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“Your people will be drunk and weaponless. Do you want to know who Hersilia is? She and her father proposed this, to tame my impatience. I only had to threaten their lives, and they agreed it would be best for all if there were no more need for subterfuge. I don’t like sneaking around, anyway, stealing girls in the middle of the night. I like to tackle a problem at its head.” He lowered his voice. It was dangerous and husky. “That’s who I am. Last chance. I could throw you from here and spare you the pain.”

“I’ll haunt you,” Safinia hissed.

“You’re right. A recipe for an angry ghost. I’ll have you brought back to your cell. Blindfolded, of course, now that I’m allowing you a few more days of life. Think hard about what you will tell Hersilia when she comes to you this evening. This story has already been told. Your options wane. But say the word, and I may be kind enough to put you to work.”

He made her watch for one horrible moment longer, his grip bruising, her scalp burning with pain. She could not cry out to the revelers below, streaming into the city ahead of the festivities. Orestilla might be down there; Mettius certainly would. His whole family. Even the twins, little Rania and Flavia. Safinia’s eyes filled with tears. There was no telling how many people whom she had brushed arms against on any normal day were now down there, stupid and unsuspecting.

Her sisters. Surely they wouldn’t have come. But they might have—they might be here, now, close and yet unreachable.

I’m going to kill Hersilia, she thought. She couldn’t kill Romulus, but she was strong enough to get her dagger into Hersilia’s chest, dull as it was. See how willing she is to sacrifice for this. She let her pulsing, furious heart scream for blood, and answered it—Yes, yes, I will. Romulus slung her over his shoulder and walked her back to the guards, throwing her into their grip. She didn’t fight them. She only had energy to take one person with her to the afterlife.

Safinia sat watching the scant light under the door, clutching her knife, her most recent bindings frayed at her feet.

She felt her pulse press against her fragile skin like it was seeking an exit. Outside, her countrymen were being shown around Rome, plied with drinks and food and good tiding. They would feel smug, the Sabine. They were being given a performance of submission. They would be boasting about controlling the salt flats again, and Rome’s wealth flowing into Cures through taxes. Was King Tatius among them? Did he know anything of Numa and Romulus’s plan?

Safinia thought she heard footsteps down the hallway. She froze, eyes trained on that sliver of light, waiting for some shadow to pass it. When it did, it kept moving. Not Hersilia. She let her shoulders relax a fraction from her ears.

Hersilia was always ambitious. Always clever, always prideful, always hissing at Safinia to stand straighter.

What had happened to turn her into Romulus’s plaything? When had she become the kind of person who could turn her friends and sister over to the vile Romans?

It must have happened in these past few years, while Safinia was too busy and tired to listen to Mettius as he rambled about city-doings. She must have missed some crucial story, some injury to Hersilia that might have caused her to change. But no—Safinia wouldn’t have missed her name if it fell from Mettius’s mouth, a smooth, river-tumbled stone in a pile of gravel.

Worse was imagining that she hadn’t changed. That she had already been this person when they were both twelve years old, and Safinia stood before her mother’s funeral pyre, her cheeks hot and the rest of her frozen. Hersilia had been standing to the right of her father, who spoke passionately about sacrifice.

She had stared at Safinia with frank curiosity, until Safinia was forced to look away, some part of her hot with embarrassment. Luckily, Anesia’s crying then reached a fever pitch, and Safinia could distract herself with calming her. When she looked back, Hersilia was still staring. Her lips crept up a degree: a small, secret smile. I have plans for you, it said. Never mind that it was Calliste’s funeral, or that Safinia felt numb with shock. Hersilia had chosen her.

It used to feel like an honor.

More and more as she waited, Safinia wished that Livy would find her, that he had not saved her and then left her without answers. She needed him to tell her what would be, convince her that Rome was a passing thing. But even as she thought it, Safinia knew there was nothing he could say to comfort her. His futures were abstract, maybe nothing more than the ravings of a charming madman. Her own future belonged only to her family and herself; when they died, they would not return to see their descendants build new cities or wander off the map. Their lives happened here and only here, while fate passed them by like a river. People like Hersilia could fortify themselves against it, or turn the water from its course, but Safinia was alone, stranded in the current.

If I stay here, at least I endure, she thought, feeling small and mean. What is anyone supposed to do but try to live?

She tightened her grip on her knife, counting her breaths, in and out. In the velvet dark of the grain store, she saw faces: Anesia, rolling her eyes. Attice, closing hers. Ores and Mettius, bent toward her, their hands—his huge, hers small and delicate—curled around her shoulders. The olive tree in her garden, a small shrine to Feronia that marked her favorite trailhead. The smell of moss.

The grief passed, like a bout of nausea. Safinia breathed deep and resumed her wait.

IV

The door creaked open. Safinia was ready. She stood aside the threshold, counting on the sliver of confusion Hersilia would feel when, for a moment, the storeroom appeared empty. Safinia lunged, burying her knife into the chest of the figure opening the door. They dropped, gasping. She clutched the door to hold herself up, suddenly overcome with the enormity of the thing she’d done. Then, as her eyes adjusted to the flickering light of the hallway, she looked up.

Hersilia looked back. Her guard gurgled between them. His blood pooled and oozed over the stone floors.

“I know what you’ve done,” Safinia said breathlessly. “I know about tonight.”

For a moment her heart held its breath, clenched tight like a fist—then a surge of blood lit through her body. She stumbled as she reached for her dagger, still buried in the guard’s chest, pushing his hands away as they weakly yanked at her. Hersilia threw her candle down and took off running; Safinia tore after her, her boots slipping.

I killed him, she thought as she ran. He might have even been Sabine, or at least loyal to Sabine. He might have just been a slave.

Hersilia was deceptively quick. On a normal day, Safinia would have run her down in a hundred paces—but her limbs were stiff, and her head light with hunger. She scrambled for purchase on the floor to take a corner and instead flew into a wall, hitting it so hard on her bad shoulder that she fell to the ground and stayed there a moment.

Hersilia’s footsteps grew quieter. Maybe even just an echo. Or maybe she’d tucked herself in an alcove and was waiting to break a vase over her head. Safinia gritted her teeth and pulled herself up.

She had to kill Hersilia. She was ready to kill Hersilia. But an urgent voice in her head kept her from resuming chase. Who would it help, now, to murder Romulus’s queen? He would just pick a new one. Safinia’s sisters were more important. Orestilla was more important. Safinia had to escape Rome before the Consualia began.

She took a step forward and found herself once more on the ground.

Move, she told herself. Get out of here.