Heat is radiating up through the floor, and Amara is now pouring with sweat. The smell of hot pies and the smothering sensation of guilt make her feel nauseous. She thinks of Drauca, of all Felix might do to the woman in front of her. She cannot leave without payment. “What about the ring?” she says, pointing to the cameo Marcella is unconsciously twisting round and round.

Marcella puts her hand behind her back like a child. “No.”

“It would put an end to the payments. We could write off the whole loan today.”

“It was my mother’s. She’s dead. I cannot give it to you.”

Marcella looks fragile, standing alone in the shabby lodgings she shares with her drunken husband. Amara wonders how long it would take Felix to smash up the place, how much damage he could do. “Fires start easily in smoky little bars,” she says. “You should be more careful with that oven downstairs.” She leaves a moment of silence, allowing the threat to hang between them, then holds out her hand. “Give me the ring. If you don’t, I cannot protect you.”

Nobody has ever stared at her with more hatred than Marcella does as she turns the ring round and round her finger for the last time. It takes some time to pull it off—her fingers must be swollen in the heat, and she worries away at her hand, as if fighting with her own flesh over the parting. At last she drops it in Amara’s palm. “Never come back here.”

“Believe me,” Amara says, “I just did you a favor.” She knows it’s true, that Marcella would have lost more than the cameo, but still, the words seem to come from someone else. She realizes she sounds just like Felix.

19

“I like not joy bestowed in duty’s fee,

I’ll have no woman dutiful to me.”

—Ovid, The Art of Love II

“Those are the worst verses I have ever heard!”

Priscus is laughing, almost overwhelmed with amusement after hearing the she-wolves sing Cornelius’s hymn to Flora. Dido and Amara laugh too, while Salvius shakes his head. “If I had known what words you were setting to such a beautiful tune, I would never have taught it to you,” he says, his voice grave, though his eyes are smiling.

It is the night of their repayment, but it feels more like a holiday. Salvius’s small dining room twinkles with candles, and the cool of the evening air drifts through the open windows. It is nothing like as grand as the two parties they attended recently—there’s bean stew, a small portion of roasted pigeon—but this feels the closest thing to a family meal that Amara has experienced since she left her father’s house. She suspects it is the same for Dido.