“Gods save me,” Sabina sighed. “I really should make some sort of public appearance. Or nobody will believe it’s me once I actually turn up alive.”
“It’s only been five days since you were stabbed,” Vix growled, entering her chamber with a brimming cup. “Plenty of time to correct misapprehensions later. For now, lie still and take your draught.”
“It makes me drowsy,” Sabina complained. She didn’t want to sleep; she’d been lost to black and uneasy dreams for five days and nights after she’d slid into oblivion in a pool of her own blood. By the time she’d wakened, Pedanius was drowned and Servianus dead by his own hand, and the world was a different place.
A world where apparently, Rome believed her dead too. That was entertaining.
“I don’t care if the draught makes you sleepy. It also kills the pain, so drink it.” Vix pushed the cup into her hand. Sabina made a face at him, but drank. As a nurse he was a horrid bully and a terrible fusser. But he clutched her hand as though fearing she’d still slide off to death if he wasn’t watching every moment, and he looked at her as though she were beautiful—although one glance in a glass was enough to tell Sabina she was pale as unpainted marble. I’ll die if I lose you, Vix had whispered in her ear while she was barely conscious, and she had followed the sound of that whisper out of her black dreams like a thread winding through a labyrinth. Do not die, Sabina. Not now.
Sabina had no intention of dying, no matter what Rome thought.
“Satisfied?” she asked, finishing her foul-smelling draught. And Vix finally consented to carry her out of her chamber to the atrium, where Titus and the children waited, and where Faustina had already plumped a couch high with cushions and furs. Vix fussed some more, piling pillows behind her head and settling her feet across his lap, and Sabina looked up at this room filled with so many of her loved ones. Alive and safe, all of them—except Antinous.
And at least he is avenged.
“I hate this room.” Annia limped like a lamed colt around the central pool, her feet still bandaged from her sprint to Hadrian’s villa. Afterward, according to Faustina, she’d slept the day and night round, only rising to eat everything in the house and discover that her run down the hard stone of the road to Hadrian’s villa had broken two of her toes. But her restless energy was clearly springing back. “I can’t look at this floor without seeing a lake of blood in the middle,” Annia continued, scowling at the mosaics.
“I like it,” Sabina decided. “The scene of our victory. And the blood’s all cleaned away—”
“How is the pain?” Titus asked in his quiet voice. “And don’t be stoic, please; I know you far too well for polite lies.”
“It’s bad,” Sabina said, matter-of-fact. Her whole right side from shoulder to breast was a mass of flames. “The physician is still looking worried. He mutters about the dangers of infection—”
“Damned know-nothing,” Vix growled. “I’m getting you a legion medicus. What do those court potion-makers know about wounds?”
He captured her hand possessively, and Marcus raised a hand to shield his eyes. “Must you?” he pleaded. “It is highly improper for a guard to be so familiar with the Empress of Rome!”
“But Empresses of Rome may do whatever they please,” Sabina said. “You have many years ahead of you to learn that, Marcus.”
Annia grinned, flopping down beside him on the third couch. “He learns fast.”
They all laughed but Titus. He had lapsed back into silence beside Faustina, head bowed. Sabina risked the stab of pain through her shoulder to reach out and touch his knee. “When does the Emperor want your decision?” she asked.
“As soon as possible.” Titus looked up. “Me, as Emperor of Rome? I have nothing to recommend me. The most anyone can say is that I’m unobjectionable—never made any enemies, never landed myself in any scandals, never made any spectacular mistakes. And that is enough to qualify me for the purple?”
Marcus spoke with quiet sincerity. “I can think of no one more suitable, sir.”
Titus ran a hand over his hair, and with a wash of love Sabina saw the lanky boy he’d once been. How that boy would stare, looking at the man he became!
And the man he could become: Emperor of Rome. Oh, Hadrian, this time you chose well!
“It would mean a great change for our family.” Titus looked at Faustina and Annia. “I turn it down, and the life we have goes on unaltered.”
“Can you be sure of that?” Faustina countered. “If you turn it down, whoever Hadrian chooses instead will always be nervous of you—”
“And you should have been Emperor all along,” Vix said from Sabina’s feet. “Trajan wanted you for his successor—Hadrian and his scheming did you out of twenty years on the throne. This is his way of apologizing, and Hell’s gates, he never apologizes for anything. You really want to throw it back in his face?”
Titus sighed.
“My darling.” Faustina laid her arms about his neck, her golden hair glinting and her eyes amused. “There is no man in Rome who would make a finer emperor. So for the sake of all the gods, just breathe deeply and say yes. As for what it means for us, well, we shall manage. Annia may have to do her running with a Praetorian in tow, but frankly I think I shall make a splendid empress.”
“Far better than me,” Sabina agreed.
Titus took a deep breath. They all waited.
“No announcement unless poor Lucius either succumbs to his ill health or is formally set aside.” Titus looked up. “I will not have him humiliated on his sickbed. Surely Hadrian will agree to that.”
“Until then—” Vix swung Sabina’s feet out of his lap and rose, giving a slow, perfect salute. “Hail, Caesar.”
The solemnity held for a moment. Titus’s face was somber, Imperial. Vix was proud and fierce-eyed, and Sabina felt a thrum of sweet pain that wasn’t her wounds. How proud Antinous would be—he had always revered Titus. Did your death bring this about? Sabina could not help wondering. She would not have traded that golden life for anything in the world . . . But it was something, to know that at least one consequence from that terrible day on the Nile was one Antinous himself would have cheered.
She could see him now, springing up with his enchanting grin to wring Titus’s hand in congratulations. Maybe Vix saw it too, because his solemnity cracked and he yanked Titus into a bear hug. “You long-winded prig,” Vix said as Annia cheered and Faustina beamed. “Now you get an entire empire to bore!”
“You could lead my Praetorians,” Titus offered. “Prefect Slight, this time around.”
Vix shook his head. “There won’t be a duller job in all the Empire. You’ll be so damned popular, no one will ever try to kill you.”
“Let me give you one order, at least. Come with me to the Emperor this afternoon, when I give him my answer?” Titus made a wry face. “I may need you to drag me the last few steps, when my courage fails.”
Vix glanced at Sabina. She smiled. “I shan’t stir off this couch until you get back, I promise.”
“Go on!” Faustina shooed. “Marcus, go with them.”
“Me?” Marcus rose. “Why?”
“Because the Emperor said something to me when he made his offer,” Titus said. “When he sent you off to fetch wine for us. He told me that I was destined to succeed him, and that you were destined to succeed me.”
Marcus looked like he’d been turned to stone. So did Annia, frozen halfway through replaiting her untidy hair, and Sabina laughed silently.
“Me?” Marcus said at last, stunned.
“Hand him an empire and he looks like you handed him a bag of spiders!” Vix hooted, but Titus’s face showed that he understood everything.
“I am to adopt you as my son and heir,” he said gently, coming to lay a hand on Marcus’s shoulder. “It was a condition of my acceptance, and it’s one I wouldn’t dream of arguing.”
“You will want your own heir—” A panicky look at Faustina, looking on serenely. “A son of your own, surely the gods will bless you both—”
“I am not to have sons of my own blood,” Titus said even more gently. “The gods decreed that, and I will mourn my two boys always. But the place of son and heir, it seems, was always intended for you. And I am honored to act as your father.”
Marcus looked away then, hiding his face. Titus put an arm about his shoulders: two men, tall and lean and scholarly-looking, who might have been father and son.
“Come see Hadrian.” Vix smiled. “He’ll talk the ears off you both, finalizing all the details.” Titus and Marcus turned to follow, both looking grave at the future that faced them rather than elated. A man who does not really want the Empire is the best man to rule it, Sabina thought. And somehow my husband found two of them.
There was a clatter of boots as the men swung out, Vix banging into something because Vix couldn’t go anywhere without banging. Titus’s voice floated out, musing: “I shall grow a beard. A sign of filial admiration for Hadrian . . .”
As their footsteps faded, Sabina called for wine. Her villa was still empty, guards and slaves still dismissed, which probably contributed to the rumors that she was dead, but she had her African girl—freedwoman, now. “Three cups of the good Nomentan, and don’t bother watering it. While Hadrian and Titus are busy laying all their important plans for the future,” Sabina said to her sister and daughter as the African girl whisked out, “we may as well lay some of our own.”
Annia was still looking stunned. “My father, Imperial heir,” she said slowly. “And Marcus?”
“Titus will have to take over Imperial duties soon,” Sabina warned Faustina. “Hadrian really is quite ill.”
“Titus can shoulder a great deal of the burden. And I can take over duties for you.”
“Good.” The cups arrived; Sabina passed one to her sister and her daughter. “You already know my routine, but Annia should learn it too.”
“Me?” Annia’s red-lashed eyes blinked.
“If all goes according to plan, you will be Empress someday, too.” Sabina smiled. “Marcus’s.”
Annia looked stunned all over again, and Faustina laughed. Sabina wondered if she hadn’t seen some flying, splintered image of the three of them while she was lost in her feverish wound dreams that had felt so like an epilepsia fit. Wondered if she had not seen the three of them, sitting here like a trinity about this same couch. The Empresses of Rome—past, present, and future.
“Just think,” Sabina mused. “It would be the first time in Rome’s history that a daughter followed her mother as Empress . . .”
Annia’s eyes flared. “You know,” she said slowly. “Vix said something to me, the day . . .” She didn’t have to specify which day. “I didn’t notice it at the time, but I woke up last night remembering it.”
She looked at her unwatered wine and tossed it down in a single gulp. She looked from Sabina to Faustina, and Sabina felt her heart begin to pound under that straight, questioning gaze.
“So,” said Annia. “Which of you is my mother?”
ANNIA
Annia’s mind was reeling by the time she escaped her mother and her—other mother. She wandered out into the garden, shaking her head a little, and found Marcus by the fountain, shoulders outlined dark and bowed against a blue afternoon sky. Was he returned from the Emperor’s villa so quickly?
He looked up at the sound of her footfall. “What is it?” he asked, seeing her bemused expression.
It hovered on the tip of Annia’s tongue. I have two mothers, Marcus. And two fathers.
And though the thought was astonishing, she was somehow not shocked—not deep at the core of her. Aunt Sabina’s watchful eyes all through her childhood, the thrum of instant liking she had felt the day Vix appeared in his lion-skin cloak . . . No, Annia was not really surprised. Nor distressed.
More than anything, the thought made her smile.
I have two mothers, one the kindest woman in Rome and one the cleverest. And two fathers: one the wisest man in Rome and one the bravest. What other girl in the Empire was so fortunate?
But Annia rather thought Marcus would be shocked, and he’d had enough surprises for one day, so she tucked her astounding new secret away to tell him later.
“I think we should run away,” she said instead—though the thought of running anywhere at a pace greater than a gentle amble was horrifying. She was still so muscle-sore and foot-weary that she hobbled like an old woman. “Go to Britannia or Hispania or somewhere, before we get just as crazy as our elders. I left my mother cackling away with Aunt Sabina, getting tipsy and telling horror stories about empresses of the past. You would not believe the things they were saying. All I can conclude is that ruling an empire turns you utterly mad, so let’s run away before it happens to us.”
“Don’t tempt me.” Marcus scuffed the path with one foot, head still hanging.
Annia came closer, setting her own revelations aside for his. “. . . So it’s settled?”
“Nothing’s settled. How can it be?” Marcus started to pace, restless. “The Emperor said he always wanted me for his heir. I was too young, so he was planning to have Lucius Ceionius adopt me, only now it’s to be your father instead.” Marcus looked up at Annia, and she saw his eyes were wild. “I don’t understand. Why did he choose me?”
“Who knows why Emperor Hadrian does anything?” Annia shrugged. “He’s got a mind like a maze. But he’s decided you’re the one, and he’s right.” If she knew nothing else—and her world had tilted so many times today, her mind was spinning—she still knew that.
“He made your father swear a solemn oath on every god in the heavens that he would name me his successor as soon as he took the purple.” A gulp. “All I wanted was to serve the Empire, maybe write a philosophical treatise or two in my spare time. And now I’m to be Marcus Aelius Aurelius Verus Caesar: heir to the throne.”
“That doesn’t please you?” Surely Marcus had to know he was born for this.
“How many promising boys in the past have been groomed for the purple by hopeful emperors?” Marcus cried out. “They just get killed! Whenever an emperor dies, the gods toss a coin, and we all hold our breaths. Peace or chaos, no one knows what will come. Not even Hadrian or your father can guarantee I’ll ever be Emperor. I might as well have a target painted on my heart—”
“Stop right there. All those promising young heirs who died young? They mostly got killed off by the same Imperial family who elevated them. But this is my father we’re talking of, not some ambitious upstart being asked to keep a throne warm for a rival. My father keeps his oaths. And he loves you.” Coming closer. “Emperor Hadrian did his best to safeguard you—he eliminated every rival in Rome who could oppose you, and he set my father to guard your future. That’s about as certain as any mortal man could make it, Marcus.” Annia paused a beat, feeling a great swell of tenderness. “Emperor Marcus Aelius Aurelius Verus Caesar.”
His chin jerked.
“I’ve never liked Aelius,” Annia decided. “Perhaps I can just call you Emperor Marcus Aurelius?”
“Aurelius like your father.” Marcus’s eyes met Annia’s, and they were full of tears. “I admire him more than any man I have ever known, and now he’ll be my father in truth.” A breath. “Father and father-in-law.”
“I know. My mother told me.” Annia couldn’t resist a laugh. “Ceionia will be furious. I think I’ll break the news to her myself.”
She did, too—and she enjoyed every moment, two days later, when she watched Ceionia lose her fabled decorum entirely and rip that half-finished wedding tunic off the loom, shrieking.
Marcus leaned his forehead against Annia’s, his hands warming her waist, and they stood quietly in the waning afternoon. It was fiercely cold, and Annia’s body still ached so b
adly from her twelve hellish miles, but in Marcus’s arms, she felt neither pain nor cold. She felt warm as a fire, and full of hope.
“Vercingetorix wants to speak with you,” Marcus said. “He said he and the Empress have something to tell you.”
“The Empress already did,” Annia said. “So let them wait. I want to be here with you.”
“He’s her lover, isn’t he?” Marcus’s brows puckered. “You’re not going to be taking up with guardsmen when you’re Empress of Rome, are you?”
“Why would I bother? I’ll have Emperor Marcus Aurelius, and he’s enough for me.”
“I had a dream last night.” Rocking his forehead gently against hers, smoothing his hands up and down her back. “I dreamed I had shoulders made of ivory, and I heard Hadrian’s voice telling me I would need those shoulders, because they would carry a heavy burden. This morning, I didn’t know what that dream meant . . .”
“And now you do,” Annia whispered.
“Even with shoulders of ivory, I don’t think I can carry an empire,” Marcus whispered back.
“I’ll help you, I swear it.” Annia cradled his face in her hands. “And this is all a long way off, you know. It’s my father’s turn, first—we have so much time to learn.”
Their lips touched. Annia felt Marcus’s taut body against her relax, just a little. What a worrier he was! “And since we have so much time ahead of us,” Annia added, suddenly playful, “I don’t think we should marry right away.”
He frowned. “What?”
“I know you, Marcus. The moment we marry you’ll start ordering me about.” Annia felt warmth running through her like a ribbon of flame, right where his hands were still stroking her back. “I’ll only marry you once you’ve finally figured out you will never be able to get me to behave.”
“I already know that.” He frowned, distracted just as she hoped. “We’ll marry at Lupercalia.”
“See? You’re already giving me commands.” Annia slipped out of his hands, backing away with a grin. “Maybe you’re going to be Emperor, Marcus, but I’m going to be Empress. And an empress of Rome always gets her way.”