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She shouldn’t have been surprised that he had guessed her plans. “You know what I want to do.”

“I do.”

“I will offer safe passage for any who choose to join me,” Safinia said, and though it shocked her to say this aloud, she knew she meant it. “I intend to bring them all.”

They’d sat long enough for the cold to seep into Safinia’s thighs and feet. She turned her face to the screen of branches above her, scraping each other as the wind moved them. Occasionally, a burst of sunlight fought through the locking treetops. “Wherever we go, we need to rest first. Somewhere new, and green. Cures is—wrong for us.”

“Very well then,” Timaeus said. “I’ll show your flock the way to Lucus Feroniae. I’ll leave signs so you can follow me there.”

It was the best she would get from him. “Thank you, Timaeus,” she said.

He inclined his head. “It’s the least I can do,” he said. “I was—sorry to learn of your sister’s death.”

Safinia pressed her lips together. She could feel more tears building in her chest. But she also felt lighter than she had in a very long time. “I keep thinking,” she began. She couldn’t continue until she’d worked her throat open. “Attice, when I came into the woods to find her. She probably wouldn’t have lived long if I hadn’t. Maybe not even long enough for them to bring her to a slave market. But I went and found her and made her live four more tormented years, only to die in Rome.” She closed her eyes. “If I can spare just—just one or two girls, keep them far away from all of this . . .”

Timaeus took her hand and folded it into both of his. Their palms were cold where they pressed together. “Very few of us get to live knowing there is someone who would save us,” he said. “Attice did. And I suspect there will be others before you pass to the next life.”

“Thank you,” Safinia murmured again.

She was nearly ready to leave. She could sense him, too, muscles tensing to stand. But Safinia hesitated. Something in his touch had been ghost-like. Like the memory of a touch. She’d felt that before. “Timaeus,” she said. “You know the future, don’t you. You’ve lived it.”

He was quiet long enough that she turned to look at him. “Pieces of it,” he said finally.

“Then you’ll know about Livy. What he was. He told me—he told me Rome will go on past any map I’ve ever seen.” She paused, unsure of how to explain herself. “What if there’s no point? Wherever I lead people. Someday it’ll be Rome anyway.”

“Maybe,” Timaeus said. Safinia thought her heart would break.

“What is it worth, then?”

“You answer that, not me,” Timaeus said. “What is it worth? If I told you you would have five hundred years or ten before Rome came? They will never have all of you.”

And then he left, slipping away as always. He could move like a rustle through the thin boughs.

The moon had risen by the time Safinia hiked back to her home. Faustus and Quintus were either asleep or in the city—no torch was left out for her in the garden. Up on the ridge, though, a little glow said that someone was awake. Safinia found Mettius lying in the coarse grass outside his hut, staring at the stars.

“Not out for a night adventure with your new boyfriends?” she asked. Mettius had slept a few times now at her hut. The heat of all three of them meant Safinia barely needed to stir the hearth through the night.

He looked up at her. “Lie here with me.”

She settled against him, her head resting on his outstretched arm. It was the first time they’d been alone together in a long while. He lingered, after dinners, or came around pretending he was looking for the boys, but Safinia avoided him. Too many times, she’d almost given in to the urge to rage against the safe, solid wall of his body—to scream that it should have been him, not Attice, who stood between Rome and his sister.

But she would have regretted that. Attice would have forgiven him in an instant. Mettius didn’t need to carry Safinia’s anger this time.

“I missed you,” Mettius said quietly. He spun the ends of Safinia’s hair in his fingers.

“I didn’t,” Safinia said, and was rewarded with his laugh, jostling her off her shoulder. “When do you march out?”

“Three days.”

He kept his fear to himself, though Safinia could feel it emanating from him. She sat up and gripped his ankle. “You have to kill Hostius.”

“I will.”

“Promise me,” Safinia said.

“I swear it.” Mettius looked up at her. She remembered the night before she’d left for Crustumerium, when she’d woken him up for a different promise. He’d been afraid he couldn’t keep it, then. He wasn’t afraid now. She nodded, satisfied. Mettius sat up on his elbows. “You aren’t coming, are you?”

“No, I’m not.” Safinia hesitated. This had been her purpose tonight. “And I’m going to take Rania with me.”