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He backhanded her. One of his rings opened a scrape on her cheek. Safinia shut her mouth.

“I’m not selling you,” he said very low and very quickly. The Romans were almost here. “And whatever I’m willing to do to stay on course, I’m not an evil man. Cooperate, and perhaps someone will feel moved to explain to you what’s at stake here.”

“What’s—”

“Everything, Safinia Amaryllis, everything’s at stake,” he hissed. “Civility and empire and—ah, hello, Thalassius, Hostius. Good of you to greet me.”

“What’s this?” The Roman Safinia didn’t recognize—Thalassius—nudged her with his foot. He was huge, even bigger than Hostius, but obviously deferred to the other. “Who gets her?”

“I wouldn’t wish her on my least favorite Roman,” Numa said coolly. “This is the one we have to thank for the Games falling apart. King Romulus requested to deal with her.”

Safinia’s vision went gray. She barely registered being yanked upright by Thalassius, or the conversation that followed. It was all she could do to get her feet under her and try to go to death with some dignity.

Romulus wanted to deal with her. A hysterical bubble of laughter threatened to escape her lips. Romulus himself! Maybe after her execution she would be a folk hero after all, like her mother. Plebeians love me, Safinia thought with the part of her mind quickly losing grip on reality. Numa says it, so it must be true.

Now that she was going to die, her life felt wasted. A thousand possibilities in the last three years suddenly illuminated themselves—how could she have thought she was stuck? She could have taken up weaving, or married Mettius after all, or joined the army. She could have changed her name and disappeared into the woods like Timaeus.

“Blindfold her,” Numa said. “In case she tries to get tricky.”

“Don’t mind a tricky woman myself,” Thalassius, or maybe Hostius, said. Scratchy fabric pulled tight around Safinia’s eyes. A hand she thought was Numa’s gripped the back of her neck and steered her.

“Patience, Thalassius,” he said. “Yours was picked out special. Only a little longer now.”

She tried to do as Attice had—to disappear into her own mind. Fill it only with the version of her life that was worth living. Moss, she thought. Bark. Roots. Dew in the mornings. The forest wouldn’t let her in. She stumbled and Numa’s grip tightened. They were walking up a steep incline. Attice, Anesia, Orestilla, the twins, she thought wildly. Their faces wouldn’t come to her. I’ll take Mettius, even. They were all at the edge of her perception, disappearing when she tried to focus. Only imagining the ways she would kill Numa—a garroting, probably, she didn’t need him to see her face when she did it—calmed her. Safinia began to count her breaths. She wasn’t dead yet.

Rome was eerily quiet. Maybe no one was awake yet, though it was almost afternoon. She wouldn’t be surprised if they caroused all night and slept all day. Whatever the reason, Safinia was glad for the small mercy it was to not be paraded before the Romans.

“I’ll take it from here,” Numa told their escort. “I’m sure you want to get to the circus for training.”

She counted ten breaths to be sure her guards had left, then locked her knees, pushing back against Numa’s grip. He’d been an athlete when he was young, not a soldier, and he couldn’t push her where she didn’t want to go, not without significant effort.

“Stop this,” he hissed. “Or I will slide a dagger into your ribs and just be done with it. You’ve made my morning a misery.”

He suddenly stepped away and she tumbled backward, hitting the ground with a thump. “Numa,” she said, spitting a lock of hair from her mouth. “Just don’t hurt them. My sisters.”

There was a long pause. Finally, he said, “Whatever happens will happen.” And then she felt cold, sharp metal press under her chin, forcing her to stand, and walk, into a cool, echoing place. Like a tomb. Safinia no longer cared if he had the satisfaction of her fear. She could no more hide her weeping than she could stopper her love for Attice and Anesia.

A door opened, and Numa shoved her to the ground. “A cell?” she asked.

“A grain store. You’re in the Regia.”

She tried dislodging her blindfold with her shoulder and saw flashes of a stone floor and scattered grain, so deep in the guts of Romulus’s palace that the only light was by candle.

“Romulus?” she asked. “When does he deal with me?”

“Don’t be stupid, Safinia,” Numa said. “Romulus doesn’t care about you. You’re not important. I just don’t like Thalassius very much.”

He barred the door closed, and there was only darkness.

Time passed. Safinia worked at the bindings on her wrist until they bled, and finally, slickened, she slid her hands free. She still had her hunting knife in her boot. She decided to leave it there.

She clawed at the door until her fingernails cracked. It held fast. She wept, curled into her hands on the floor. When she thought it had been half a day or more, she tried using her knife after all—to wedge the door open—and nearly broke the blade. For a long, bitter moment she held its hilt so tightly that her knuckles creaked. The impulse to bring it to her neck and pull her skin open overwhelmed her. Her head was light, and also somehow pounding. She could see the motion so clearly in her mind’s eye, could feel the shift in her shoulder and bend in her elbow it would require.

“No,” Safinia said. “I want to live.”

She stuffed the knife back into her boot. It was dull, anyway.

What were her sisters and Orestilla doing? She hoped they didn’t think she’d abandoned them. Orestilla would ponder and pace and try to figure out why she’d been jumpy, if she hadn’t already assumed that their kiss was why Safinia was gone. Anesia would pretend nothing had happened, then throw a tantrum as soon as someone coughed too loudly. Mettius would need to be restrained from running to Rome himself to get her.