“Then Thrace,” Attia whispered.
She understood what Xanthus was saying. It had taken years for the House of Flavius to become a name worth remembering. Vespasian’s title had been hard-won. He’d conquered half of the known world to secure his place. As far as Timeus and the ruling houses knew, Attia was the last Thracian—an unremarkable seventeen-year-old girl who was now a slave. Alone, she was hardly dangerous. But if they thought there were more, if there was a possibility that any other Thracian—especially any of the Maedi—had survived, if they knew that Sparro was Attia’s father …
Xanthus nodded, as though he could read her thoughts on her face. “If Crassus had known who you were, he would never have let you live. They attacked Thrace because your people could have stood in the way of everything they hoped to build. Men like your father were considered grave threats.”
“To the Republic?”
“To the empire.”
Empire. The word made Attia shudder. She stared sightlessly out the window, the colors of the sky and Pompeii and Vesuvius swimming in front of her. It was so difficult to speak that she thought the wind might have stolen her voice to dance over the Tyrrhenian. She looked back to find Xanthus staring at her intently, his green eyes bright as beacons of Greek fire in the dusk. He was saying so much with that one look. Attia could practically feel the weight of his unspoken words.
“There’s something else,” she said. “Rory isn’t sick. She’s not ill or weak at all. And the sunlight—it doesn’t hurt her. She’s in perfect health.”
Xanthus frowned. “So why have Valeria and Timeus been keeping her hidden away all these years?”
“I don’t know.”
“You can’t tell anyone about this. Not even Sabina. They’ll kill you, Attia. You can’t give them a reason.”
“I gave them my father’s name.”
“You gave that to Ennius,” Xanthus said with a shake of his head. “And even that was reckless.”
Attia smiled. “I ran to an arena and posed as a gladiator. To say that I was reckless is putting it a bit mildly, don’t you think?” The reminder made Xanthus scowl again, and Attia put her hand on his shoulder. “You’re not my keeper, Xanthus. Whatever Timeus and the Romans have done, my life is still my own. I am not your responsibility.”
“The Roman child isn’t your responsibility.”
“What does Rory have to do with anything?”
“You risked your life to protect her when the camp was attacked.”
“It wasn’t a risk to do what I’ve been trained to do.”
“You can’t save everyone, Attia.”
“Who says I’m going to try?”
Xanthus started to speak, but before he could, a slow rumbling crawled through the ground, along the coastline and the road, stretching out from the mountain in the distance.
“What’s happening?” Attia’s hands gripped the windowsill for purchase as the rumbling became louder.
Xanthus pulled her down to the floor just as a violent tremor shook the walls around them.
Outside, people were shouting, but not with panic. They calmly called out orders over the sounds of cracking stone and brick.
The chair in the corner of Xanthus’s room toppled over, and the little table shuffled along the floor and blocked the doorway. But the walls held, and Xanthus held her. Just as suddenly as they’d started, the tremors stopped.
Attia rose to her knees to look out the window.
Vesuvius was huffing and puffing at the sky. Steam rose up in sharp bursts, displacing cool, low-hanging clouds before drifting down again like rain. The smell of sulfur burned her nostrils and made her eyes water. The mountain settled again, and the people below went about their business as though nothing had happened. Or as though it happened all the time.
Attia sat back on the floor and let Xanthus wrap his arms around her. But the silence slithered between them, dark and thick as the mountain’s breath. She could feel words swirling in his chest and threatening to burst from his mouth, a torrent of rebukes and fears and worries. But how could she worry about anything else? After everything that had happened, how could it possibly get any worse for them?
After a while, she took his hand and led him to their bed.
And he followed, hesitant but wanting, and held her again in a tight embrace, as though he was afraid she might try to bolt at any moment. In the curve of his arms, she closed her eyes, and finally, finally found sleep.
*
Xanthus’s eyes snapped open sometime in the night. It was a different kind of waking—abrupt and complete, as though he hadn’t been sleeping at all. The height of the moon beyond the window told him that dawn was at least four, maybe five hours away. But he was restless, and he didn’t know why.
Attia slept beside him, pressed close from hip to ankle. She’d completely wrapped herself in the blanket, and only her head and the tips of her toes were visible. Xanthus placed a soft kiss on her temple before rising and walking to the window.
The weather was turning cold. He could feel the promise of winter in the air. The snow would already be knee-deep in Britannia—a thick, deceptively soft-looking blanket of white coating everything from the steep crags of the north to the shallow bogs of the south. Winter in Rome was little more than a frost, a season of dead things and indoor plotting. He’d never seen snow in the Republic. He wondered if the council of the Princeps would view it as an omen.
The patricians were remarkably superstitious for supposedly educated noblemen, even more so than the priestesses of the Tor. They believed in the terrible signs of raven and crow, the messages that appeared in bleached bones. Some even subscribed to the portents of tea leaves. Tea leaves.
Xanthus was no seer and no druid. But the Romans knew absolutely nothing of the Sight. Not that they needed it. If they just looked ahead with reason and logic, they’d see how unsustainable their greed really was. The best and the worst of them would only turn to ash. Just like everyone else.
Xanthus sighed, ready to go back to bed when he heard the clatter of hooves. The gate squeaked as it swung open. Quiet as a shadow, he opened his door and walked to the archway that separated the training yard from the main courtyard.
Three horsemen had arrived, all clothed in black. Moonlight and torches shone behind them, sending eerie, elongated shadows across the courtyard. They carried swords, but Xanthus could tell they were neither soldiers nor Praetorians. Timeus stood in front of one of the horseman, along with several of his personal guards. One of the riders handed him a tightly rolled scroll, and as his cloak shifted, Xanthus caught sight of the sigil embroidered on his clothing—the silver wolf of the House of Flavius.