I told him. Hadrian, making me his bodyguard and his desk-man. Hadrian, making me butcher his enemies. Hadrian, for whom I’d cast off most of my friends and lived separate from my wife. “I hate him,” I concluded. “But sometimes . . . sometimes I forget that I hate him. When I’m riding along behind him on the Rhine as he’s surveying the legions, or when he tells me to do what I like with training the Praetorians because he knows I’ll make a fine job of it—that’s when I forget.” It was worse since we’d begun traveling—in Rome I could keep the hatred stoked, during those long idle watches where I did nothing but watch the bastard’s back as he worked at his desk. Nothing like idleness for hatred. But on the road, so many new things to see, so much to do, his energy subsumed by movement instead of idle viciousness—that’s when I forgot.

It wasn’t just for the sake of seeing Mirah more often that I pressed to travel ahead of Hadrian’s court, out of his company, to make his preparations as he journeyed while Boil held the bodyguard watches. I was more comfortable out of range of the man, where I could keep what he was clearly in mind. Because I was a dim, rock-headed bastard who apparently couldn’t keep his grudges straight, and it made my eyes prick with shame. “He once threatened to have Mirah and the children killed if I didn’t do his bidding,” I said, “and yet sometimes I forget that I hate him.”

My father said nothing.

“Did he break me,” I managed to say, “and I’m only now noticing?”

“No one could break my son,” my father said calmly. “Not the Young Barbarian.”

My old gladiator name. How foolish it sounded—so foolish I almost laughed. “Not so young anymore.”

“And grown more stubborn, not less.” My father looked at me. “Nobody’s broken you, boy. Not the Emperor, not anyone.”

I wasn’t altogether sure he was right, but I still felt a violent relief pierce me like a spear. Fathers do that to you—here I was, thirty-eight years old, the Emperor’s protector, commander of hundreds, and I still felt relief because my father had told me things weren’t so bad.

Or maybe it was just relief at admitting my secret guilts and shames at all; my fears of what I had become. How long had it been since I’d been able to speak like this? At one point my confidante had been Titus, but I’d buggered that up to Hades and gone. My eyes pricked, and I dashed a fist across them angrily. “Dust,” I growled, but my father wasn’t fooled.

“Don’t you talk to that wife of yours about any of this, boy?”