And their faces were painted to extremes. Thick kohl around their eyes, stark and unnatural red at their lips, white powder on their skin and clownish rouge at their cheeks.

Indeed, there was so much paint on their faces, I could not tell if they were aged sixteen or sixty.

They wore tangles of strings of pearls and gold chains that fell about their chests, dangled from their ears and bound their wrists.

This demonstration of wealth was not only ostentatious (most specifically because of the absolute lack of such adorning the women in the city), it also seemed more like manacles and yokes than gilding.

It was a shock to the system, for seeing it, I realized there was no color in this place. Not anywhere. Not here, at the Citadel, not down below, in the city.

No flowers. Even if it was late in the season, mums, sage, goldenrod, roses, sunflowers and asters still bloomed.

No colorful awnings.

No bright pottery or brightly glazed tilework.

There was not even color in the fabrics, not in the uniforms of the servants, not in the clothing of the women (the corsets were all in shades of brown or gray, the blouses white or cream, the skirts, black or gray).

My thoughts were turned when the women all rushed directly to Gallienus before he even dismounted and fell into such low curtsies, their skirts looked like pools of dark silk on the cobbles.

His wives.

All three of them.

Nearly prostrate before him with their heads bowed.

I felt bile chase up my throat and heard Jazz choke down hers.

“Welcome to my home,” Cassius drawled, and I looked to him in alarm.

With one look I knew more than I already knew.

He hated it here.

Abhorred it.

And here we were.

Here I was.

And he did not want me here.

But here was also where he was raising his beloved daughter, his Aelia.

He did not want that either.

And I could now understand why.

I stared into his eyes, seeing the sky-blue was gone. They were dark as night and blinking with miniscule stars.

This, how they looked when he felt deeply, in the haze of passion or in a blaze of anger.

And looking into those eyes, I sensed something gathering along my spine.

Not my magic.

Something even more important.

Vital.

Fundamental.

I needed to save him from this.

I needed to save him and Aelia and Dora from this.

I needed to protect them from this nightmare, deliver them from it.

And the only thing I could do in order to achieve that was to transform it.

At first in mind.

And then in reality.

“It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” I only partly lied.

His chin jerked into his neck.

“The whole city. Those…I don’t know what they’re called, carriages on rails,” I went on.

“Trains,” he said.

“Trains,” I repeated. “And the canals. And the rose windows. The steepled roofs.” I looked up to what seemed like the interminable towers of the Citadel, doing so gazing past gargoyles in shapes of everything from lizards to bats to trolls to griffin to dragons to, well…gargoyles to see intimidating wrought iron finials spiking into the sky. “And this…” I searched for words. “It’s just extraordinary.”