Amara knows she only has the briefest moment to act before Philos mistakes her shock for something else. He flinches as she lays her palm over the scars but does not push her away. She moves closer, bending her head to kiss him on the part of himself he was so afraid of revealing, then looks up. “Nobody in the brothel was branded,” she says. “It would have reduced our value. But sometimes, I think there is not a piece of my skin that was left unmarked.”

This time when Philos kisses her, Amara does not tell herself there is a way back.

Afterward, when they are tangled up together, Philos keeps murmuring apologies into her hair, promising that he will last longer next time, but Amara cannot reply because she does not want him to know she is crying. Tears start to pool onto his shoulder, and he sits up in alarm.

“Did I hurt you?”

“You didn’t hurt me,” she says, crying even harder. “It just felt different. It made me realize . . .” Amara cannot continue, cannot even put into words the sense of loss she feels.

“I understand,” Philos says, drawing her closer. “It’s alright.” Amara holds onto him tightly, her distress gradually subsiding as he strokes her shoulders. “I know it can get you that way,” he says. “If it’s any consolation, the first time I was with a girl after Terentius, I bawled my eyes out.”

“You did?”

“It was terrible. I was so embarrassed.”

“What did she say? Did you see her again after that?”

She senses the hesitation in his body even before he refuses to answer her question. “Maybe that’s a story for another time,” he says. “But you must know all this already, from your affair with that boy with the lamp. I knew when I saw you together that you loved him.”

“Menander?” Amara asks, unnerved by his perception. “I did love him, yes. But he was never my lover. We never had the chance.”

“Am I your first then?” Philos sounds both delighted and surprised. The question is so ridiculous that Amara has to stifle a laugh. “I’m serious! If you didn’t choose, it didn’t count.”

“Philos,” Amara says, amused, “I must have slept with literally hundreds of men. I worked in a brothel. I can’t even begin to keep track.”

“None of it counts, though,” he says, his voice even more earnest. “Not if you didn’t choose.”

She is about to argue then realizes from the intense look on his face that perhaps he is thinking of his own life rather than hers. “In that case, yes. You are my first lover.” In spite of her good intentions, Amara is unable to finish the sentence without snorting.

“You might laugh,” he says, kissing her. “But I just brought you to tears.”