cornelia continued, “you could not have come to our aid. If you had tried, the way he feels about you, it would have been worse for you.”

Elena moved closer to him as Cassius remained quiet and listened to her words.

“When he had power, he was a danger to us all,” she concluded.

“Even so, I still wish there was some way that I—”

He did not finish that either.

Cornelia talked over him.

“I do as well, but you are doing it now. And that is all.”

That was definitely all, for as he could glean from her expression, she intended to speak no more of it.

At that point, he noted Mac on the move, and Cassius looked to the door.

A soldier stood there.

“I would wish to return to my mother after this,” Cornelia declared, and regained Cassius’s attention.