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Her stomach growled. She was not yet at the point of chewing raw grain. Safinia pillowed her head in her hands and lay on the stone floor, pretending it was soft moss and a clearing. What about Livy? She had no idea what he was doing. Had association with Safinia tainted him? What had he meant when he said to Numa he had plans for her?

And then there was Hersilia to think about. Numa believed she was in danger. Was she shut in some dark place, too? Was it close by? Maybe she was in the next room over, and all Safinia had to do was place her hand on the wall to feel her. She fantasized about finding her in the Regia and escaping together. Hersilia would kiss her senseless. Sometimes in her imagination, it was Orestilla who held her hand.

She paced back and forth to keep the blood in her legs from pooling. She had six small steps to work with from end to end. She did this until the arches of her feet ached, then sat back down to rub them.

Maybe no one was coming for her at all. Maybe Numa really had just wanted to get her out of the way, and now that she was, she was no longer his concern. She would live and die and rot in this room. No one would find her until grain allotments began, and then she would be the plaything of whoever opened the door first.

The long silence yawned on. Safinia curled on the floor and tried to reach for Feronia, connect her roots to the pulsing heart of rage she knew was deep under her feet, but she lay on stone, and had no idea how far she would have to reach to find the dirt.

Please, Goddess. She pressed her prayer flat into the ground. Janus, Feronia, Vesta. Save me. Over and over, in a twilight between sleeping and awake, until—as if in answer—she was blinded by a sudden burst of light, boring into her even as she clapped her hands to her eyes. For long, relentless moments, all she could register were feet. Someone new had come into the space. Someone delicate, clad in silk slippers.

II

A woman materialized out of the light. Her stola—layers and layers of silk and muslin—made a soft shushing sound as she knelt eye level to Safinia. Her huge, dark eyes were unblinking. Safinia was hypnotized by the way they moved, incrementally, over her face, her shoulders, her body. Noting every bruise and oozing sore. Safinia wanted to hide. She wasn’t fit to be seen by this goddess, gold threaded through her hair, around her neck, dowry bangles from wrist to shoulder.

“Well?” Hersilia asked. Her voice was a rasp, low and amused and in control, just as Safinia remembered. “Don’t you recognize me?”

“I thought you were dead,” Safinia told her. “Your father said you might be. Are you taking me to the underworld?” This wasn’t said to be a part of the process of dying, but since no one could find Cures’s dead, there were no ancestors to tell them what was.

Hersilia laughed. She straightened and set an oil lamp in a holder next to the door. The room glowed with warm light. “I’m so happy to see you. Even in such a state.”

“Are you hurt?”

“Please.” Hersilia winked over her shoulder. Then she pulled the door almost shut and settled prettily on the ground before Safinia. “Father worries too much. I’m fine.”

Safinia studied her to be sure it was true. She wasn’t sure that it was. Hersilia weighed less than the last time they’d seen each other, and there was a shadow under her eyes that had never been there before. The jewelry could be hiding bruising, too. She wore more of it than in Cures.

“I can’t believe it’s you,” Safinia said. At the same time, Hersilia: “It’s really you.”

They laughed, suddenly teenagers. There was a hum in Safinia’s body that was completely at odds with how it should have felt—a giddy lightness that had not yet tipped over into dizzy or sick, but would. She tried to think about all they needed to say—and more importantly, the plan they needed to make to escape, but when Hersilia’s hand came lightly under her chin, lifting her face, every thought flew from Safinia’s head.

“Four years shouldn’t have changed your face, and yet . . .” Hersilia tilted her from side to side. “I didn’t imagine we would be apart for so long, when I last saw you.”

Safinia closed her eyes. She could not stop her hands from lifting, her fingers from tracing Hersilia’s jaw. She remembered that night vividly. Not because of the fight they’d had—she couldn’t even remember what it had been about. Something petty was always coming between them, such that their affair was a series of cliffs and very steep drops. No—what Safinia remembered was the way she’d halted in the dark streets, after storming from the corner chef near the villas, burning with embarrassment and dizzy with drink, and turned from the gate to go find Mettius instead of going home.

If she hadn’t, she would have arrived home before the raiders did.

“You knew where to find me,” Safinia said. “You could have sent a message.”

“No, I couldn’t have. Not with what people were saying about you,” Hersilia whispered. A torrid affair was one kind of taboo; taking up with a girl who had a reputation for violence was another altogether. “I still wanted you, though. If you had come back to the city and tried to take some other lover—I had a plan to punish you for it.”

“Too busy for that,” Safinia said. Too tired. Too emptied out. Her hands too bloody.

“Well, I can make up for it now.” Hersilia’s eyes crinkled. She leaned forward, nudging Safinia’s nose with hers, pulling her chin forward in a kiss that first brushed, then consumed. The pressure on her lips was bruising; Hersilia’s teeth caught and scraped her, and the pads of her fingers pressed hard into the spots under Safinia’s ears, along the sides of her neck. She’d forgotten how this could be a battle. It was no sweet, sweeping kiss in a courtyard, the sun hot on their hair. Hersilia meant to eat her whole. Her fingers brushed the sores on Safinia’s wrist and made her yelp.

Hersilia pulled Safinia to the floor with her, hands clamped tightly against the spot where her head met neck, twisted in her hair. Safinia’s body responded, unfurling like a reflex to familiar touch, even as her mind felt the cold shallowness of this act. Safinia wanted to not breathe, to not think, to not have fallen in love with a different woman than the one underneath her. How would Orestilla blame her for this? Safinia felt sick—Orestilla wouldn’t blame her, of course she wouldn’t. She’d stood by and watched her sister fall in love with Safinia. She’d said nothing of her own feelings until she’d earned Safinia’s trust.

That had been what Orestilla was saying that first night, when they spoke in the garden of Safinia’s hut. Hadn’t it? She’d been smiling. Maybe blushing.

She’d liked Safinia for the same reasons Hersilia had iced her out. As soon as Safinia thought it, there was no part of her that wanted to be kissing anyone but Orestilla.

“Stop a moment,” Safinia asked. She pushed Hersilia’s shoulder back. “Please. First we have to talk.”

“Boring,” Hersilia whined. But she disentangled herself from Safinia, making a show of stretching and sitting back on her hands. “What about?”

“What—Hersilia.” Safinia scrambled to a seat. “I have been all over Sabinum since I learned you were missing. I’m sorry I didn’t find you faster.”

“You didn’t find me.” Hersilia’s eyes twinkled with amusement. “I found you. Well, my father did. But he told me where I could this morning.”