Mistress of Rome by Kate Quinn

kneeling by a camellia bush, draining the bowl out into the earth. He stood by awkwardly, feet planted apart for balance.
    “There.” She rose too quickly, staggering, and he caught her by the shoulder before she fell. The light of the distant lamps revealed that she was tall, the top of her head level with his eyes, and as angular as a doe. The point of her shoulder was sharp under his hand.
    “Good luck to you tomorrow.” She offered a smile. “I’ll be watching.”
    Her eyes were black, dilated too far. He’d seen them before, those eyes. The same brave desperate gaze—on the Amazon he had slain in the arena. A nerve prickled along the back of his neck.
    Careful.
    “Good night,” he said roughly, and left her.

THEA
    T HE next day, when it seemed too bright and glaring to believe that the previous night had ever happened at all, I watched Arius kill Belleraphon.
    It was brutal, stomach-turning, utterly unforgettable. He strode out quietly, dwarfed by Belleraphon’s strutting, preening elegance, and then launched an attack of such savagery that my knees buckled in the stands. Belleraphon’s grin slid away as his shoulder was laid open; he began to fight in earnest, but it wasn’t enough. Arius’s sword took the top half of his shield, took another wide cut out of his ribs, took half the fingers on his left hand. Belleraphon’s dancelike grace was hewed away a piece at a time, cut down to raw desperation, and even that wasn’t enough. He wavered, a broken, bleeding thing, and he died on Arius’s sword.
    The Colosseum rose with a roar, stamping for him as they had stamped only last week for Belleraphon. They screamed, they shouted, they wept, they tore gold from their fingers and silver from their purses to rain down on the solitary figure in the sand. Men cuffed tears from their eyes and swore he was the god of war come on earth to walk among men. Women tore their stolas to bare their breasts, sobbing that they would love him forever. In the Imperial box, the Emperor nodded approval. Arius threw his sword into the sand, and they shrieked their love for him.
    Miserable, in the middle of such glory? No one would ever believe it.

Three

LEPIDA
    B EAUTY is fate’s gift—and every time I looked in my mirror, I knew Fortuna loved me.
    I dressed carefully: lilac silk to set off my black hair, a chunk of amethyst on each hand to showcase slender fingers, strands of amethysts on silver wire emphasizing the length of my neck. Lovely—and then I had to ruin the effect with a hideous brown cloak over the top, and that long-faced, blank-eyed Thea at my back.
    “I’m not carrying that.” I wrinkled my nose at the basket she held out to me.
    “Slave girls carry baskets on the way to the forum, Lady.”
    I took it grudgingly, looking in the mirror again. At least no one would recognize the beautiful Lady Lepida Pollia when she went incognito to the gladiator barracks. “Get behind me,” I hissed at Thea as she fell into step at my side.
    “Slave girls on the way to the forum don’t walk behind each other,” Thea said, impassive. “They walk in pairs.”
    That gawky sunburned slut never smiled at me, but I always felt the smile lurking, just the same. I sniffed and hurried ahead, away from the rows of gracious marble villas and toward the seedier district on the edge of the Subura where the gladiator schools were. Even a warm summer day couldn’t make Mars Street pretty.
    A perfumed slave boy tried to leave me waiting in the anteroom, but I gestured to Thea and she tossed him a copper that got me admitted. No one kept Lepida Pollia waiting. I was shown into a narrow room with a writing desk, and behind it the fat lanista in midtirade.
    “—abusing your followers? Hurling wine cups at powerful fans, say, when they beg for souvenir locks of your hair? Or pitching drunken young patricians into the Tiber when they challenge you to a match?”
    Arius sat on a wall bench with a jug of wine in one hand, head thrown