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Romulus.

Safinia tried to dig her heels into the ground, but he hopped from the topmost point of the rock, striding down to her, and the guards forced her to her knees.

“Found her at last, Sir—uh, Lordship—” the guard with her hair in hand stammered.

He held up a hand. “My name is fine.”

“She was stuffed up in one of the grain stores. Romulus. Made a mess of things in there.”

“Another debt to add to my lovely wife’s account,” Romulus said. He looked Safinia over and grabbed her chin, turning it this way and that, hard enough to bruise. “You don’t look like the trouble you’ve turned out to be.”

Safinia stayed stubbornly silent. She wasn’t sure she could say anything even if she wanted to—her mouth was totally dry.

She had to admit he looked like a king. He was tall, broad, with a dark, full beard and a hawk-like nose. He wasn’t as muscled as Hostius, but Safinia doubted Mettius would like to face off against him. He had a restraint in the way he moved that she hadn’t expected. The last time she’d seen him she’d been drunk, and his image hazy. Now he was cast in sharp lines.

“Last night, my wife asked if we might amend some of our plans. She no longer feels you are a match for my champion, Hostius. He was looking forward to hashing out your insults at the Quirite Games.” Romulus had turned his attention back to the land below, but Safinia wasn’t fooled. His tone was conversational, but his voice was pitched to be heard. “It was the only reason he agreed to marry a plebeian drunk. He’ll be so disappointed not to break you in.”

Safinia’s breath came shallow. She knew the guards who held her could feel her shaking; they snickered over it.

Romulus drew near her again, and the force of him—his intensity, the fury she could track in his eyes—nearly made Safinia faint. He drew his gladius and put it to her neck. The blood rushed in Safinia’s ears as she watched it move. She had no other choice but to watch. She’d thought she was facing death at least three times in as many days and was no closer to accepting it—even now, she couldn’t fathom that he was really going to kill her, was really going to stab her or slit her throat and step over her body.

“I won’t waste time. I try to offer dignity in death—I believe in angry ghosts. You may have Hostius in marriage, or be executed.”

Safinia knew her answer. It shamed her, even through her fear. Some would have elected to live, endure, until they could overcome. Raise hell for Rome. Slide a dagger in Hostius’s ribs after he took his fill and slept. But Safinia couldn’t do it.

Her throat was still dry. She bit her tongue until blood filled her mouth. Then she spat it at Romulus’s feet.

His sword moved so quickly in his hand that she barely saw his muscles tense. He’d slapped her with the flat of his blade. A thin cut opened on her cheek. “Do I take that as your answer?”

She could stab him. She could get to the knife in her boot. It was a gift from the gods, surely, that she hadn’t been searched and stripped of it in all this changing of hands. But even if she could get her hands free, the blade was chipped and dull.

Romulus looked expectantly at her. Then his eyes flicked down, and narrowed as he considered. He angled his blade under the twine around her neck and drew it toward him. Livy’s ring dangled between them. She saw it reflected in his eyes—a gold glimmer against fathomless black. “Where did you get this?” he asked. His voice was softer than before, more curious than commanding.

Safinia worked her throat until she had some moisture in it. “Payment,” she lied. “A bounty.”

He snorted. “If it was, you would have sold it. No one keeps a ring like this when their clothes are so worn. And you have no other jewelry.”

“It was given to me by a friend.”

“It’s good make,” Romulus said. He dropped his swordpoint and the ring thunked hard against her sternum. Then—stunningly, so much so that Safinia wondered if she were already dead, and this some kind of hopeful delirium—he stepped back and sheathed the gladius. “I find myself acting hastily,” he said to her in a rueful tone. “I have had to work hard to stay a step ahead of my sweet queen. When I learned she had you hidden somewhere I thought leaving your body for her would send a compelling message.”

Safinia felt sick. He spoke of her murder like it was part of an amusing game.

“I see now how wasteful that would be. I let my anger make me forget I have other councilors who may have opinions on your potential for a place in my kingdom. I will consult them before any final decisions.”

Safinia spat again.

His eyes flicked to her. “I could still kill you. Or make you suffer. Hersilia can tell you all about that when next she comes to conspire.”

“Do it, then!” Safinia’s voice tore from the pit of her stomach, and out of her throat. The guard with her hair in his fist shook her. “What’re you waiting for?” she yelled. “You won’t break me like you did her!”

Romulus smirked to himself. “She’s hardly broken. Not yet. I bet you fretted over her while she was away. Well, let me show you who your Hersilia is.” He strode over to her and took her hair from the guard, dragging her with him to the top of the cliff. Below, a marshy plain. A horde of people were at the gate, or headed that way, either from the east or north. Safinia realized with a sinking feeling that many wore the colored ribbons given out to support Mettius in the Games.

“They’re Sabine,” she said. “It’s the Consualia.” She’d been locked up longer than she hoped.

“Most of them. There will be some Latin, some Alban, in the crowd. But mostly Sabine.” Romulus felt her gulp air and put his huge hand over her mouth before she could scream. Safinia tried to kick and scratch at him, twisting her wrists in another coarse set of ropes, and he held her away from him like an irate cat. “Tonight, every one of my Romans will ride into the crowd and take a bride.”

This was horror. Unthinkable, and yet it rang with truth. Safinia screamed into his hand; he held it all, muffled.