Victoria slaps her across the face. Amara gasps, clasping a hand to her stinging cheek, too shocked to retaliate. “Don’t pretend to be such a fucking idiot,” Victoria shouts at her. “Rich old men and fancy boyfriends aren’t enough for you, you have to have Felix as well? You don’t even like him, still less want him! What are you doing? Rubbing everyone else’s nose in it, making us all feel worthless?”

“Like I have any choice!” Amara shouts back. “You think I enjoy being around Felix? And anyway, why do you care? You hate him as much as I do!” As soon as she has said it, she remembers the afternoon she and Dido overheard Victoria panting out her devotion. I love you; I would die for you. Amara looks at her anguished face and understands what she should have realized long ago. Victoria wasn’t pretending. “But you can’t; you can’t love him,” she says. “He’s a fucking monster! He doesn’t care about any of us.”

“Can you keep it down?” Beronice is standing in the doorway, looking haggard with exhaustion. “Or else take it outside. Some of us are trying to sleep.” She flings the curtain back across with a swish.

The interruption startles Amara and Victoria out of their anger. “I know he’s a shit; I know it,” Victoria says, lowering her voice. “You don’t have to tell me. But you don’t understand what he can be like sometimes. You’ve never seen it.” Her eyes are shining with tears, and she tumbles over her words, tripped up by all the feelings she keeps buried. “He can be so loving and gentle. And he’s always really sorry when he’s hurt me. He begs me to forgive him; he really begs. I see a side of him the rest of you don’t.” Victoria is unrecognizable in her desperation; Amara almost cannot bear to be near her. “He’s lonely, like I am. I love him so much.”

Amara thinks of the way Felix spoke to Victoria after Paris punched her, the many times she’s seen him hurt her, the way—only yesterday—he offered her body to Cedrus as if she were nothing. She feels sick to her stomach. She takes Victoria’s hand, squeezing it. “I just think you deserve so much more,” she says.

“What more is there?”

“Somebody who wouldn’t hit you,” Amara says. “A man who didn’t sell you.”

“What do you think we are? Where do you think we are living?” Victoria asks, incredulous, gesturing at the soot-stained walls. “This isn’t a fucking play. We’re not goddesses. How high are you aiming? The emperor?”

There is a sound of violent retching. They look at each other in alarm. “Cressa!”

Beronice has reached the latrine before them, craning over the low wall. “Are you alright in there?”