Erhalten Sie Zugang zu diesem und mehr als 300000 Büchern ab EUR 5,99 monatlich.
- Herausgeber: Titan Books
- Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025
A powerful and fierce reimagining of the founding of the Roman empire and the legend of Romulus and Remus-and the mother whose sacrifice made it all possible. Ideal for fans of Madeleine Miller, Jennifer Saint and Natalie Haynes. A powerful and fierce reimagining of the earliest Roman legend: the twins, Romulus and Remus, mythical founders of history's greatest empire, and the woman whose sacrifice made it all possible. The names Romulus and Remus may be immortalized in map and stone and chronicle, but their mother exists only as a preface to her sons' journey, the princess turned oath-breaking priestess, condemned to death alongside her children. But she did not die; she survived. And so does her story. Beautiful, royal, rich: Rhea has it all—until her father loses his kingdom in a treacherous coup, and she is sent to the order of the Vestal Virgins to ensure she will never produce an heir. Except when mortals scheme, gods laugh. Rhea becomes pregnant, and human society turns against her. Abandoned, ostracized, and facing the gravest punishment, Rhea forges a dangerous deal with the divine, one that will forever change the trajectory of her life…and her beloved land. To save her sons and reclaim their birthright, Rhea must summon nature's mightiest force—a mother's love—and fight. All roads may lead to Rome, but they began with Rhea Silvia.
Sie lesen das E-Book in den Legimi-Apps auf:
Seitenzahl: 534
Das E-Book (TTS) können Sie hören im Abo „Legimi Premium” in Legimi-Apps auf:
Ähnliche
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Leave us a Review
Copyright
Dedication
Prologue
Ten Days Earlier
Chapter I: Rhea
Chapter II: Rhea
Chapter III: The Histories of Latium
Chapter IV: Antho
Chapter V: Rhea
Chapter VI: Rhea
Chapter VII: Rhea
Chapter VIII: Antho
Chapter IX: Rhea
Chapter X: Antho
Chapter XI: Rhea
Chapter XII: Numitor
Chapter XIII: Rhea
Chapter XIV: Antho
Chapter XV: Rhea
Chapter XVI: Rhea
Chapter XVII: Antho
Chapter XVIII: Rhea
Chapter XIX: Rhea
Chapter XX: Antho
Chapter XXI: Rhea
Chapter XXII: Rhea
Chapter XXIII: Antho
Chapter XXIV: Rhea
Chapter XXV: Antho
Chapter XXVI: Rhea
Chapter XXVII: Rhea
Chapter XXVIII: Antho
Chapter XXIX: Rhea
Chapter XXX: Antho
Chapter XXXI: Rhea
Chapter XXXII: Numitor
Chapter XXXIII: Rhea
Chapter XXXIV: Antho
Chapter XXXV: Petronius
Chapter XXXVI: Rhea
Chapter XXXVII: A Natural History of Latium
Chapter XXXVIII: Rhea
Chapter XXXIX: Antho
Chapter XL: Rhea
Chapter XLI: Rhea
Chapter XLII: Rhea
Chapter XLIII: Antho
Chapter XLIV: Rhea
Chapter XLV: Rhea
Chapter XLVI: Rhea
Chapter XLVII: Antho
Chapter XLVIII: Amulius
Chapter XLIX: Rhea
Chapter L: Leandros
Chapter LI: Rhea
Chapter LII: Antho
Chapter LIII: Rhea
Chapter LIV: Antho
Chapter LV: The Political Histories of Latium
Chapter LVI: Rhea
Chapter LVII: Remus
Chapter LVIII: Rhea
Chapter LIX: Remus
Chapter LX: Antho
Chapter LXI: Romulus
Chapter LXII: Faustulus
Chapter LXIII: Leandros
Chapter LXIV: Rhea
Chapter LXV: Romulus
Chapter LXVI: Claudia
Chapter LXVII: Rhea
Chapter LXVIII: Rhea
Chapter LXIX: Antho
Chapter LXX: Rhea
Chapter LXXI: Rhea
Epilogue The Early Histories Of Roma
Author's Note
Acknowledgments
About the Author
PRAISE FOR MOTHER OF ROME
“In the mists of the founding of Rome, the true heroine is revealed. An imaginative journey with the mother of Romulus and Remus. You will never look at the statue of the wolf and the twins in the same way.”
Margaret George, New York Times bestselling author of Mary, Called Magdalene and The Memoirs of Cleopatra
“Bear's writing is pure magic. I was enchanted by Rhea’s story from beginning to end.”
Emily Rath, New York Times bestselling author of North is the Night
“Feminine rage in book form, Lauren J. A. Bear’s reimagining of Rhea Silvia and her cousin Antho is powerful, compelling, and absolutely unforgettable. Mother of Rome has become one of my all-time favorite books.”
Genevieve Gornichec, author of The Witch’s Heart
“Truly fierce and fearless. One of the very best retellings I’ve read in a long time.”
Olesya Salnikova Gilmore, author of The Haunting of Moscow House
“Gripping, poignant, and thoroughly spellbinding . . . Lauren J. A. Bear brings the legend to life with elegant prose and emotional intelligence, merging myth with a powerful tale of womanhood in all its forms. This is a story that will stay with me for a long time. Utterly superb.”
Mimi Matthews, USA Today bestselling author of The Muse of Maiden Lane
“A brilliant retelling that shows the power of a woman with nothing left to lose, this novel about the genesis of Rome will captivate readers from the first page.”
Megan Barnard, author of The Winter Goddess
“A work of pure, page-turning brilliance that cements Lauren J. A. Bear’s position at the top of the class . . . Gorgeously written and compulsively readable with an ending that will steal your breath, Mother of Rome is a rare gem and an instant favorite.”
A. D. Rhine, author of Daughters of Bronze
Also by Lauren J. A. Bearand available from Titan Books
Medusa's Sisters
LEAVE US A REVIEW
We hope you enjoy this book – if you did we would really appreciate it if you can write a short review. Your ratings really make a difference for the authors, helping the books you love reach more people.
You can rate this book, or leave a short review here:
Amazon.co.uk,
Goodreads,
or your preferred retailer.
Mother of Rome
Print edition ISBN: 9781803364742
E-book edition ISBN: 9781803364759
Published by Titan Books
A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd
144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP
www.titanbooks.com
First Titan edition: January 2025
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (except for satirical purposes), is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2025 Lauren J. A. Bear. All Rights Reserved. Published by arrangement with Ace, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC.
Lauren J. A. Bear asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
For R, D, and S,who made me a mama bear.(Or should I say a mother wolf?)
‘O daughter, first there are hardships to be borne by you; but after that, your fortunes will rise again from a river.’
—“ILIA’S DREAM”from the Annales of Quintus Ennius, Book 1
PROLOGUE
THE GODS WHISPER a girl’s name; she curses them all.
On the night Rhea Silvia, Princess of Latium and favorite daughter, took her vows, five other women encircled her in the House of the Vestals, in its secret round room, enclosing the girl in a double loop of white robes and whiter stone. Rhea felt the heady mix of incense and energies—those of the women, the building, Vesta herself—some joined in accord and others at odds. Celebration, excitement, sisterhood. But also distrust and a bitterness bordering on enmity. Following the hallowed steps to the sacred hearth, she held all their empathies and judgments upon her young shoulders, obliging their ritual with the shallow reverence of an unwilling participant.
She kept her chin down but walked like a queen—even barefoot, even at her age. She had carried far greater weights than these.
When Rhea knelt before the fire, she imagined the unholy glee of her enemies, those who had killed and connived to bring her here, how they might revel in perverse satisfaction at Numitor’s lofty daughter brought so low. She heard their giddy hate across the city, in all the cities, and inside the minds of some women present.
No queendom for her!
No wedding night!
No wealthy prince!
No jewels or servants or golden cups!
Someone must pay the price for Numitor’s mistakes and losses, his wild queen.
Embrace this future, penitent!
Even the fire cackled.
But then Prisca, the elder and ranking priestess, stepped forward, breaking the perfect symmetry of their circular order. “Hail, holy Vesta, living flame, center of our world!” she began. “You, holy Vesta of the Perpetual Fire, you stand on perpetual guard, your light protecting our city, our people, and banishing the darkness.”
Rhea’s fists clenched; what did these sheltered fools know of darkness? Any belief she’d once held in Vesta’s protection had long since shattered. The goddess was either dormant or indifferent. Vesta had not intervened in any of the tragedies that had befallen Rhea’s family. Vesta had done nothing to protect the land they’d ruled for sixteen centuries.
And the Silvian line, descended from Aeneas of Troy, had been pious enough, certainly. Had made the sacrifices and honored the flames only to be brought here: the end of the direct line. Fourteen generations of legend gelded.
But Rhea would not lay blame at Vesta’s altar. Focus your hatred, she reminded herself. Hone it. Keep it sharp and precise. Her subjugation wasn’t the goddess’s fault. Nor was it Prisca’s. Rhea was here, humbled on hands and knees in the ash, future burned, by the machinations of one man.
The taste of his disgusting kiss still lingered in her mouth. Bile rose in the back of her throat, and Rhea Silvia tasted rage.
She might choke on it, maybe suffocate.
This room was suddenly too small. And there were no windows, save for the smoke hole in the ceiling. And she knew she wasn’t supposed to look up. From now on, she must keep her eyes low, honor the hallowed.
Obey.
The ceremonial chanting commenced. Prisca called and the other four responded, surrounding Rhea. Their voices targeted her from every angle: voices ranging from alto to highest soprano, voices that ordinarily giggled and inflected, soared and speared, all homogenized by ritual.
A drone of wasps.
“Vesta, you dwell in our hearth so we may be one with your eternal power. Recast us in the shadow of your radiant blaze!”
“Hail the illuminating virgin.”
“Shine true in darkness—that of time and heart!”
“Hail the incorruptible virgin.”
One unmistakable voice cut through the rest, however, gloating with pointed piety. It was that bitch who had taken Rhea’s hair—her mother’s hair, as thick and brown as deep forest wood. The priestess Tavia had lopped it off with a kopis, large and slightly curved, shearing Rhea like an animal, nicking her scalp more often than not and leaving her head like a forgotten stump, a fallen log dotted with clumps of moss.
Tavia hummed while she worked, so Rhea knew her voice well. Heard it now, with traces of that sadistic melody, as Tavia repeated the high priestess’s call with a hint of singsong.
No, Rhea would not mourn her hair, not now, but she felt its loss, an empty shadow where it used to lie, down her back and almost to her elbows.
Oh yes, emptiness is its own weight, absence another burden.
Four members of the royal guard had escorted Rhea to the temple earlier that morning. Four. Apparently, her womb was that terrifying. After the soldiers left, the princess Rhea Silvia was taken apart, stripped, shorn, and reassembled as an initiate, ageless and shapeless. Covered in a white ascetic shift with a veil draped over her bare head. How her brothers would have laughed!
If she still had any brothers, that is.
“Vesta, wise and modest matron, accept this initiate, this offering, into your truth.”
“Hail the virgin, immaculate through immolation.”
Prisca, Virgo Maxima, Vestalis Maxima, sprinkled salt into the hungry flames. Rhea stared, letting her eyes go slack and unfocused, a practice that allowed her mind to escape from her body, to travel upward with the smoke, through that hole in the roof. In her imagination, she hovered above the temple and spied—even in the dark of night—her former hair hanging from a bough of the stone pine at its entrance, swaying slightly in the evening breeze, saying hello. Or maybe farewell?
Down below, the priestesses continued to chant.
Pounding, incessant. A war drum calling for her surrender.
To dream herself away was another act of rebellion, and Rhea Silvia was no stranger to the subversive. She had made that abundantly clear in her final hours of freedom. And these prayers were long. Boring. Blood and fire and salt in repetition. Instead, Rhea thought of the sky, of the hours spent on the rooftop, sharing secrets with the stars. The scandalous euphoria of the night before.
Dream Rhea, spirit and ghost Rhea, departed the House of the Vestals and their temple. She flew toward the Regia, the royal complex built by Aeneas’s first son and the home where she was no longer welcome.
But in her mind Rhea could do whatever she wanted. Over the stone walls she bounded, to the windows behind which the pieces of her broken family remained: Her father’s bed. Her cousin in tears. Gratia and Gratia’s daughter, Zea, turning over her room. The new king on his throne.
And in her imagination Rhea made herself corporal, leaping through this window and grabbing the new king by his throat. She held him down on the floor, thumbs pressed between the cords of his neck while his eyes bulged, and he sputtered and—
The splash of holy waters against Rhea’s face returned her to an equally gruesome present.
“Be cleansed! First by water, then by fire!”
Rhea Silvia ground her teeth, wanting to wipe the water droplets from her face but knowing she could not. She reminded herself to show no emotion—not if they saw her naked, not if they took her beauty, threw water at her.
Her stoicism would be a tiny victory.
No matter her fantasies, tonight was destined not for her revenge but for a celebration of his, uncle and usurper. Amulius’s vengeance upon them all.
“Vesta,” Prisca continued, setting down the ladle and pail, “we Latins survive by your favor and thrive within your love.”
Love. What was love to one betrayed and outmaneuvered by her own kin?
Love. To someone who’d known such heartbreak, such loss?
Love. To one abandoned and alone?
“Rhea Silvia, only daughter of Numitor and Jocasta, do you accept Vesta as your true mother, the Vestals as your sisters, our order as your home?”
“I accept.” And though Rhea lied, she could be proud, for her voice did not crack, did not shake.
“Do you accept our way of life? The standards we uphold to be worthy of this divine service? Do you sacrifice your years of fertility and transfer your maternal powers to Latium and the renewal of generations?”
“I accept.”
“And you will accept the consequences if you bring shame to yourself, or shame to your true mother, your new sisters, and our order?”
Rhea’s throat tightened. “I will. I accept.”
The priestess laid a bundle of spelt and wheat before her, and her voice was warm: “Then, child, kiss the beginnings of bread, which we transform in Vesta’s fire to sustain our bodies and our people. And let that seal your oath to the goddess and her Vestals.”
Rhea lowered her face to the ground and placed a chaste kiss on one fragrant sprig.
Prisca regarded the others. “Priestesses, do we accept this woman into our midst, to be our sixth? To complete our circle? To tend the city’s flames, prepare and cleanse the hearth, and observe the most inviolable rites?”
“We accept.”
“We accept.”
“We accept!”
“And we remember that to break these vows is to betray all of Latium.”
“Honor your vows!”
“Live your vows!”
“Protect Latium!”
An instrument rang from the periphery, some sort of brass peal, a concluding note. The end of a dirge. Prisca offered her wrinkled hands to Rhea and pulled the girl to her feet. “Then let it be done.”
Rhea Silvia, princess turned priestess.
Yet unbeknownst to all, she had already been unmade in the forest, where she would be remade over and over again—but not yet, not tonight.
Tonight, she would be the virgin sacrifice.
But she was no virgin.
She remembered his hands upon her just the night before, in the woods, in the waters.
The women around her began to sing.
And beneath her veil, head bowed, Rhea Silvia thought of tomorrow and smiled, showing her teeth.
TEN DAYS EARLIER
CHAPTER I
RHEA
RHEA SPENT THE night before the eclipse on the Regia’s roof thinking about wolves and kisses. The top of the palace, above it all, away from it all, was the place she most needed when her restless mind would not rest, when the walls of the royal compound felt too finite and her thoughts required utmost freedom.
After a long day, Rhea climbed the bay laurel, scooting across its branches to where her hands could just make purchase on the rooftop. She pulled herself up, unrolled the blanket she kept stored there, and lay across the clay tiles. Breathing steadily, one hand on her ribs, the other on her belly, Rhea engaged the world above.
“Hello, beautiful,” she told the moon.
This was no relaxation exercise, no passive observation—there was nothing passive about Rhea Silvia—but an active conversation between herself and the sky. For Rhea saw herself in the night, as if it were a mirror reflecting her own humanity, and she had so many questions.
What was I born to do and how shall I do it?
Though Rhea was not exceptionally skilled—not particularly musical, only adequate at the loom, and possessed of no prowess with a bow or sword—she felt remarkable. She believed in her own importance, in her place in the universal plan.
And the stars surely held all the answers. They guided sailors home; they must know the direction of Rhea’s life as well.
Below her, the Regia—the royal palace and all its environs—transitioned into nocturnal life. In her periphery, Rhea could see windows illuminated by lamp and candle; could almost feel the pulse of bodies moving across the tufa-paved courtyards, returning from their tasks to their rooms; could almost hear the timbre of each voice change as stress lessened and selfness returned.
And out in the beyond? Among the sleeping trees and hills, her people, the people of Alba Longa, ended their own exhausting days, and Rhea pictured other women, other lives, other dreams. Her mind found more possibility, more freedom, in the darkness. During the night, without diurnal distraction, memory and conjecture held equal rank. The present ceased pressing its priority, and Rhea could both imagine and remember at almost the same time. A confusing but delightful trajectory of thought. Thinking about her own thinking was a way to uncover herself, and there was no better place for self-discovery than the roof.
It was her older brother, Lausus, who had shown her how to reach this beloved summit. When she was too small to merely pull herself from tree limb to stone, he ordered her to jump.
“I will fall!” young Rhea cried in terror. “Carry me!”
“You can do hard things, Ilia.”
He was stern but correct. She could, and she did, taking a wild leap and flying, landing hard on her knees. She’d punched Lausus furiously, and he’d taken her fists with a smile.
“You could have helped me,” she fumed. “Nobody would have seen; nobody would have faulted either of us.”
Lausus shook his head. He sat with his legs dangling over the edge and gestured into the shadowy distance. “The wolves and gods are always there,” he said. “Even when you don’t see them, they watch. I can’t let you forget.”
That memory struck a chord with another, for Aegestus had also mentioned wolves before he left.
Tend to my animals, Ilia. Watch out for wolves.
Aegestus was her younger brother—her only brother, now that Lausus was dead—and away on a summer hunting trip, a time-honored Latin tradition. A select group of unmarried princes from a handful of cities entered the Ciminian Forest, the feared and pathless wilderness between Latium and their contentious northern neighbor, Etruria. This was no new development but part of the established order. Both Rhea’s father and her uncle had participated as young men, as had Lausus, who’d loved every part of the experience—sleeping outdoors, basking in the boisterous male camaraderie, mastering the techniques of tracking and trapping.
But Aegestus, with his affinity for animals, could hardly stomach the thought of the hunt. Her sweet brother, who cherished every goat, every sheep and bird and calf, who rode his stallion, Hector, with a horsemanship unlike any other, controlling the animal entirely with his legs and seat, never relying upon metal in Hector’s mouth or a crop at his flank.
“I hate hunting,” complained Aegestus when Rhea helped him pack.
“I know, but Father is letting Lucian accompany you,” she reminded him. “You won’t be alone.”
“I know,” he replied, repeating her words crossly.
Lucian was an orphan, brought into the Regia’s employ as a child by their mother, the late queen Jocasta. He worked in the stables and was Aegestus’s closest friend.
Rhea sat beside her brother on his bed. “It could be exciting,” she offered again, a bit more gently. “And you will experience a forest I’ve never seen. I want you to remember every detail so you can describe it perfectly to me when you return.”
He’d rested his head against her shoulder, and she’d laid a kiss in his mussed hair. Her worry for her younger brother was a cyclone she couldn’t control—all-encompassing—and it made her feel hard and soft at the same time. If she could, she would forever hold him in her arms, shield him from the worst of the world, but he was no longer a child. Aegestus was his own person and the heir to all thirty confederated cities of Latium.
“Do you remember Mother’s brooch, the one with the three gems?”
Aegestus’s eyes lit up. “For her three children. I could never forget it.”
Rhea pulled it from her belt, where she’d kept it concealed. She offered it to Aegestus on the palm of her hand.
“Take it with you. Take us with you. And keep yourself safe.”
His mouth curved slightly upward, making him look both happy and sad. “I might not give it back.”
Rhea crossed her arms over her chest. “Do not overestimate my generosity.”
Aegestus attached the brooch to the inside of his toga, where it rested, hidden, over his heart. And that’s when he said it, when he mentioned the wolves. “Tend to my animals, Ilia. Watch out for wolves.”
She scoffed. “I do not fear the wolves.”
“You wouldn’t, would you?”
“The only people who do are the ones who think like sheep.”
Aegestus rolled his eyes affectionately. “Fear isn’t passive or stupid. Fear saves lives.”
Oh, she had many fears—active ones—but would not speak of them. Fears for her father, for her younger brother, for their health, their hearts, their safety. But beasts? No. Rhea could care less about fangs or heights or spiders or storms, things other people lost sleep over.
She grabbed Aegestus’s hand. “Find a wild boar or bear and come home to me quickly.”
The hunting party had been gone for weeks, and she missed Aegestus more each day. Without him, she felt herself coming untethered and going adrift, for she was a boat in port, moored to her family. After two snapped ropes, she clung to her brother and father for purchase. Should they break, should they untie, she would be lost.
And their father, King Numitor, needed them together most of all.
The moon above her was a curved sickle, skinny and sharp. Tomorrow would surely be a new moon. A dark moon in a caliginous sky.
Black moon, black sky.
Her mind pulsed with those words, then devolved into the corresponding image which haunted her mind’s eye.
Black wolf.
Rhea had first seen him at the Latin Festival in April: a wolf, darker than the stygian shadows, bigger than any wolf ought to be. Oh, she had spied wolf packs before, scavenging the Regia’s goats during the transitional time when night met dawn. And, more often, she had seen their pelts, trophies of hunters, furs for the winter. But this wolf, its size and color, was unprecedented.
She’d stood frozen amid the tents and camps of Latium’s most important representatives, those who met each year on the Alban Mount to pledge loyalty to her father and stared into that pair of red eyes. A cry for help concentrated at the back of her throat. She should have alerted the guards, should have warned the others, but she recalled her mother’s strange bedtime stories and their even stranger messages: Never kill a wolf—it is disgraceful.
The scream-in-wait faded as quickly as it had collected, and the wolf regarded her as it slunk backward, the embers of its eyes dimming out.
“Ilia?”
Scuffles in the bay laurel and her pet name in whisper. Rhea propped herself up on an elbow and watched as her cousin pulled herself to the roof. Antho, tall and slender and undeniably feminine with her wide doe eyes and small mouth.
“How did you escape Claudia?” Rhea asked by way of greeting.
“She was meeting the midwife,” Antho returned. “Again.”
“Is your mother pregnant?”
Antho nearly choked on her laughter as she settled beside her cousin. “Stars, what a horrific thought! No, I think that is very doubtful. They are preparing draughts for me,” she admitted quietly. “Every month, to ready my womb.”
Rhea sat all the way up, all thoughts of wolves vanished. “Is a betrothal so soon?”
“I will be the last to know.” Antho bit into her lip, worrying it with her top teeth. “But I am sure my mother would be overjoyed should I marry before you.”
“She’ll have me presented as the bride’s spinster relation.”
“She will be insufferable.”
Antho was one year younger than Rhea, almost to the date. Their fathers were brothers—only Rhea’s father was the king, and Antho’s father, Amulius, was his adviser. Though the royal children were raised together, a clearly defined and recognized hierarchy existed: first Lausus, then Aegestus, followed by Rhea and, finally, Antho. It never affected the cousins’ relationships or fun, but it had soured any bond between their mothers.
And even though Rhea’s mother was dead, the bitterness remained, lingering and festering like a bad taste or an open sore.
Aunt Claudia did not like Rhea, simply because she hadn’t liked Queen Jocasta. Claudia seemed perpetually irritated by her niece’s presence and offended on her daughter’s behalf, for she saw the way people preferred dark and unholy Rhea, and despised the way her only child didn’t seem to mind—though, in truth, Claudia didn’t much care for her own daughter, either. Too soft, too sweet. Antho was honey—from her soft, oiled feet to her golden hair—and Claudia was a raw onion.
The Latin people had preferred Rhea’s mother, too—preferred her even in death.
For Claudia, this was a living wound.
“Well,” Rhea replied, reclining on her blanket and arranging her body into a more comfortable position, “nobody has asked for my opinion, but I think you should marry Leandros.”
Rhea’s cousin made no ostensible move, but Rhea was no ordinary bystander, immediately noticing the telltale rigidity in Antho’s spine, the forced nonchalance in her face, the strangled sound of her breath.
“Why would you say such a thing?” Antho managed to ask.
“Because you adore each other.”
Her cousin fell quiet.
“He’s a guard, Ilia.”
“He is.”
“And Greek.”
“Also true.”
Antho sighed, looking away. “You say impossible things.”
“At least once a day, I hope.”
Then Antho lay back beside Rhea, and their hands found each other. Rhea squeezed.
And because it was the uppermost thought in Rhea’s mind, she let her most thrilling secret partially slip.
“I met someone at the Latin Festival.”
“In April? Why didn’t you say something before?”
“I’m telling you now,” Rhea answered carefully, “because he isn’t a prince, either, and it’s important to me that you know.”
Antho pursed her lips, blew air in a faint whistle.
“Who is he? Do I know him?”
Rhea considered. How much was she willing to share? The whole truth was delicious.
* * *
NIGHTTIME ON THEAlban Mount, and Rhea danced before the altar to Jupiter. She followed the ecstatic movement of the crowd around the bonfire, the circular stream of energy, until a pair of strong hands grabbed her waist. Rhea spun to protest, but—
Oh.
A gorgeous man, hard and muscled and intimidatingly tall, with a glinting grin like mica in stone. A man she had not seen amongst the Latin representatives, had never seen before anywhere. Rhea felt an aura of invincibility, of detachment, of unadulterated power in the strength ofhis hands, in the charge of his gaze. Like black lightning, like toxins, like uncut wine.
Yes, this was a stranger in every sense and her instinctive sensibility understood why.
He was an immortal.
“You are not from the League,” she observed dryly.
“No.”
She pushed his hands away from her hips. “This event is for Latins.”
“I am. In a sense. I live here now.” He cocked his head. “Among other places.”
This was a festival for Jupiter, but the man looking down at her was no Father Sky. How could she be so sure? She had already seen his other form, its four-legged silhouette, amid the tents.
“I saw you earlier.”
“And you did not scream.”
Had that been a test? Well, she wasn’t afraid, and she was never impressed. He might as well know now.
“And yet you changed.”
He held wide his arms. “It’s much easier to dance on two legs.”
Rhea stared at his chest, at the dip where his collar bones met his neck. She wanted to taste that patch of skin.
Stars! How much wine had she consumed?
“Prove it.”
He grinned and took her hands in his own.
Rhea loved to dance, and this man moved with her and against her in alluring ways, to a song only she could hear: the drumbeat in her blood, the wild refrains of her soul. The bonfire incarnate. She had danced with others that night, lesser princes who lusted after her name, but those were cursory exchanges. Nothing like this: his perfect body, his breath on her neck, all of it leaving her lightheaded with a terrifying but rhapsodic thrill. Her father might be watching. Her uncle Amulius, the royal council, or any of the very real, very mortal men dissecting her every move.
“People can see me,” she whispered into his ear, forced to stand on her toes.
“Doing what?”
“Enjoying myself.”
“Tell me to leave,” he whispered back, “and I will.”
She should say the words, make her excuses, but she didn’t want to. Instead, Rhea wordlessly laced their fingers together and led him into the forest. They would leave together. When he murmured approvingly, even so far away, under arboreal cover, she felt the combined effect of him and the nearby conflagration burn her cheeks.
It felt like kismet; maybe she was kismet.
She stopped walking and faced him. “You are too old for me.”
He smiled, and she saw them, undeniably. Wolf’s fangs. “You knew that before you brought us here, just as you know who I really am.”
His hand slipped through her hair to the back of her head, and Rhea murmured his name.
“Mars.”
A growl rose from his throat, and his fingers gripped her neck. “Yes.”
He had to stoop to bring their faces together, and oh, she had never been kissed in such a way and surely never would be again. No human boy could come close. Her heart soared, and so did her feet. Was she floating? Was she still corporeal?
Yes and yes, but the god of war had lifted her off the ground—so easily, so effortlessly.
She wrapped her arms around his neck, her legs around his waist. “If any of the Latin kings see us, I’ll never marry a prince.”
“Rhea Silvia, you were never meant for a mortal man.”
She knew this too, somehow, but it did not make his response any less exhilarating, and then his tongue was in her mouth, his hands passing beneath cloth, and Rhea became something hot and delicate. Molten gold.
Kissing, simmering, alchemical.
Where would this go? How far would she allow it?
Questions she never got to answer because Aegestus stumbled into the woods calling her name and Mars cursed, placed her on the ground, and disappeared.
* * *
JUST RECALLING THE memory brought heat to Rhea’s chest. She was undeniably flustered—and caught, judging by Antho’s amused expression.
“Well?” she prodded. “Who is the mysterious man that makes you blush?”
But as dearly as Rhea loved her cousin, she would not divulge her savory encounter with the god of war. Antho might not believe her, and if she did, would worry incessantly. Romances with immortals only ever went badly, especially for the mortal, especially for the girl—or so it went in all the stories.
“You do not know him,” Rhea said instead, maintaining ambiguity. “I barely do.”
“Whoever he is, they won’t let you have him.”
“They certainly won’t,” Rhea agreed, and then she sighed. “But it’s a shame. I’ve yet to meet a Latin prince with a body like his.”
“I think of Leandros’s stomach all day long,” Antho confessed. “The place below his navel, the line of hair that goes downward.”
“Now which of us is keeping secrets!”
Antho, bit back a smile. “We may have spent some time together.”
“Time alone, apparently.”
Antho laughed. “Just a bit, never enough.” And then she became serious. “At least half the Regia’s women watch Leandros with mouths hanging open like dead fish. But I can’t let anyone else have him.” She fingered the gold bangle on her wrist. “We should run away, Ilia, and live in the forest together.”
“Or commandeer a small boat and take the Tiber to wherever it may lead.”
“To anywhere. To everywhere.”
“Drink as much wine as we want. Stop styling our hair.”
“Disguise ourselves and pass unnoticed through villages, telling stories and singing songs for food.”
“Bed every handsome man who pleases us.”
“Oh, yes, all of them.”
“We would need horses.”
“New names.”
“And sharp blades, for those who might stand against us.”
And they continued to dream aloud, together and freely, in the time-honored manner of girls and women, in that safe space where desires can be revealed and choices seem possible. To imagine worlds without limit where love and adventure and knowledge are accessible to any who dare. Until Antho fell asleep against her cousin’s shoulder and Rhea remained, still waiting, forever waiting, for the stars or gods or wolves to hear, and perhaps change, everything.
CHAPTER II
RHEA
RHEA AWOKE ON the rooftop alone. She was not certain when Antho had left—probably before dawn, before Claudia could catch her out of bed and commence her scolding. Rhea sat up and stretched. She was just about to reach for a sturdy branch and make her descent down the tree when she heard her father’s voice.
She paused, held herself still, focused her ears.
Not just her father but her uncle Amulius as well.
Rhea slid back onto her stomach, lying as flat as the roof itself, and listened.
“Corinth has sent a tentative introduction,” her father said. “And so have the Greek tributaries in the South. Cumae, Tarentum.”
Her uncle scoffed. “If you are considering Greek offers, why not betroth her to the Volsci or the Sabines! Give your only daughter to our most immediate enemies!”
A betrothal. And hers? This might be a private conversation, but considering the subject matter, Rhea felt no shame in eavesdropping.
“I have answered correspondences, Amulius.”
“You have given them hope. It suggests they have a chance.”
“Perhaps they do. What if my Ilia could unite our peoples? Children of two nations might ensure a future full of peace.”
“Peace is never assured.”
“Of course not, but—”
“Latins are good at two things, Numitor. Farming and war. You forget this!”
“I could not call myself a proper king, diligent to my people, if I didn’t seek peace at every opportunity.”
Rhea heard her uncle snort. “Peace is contrary to human nature, Numitor. It’s an illusion. A myth.”
But the king ignored his brother’s philosophical baiting. “Other Latin cities have also requested permission to court my Ilia: Tibur, Praeneste, Gabii. But I cannot entertain any without first speaking to Ardea.”
“You are too loyal.”
“I owe them a queen.”
Up above their heads, among the branches and birds, Rhea drew in a sharp breath.
Ardea.
Lausus, Rhea’s older brother—and Numitor’s firstborn son—had been promised to Princess Mariana of Ardea before his death. A strong alliance with the southeastern city was important for Alba Longa. Ardea, the Rutuli’s notoriously autonomous former capital, was coastal and expansive. This alliance would have offered Alba Longa a piece of the lucrative sea trade with the islands. Years of negotiations had collapsed when Lausus died. Rhea and Prince Taurin would be a second-rate option, a way to salvage the agreement.
But did she want to marry him? Could she?
Rhea had met Mariana’s brother a handful of times. Timid, plump, with white blonde hair and fine clothes. He brought to mind a well-dressed peach. She tried to imagine him climbing atop her in their marriage bed, but even the thought of their mouths meeting made her queasy. And he couldn’t possibly find her attractive, with her thick dark hair and dirty feet and sharp mouth.
Could a pair be any less suited for each other? Would her father seriously consider such a match?
“You owe Ardea nothing,” Amulius argued. “It was one thing to bring their princess here for Lausus, but if Rhea goes to Ardea and marries Prince Taurin, their children will have our bloodline and control of the trade routes. Ardea’s strength would rival, if not surpass, Alba Longa’s.”
“It is only a conversation. It is the right thing. Do not worry yourself so much with Ilia’s progeny.”
“One of us should. If you match her with someone too powerful, it could potentially challenge Aegestus’s claim to Latium and bring war to our walls!” From the way the volume of Amulius’s voice fluctuated, Rhea knew he was pacing, though she did not dare look.
“I thought you advocated for war,” her father teased.
“Yes, with the Etruscans. Not from within!”
“Aegestus is young still. His future children are not guaranteed. Maybe Ilia’s children will be the best choice for Alba Longa. Do not close yourself off to the idea. Change is human nature, Amulius. Do not fear it.”
“That is where you are wrong, brother. Humans do not change.”
And something about her uncle’s tone made Rhea shiver. She awaited her father’s response, but Amulius spoke again, with a forced levity this time. “I only ask that you wait until Aegestus returns from the hunt, for the harvest to come in, and then make a decision about Rhea.”
Her father chuckled, a sad sound. “I’ve already kept her longer than I should have.”
There was a long, fraught pause and then: “You suffered a great loss two years ago.”
Before Numitor could respond, and surely to his relief, a servant arrived requesting Amulius’s presence, and Rhea heard the particular, syncopated click of her uncle’s sandals in his departure. Rhea counted silently in her head, and when she hit a sufficiently high number, she climbed down through the tree.
Her father lingered on a stone bench below.
“How much did you hear?” he wondered, not looking up at her but studying a laurel leaf between his fingers.
He always knew; it felt impossible to deceive him.
Rhea smiled and closed the distance between them, sitting on the ground and leaning her head against her father’s knee as she used to do. “All of it.”
“No need for small conversations or summary, then. What do you think of Ardea?”
“The place or the boy?”
“Either. Both.”
Rhea shrugged.
“You have been remarkably quiet on this subject, my girl, especially for one so typically loud.” But her father misunderstood her silence, as evidenced when he gently added: “There are other princes, of course. Does one already hold your heart? The heirs of Tibur or Praeneste?”
“One fights so often he’s already lost half his teeth, and the other is younger than Aegestus.”
“Taurin is of a similar age, at least,” the king continued. “Though when he comes to see me, I will check his teeth like a horse.”
She grinned.
“Is there an Alban man you prefer? Even if he is common, Ilia, you can tell me.”
There was nothing common about the man she preferred. Black wolf, black hair. Kissing in the black forest.
“No.”
She longed to ask him about her mother, to hear him tell the story of their betrothal, one she never tired of hearing. Jocasta of Satricum was a second daughter, a friend of her uncle’s. Numitor was already engaged to another, but when he met this wild young princess, he was bewitched and would have no one else. His father, King Procas, had to cut many deals to placate the offended parties, but her grandfather respected his oldest son and heir’s decision to marry for love. Lausus followed soon after their wedding.
The king placed a tender palm upon his daughter’s head. In these quiet moments, when he was contemplative and unbothered by affairs of court, the Trojan trauma he carried seemed heaviest. Numitor had been born with a tragic knowledge that existed in his marrow, that was passed down by a people who had witnessed their city burn, who wandered, starving and shelterless, for so many years. An inherited generational pain, an ever-present exhaustion in the depths of his eyes. Her father, more so than his younger brother, was a living relic, a soul-filled scar. And because Numitor held fast to the wisdom of their ancestors, he could never overlook what war did to home.
“It will be a struggle to find your match, I am afraid.” And Numitor ran his hand down his daughter’s hair, for Rhea’s hair was important hair. It was the same as Jocasta’s, and this was Rhea’s inheritance.
And while she reveled in his touch, his love, Rhea hoped it did not pain his heart.
Rhea missed her mother so much.
Two years she had been gone.
Memories of the dead queen were precious, and Rhea sometimes feared that those she cherished were wrong, that she had changed them through some metaphysical process, some mental translation across time, in her desperation to keep them safe and perfect.
What, then, did Rhea remember?
The touch of her mother’s hand on her chest, passing back and forth, tracing slow circles, humming when her daughter took ill or had a nightmare. Rhea could resurrect that haptic feedback sometimes, ,a ghost-like sensation, an illusory return to safety.
And there were smells. The scent of the lavender-infused olive oil Jocasta rubbed into her body. The sprigs of rosemary she kept in her family’s rooms.
Sounds, too. Her loud laughter at lewd jokes or the uncanny way she could imitate animals, delighting the children to no end.
Her cutting mouth, her smile like a curved blade.
Watching her mother nap outside in the sunshine like a satisfied cat. (This had driven Claudia mad: “The queen is passed out in broad daylight like a village drunk!” But the king had never woken her; he’d found all her idiosyncrasies endearing.)
Jocasta had cared little for propriety, and as the king’s beloved, she’d gotten away with all sorts of mischief.
“Mama,” Rhea had asked as a young girl, “why do you feed Aegestus from your own breast when the other mothers use nurses? Why do you wear your hair down and unveiled? Mama, where are your sandals?”
And when Jocasta had responded, she’d lowered her voice, as if imparting a great secret: “I cannot live the city ways, because I was born in the forest, a child of Cybele, ‘the Great Goddess.’ The king of Satricum found me scavenging with the bear cubs and scooped me up. He brought me back to court and raised me as his human daughter.” She winked. “But I was always meant for the woods.”
“That isn’t true, Mama,” Rhea argued, but they giggled anyway.
And always there was the golden brooch, the only fine jewelry Jocasta ever wore, dependably pinned above her heart. Rhea had loved to sit upon her mother’s lap and finger its three precious gems—a garnet, an amethyst, a moonstone.
“Ilia,” Jocasta would say, “do you know why your father chose three stones?”
And Rhea would nod. “For your three children.”
“Yes, my three children, my jewels. Lausus is here, my bloodred garnet, and Aegestus here, an amethyst, for his temperance. But you, Ilia, you are my center stone, my middle treasure, my moonstone, my only girl.” And she would take Rhea’s finger, press it to the stone—one small fingertip beneath its mother’s, rolling against that milky blue and white—and recite her favorite line, her chant, her prayer, her spell: “To be a mother is to be alive.”
Which wasn’t true in the end. The cruelest memory of all.
The brooch had passed to Rhea after the funerals, but she’d never worn it, had only removed it from its wooden box to lend to Aegestus. Rhea thought of him on his trip and hoped he was keeping his promise to her—to wear it, to keep it safe. And she would honor the one she had made as well.
She would tend to his animals.
On her way to the pastures and pens, however, Rhea crossed paths with her uncle.
Amulius was a decade younger than her father, with a shock of black hair and a corvine face and he walked with a limp, a permanent injury from childhood. He was a cold man—in his demeanor and expressions, in the frigidity of his voice—so Rhea delighted in any opportunity to shatter his saturnine stoicism. Amulius never appeared to despise Rhea as much as his wife did, but neither did he seem to like her.
He noted Rhea’s empty hands, and his eyes narrowed. “Shouldn’t you be with my wife, cleaning or”—he waved a dismissive hand in the air—“attending to whatever you women do?”
Rhea forced a deep sigh. “Oh, Uncle, I needed to see the midwife for a tea and more rags.” She cupped her hands at the bottom of her stomach. “But I remind myself that it is a blessing my courses are so regular.”
And when Amulius’s face flickered with disgust, she gloated.
“Because that’s another thing us women do, Uncle,” she added, glancing over her shoulder in flippant farewell. “Give birth to kings.”
* * *
RHEA FED AEGESTUS’S pets. She cleaned their pens. She wasn’t affectionate with them in the way her brother was, but she attended to their needs faithfully. Outdoor chores on her own terms were invariably superior to indoor ones overseen by her hawkeyed aunt.
But one moment it was a typical Latin summer, thick with heavy heat, and the next moment the sun had quit its post, abandoning the day to the darkness of dusk. Rhea looked upward in shock and saw the cause: the moon passing between the earth and the sun. Dimmed was the day’s light, in sharp contrast to her own heart’s acceleration.
The animals fell silent, the land itself muted—in color, in sound, in all its tones. A natural response to an ominous anachronism—an inversion of the order of things. When night falls during the daytime, what else can be upended? Will fish fly and mothers’ milk turn to blood?
“A demon has eaten the sun!” screamed a voice in the fields, and hysteria followed.
Shrieks and cries. Tears. Rhea felt her heart beat with furious demand, heard it reverberate in her ears, her head, her bones, as the minutes passed slowly.
Her first thought was that Aegestus would not want her to abandon his animals, but that was absurd. She should save herself and return to the protection of the Regia. But Rhea did neither; she waited, caught undecided, in between what happened then and then what happened.
Was this the end? Would they never return to the halcyon days of yore? An extreme thought, surely, but what if, what if?
Eventually, the moon moved, the sun resumed its shine, and the shaken animals took tentative steps toward resuming the process of living. Field hands laughed off their nerves, clapped one another on the back, and made jokes of their trepidation.
“Only an eclipse, no need to panic.”
“I saw your panic dripping down your legs!”
Rhea knew the lore, however: an eclipse was a signal, a symbol of powerful and unnatural forces at work. Alarmed, she raced home like a horse given its head. Only speaking with her father would ease this apprehension.
She groaned when she spotted Helvius standing guard outside the king’s door. Her least favorite of the Regia’s soldiers, Helvius had a lazy tendency to lean against walls, ogle servant girls, and make crude comments under his breath.
He was vile; Rhea loathed him.
“The king is occupied with the augur,” Helvius jeered, barring the doorway with his body, and Rhea’s hands itched for purchase on his stubborn neck. His upper lip, sliced in some past skirmish, had healed incorrectly, giving him a permanent, grotesque sneer. It suited him.
“Father,” Rhea yelled through the door, “may I come in?”
A pause.
“Let her pass, Helvius.”
Helvius muttered invectives, and Rhea shoved the guard with her shoulder as she entered her father’s rooms.
King Numitor, sitting at a table with his brother and Sethre, the augur, was the only man to acknowledge Rhea’s presence. Not with words, of course, but with the slightest nod of his head. For just a moment, Rhea wondered how it might feel to be offered a chair, an invitation to share her opinions openly, to ask her own questions. What would it be like to be welcomed like Lausus had been and Aegestus would be?
Instead, Rhea stood silently to the side, listening with her head down.
“An eclipse is a sign of war!” Amulius insisted. “The king must summon more soldiers to our borders with the Sabines and Etruscans.”
“We are not at war, brother.”
“We are always at war.”
“I have consulted my texts,” interjected Sethre. He was a strange man, with one long, dark eyebrow. “An eclipse is an empyrean omen, but what it portends I cannot yet tell. A natural disaster? A catastrophe? The end of a dynasty?” His lips tightened into a thin line as he offered his advice: “A sacrifice would be sage. One hundred cracked eggs in offering to the sun god, Sol. To ensure that his light will not leave us again.”
“Do so with my full support,” the king replied.
After the augur excused himself to perform the rituals and prayers, Amulius looked pointedly at Rhea and shot one final pointed query. “Has our family lost favor with the gods, Numitor?”
“The moon and sun have met, then passed. This has happened before our family existed and will happen again, long after the last of us meets the pyre.”
Rhea’s uncle stood, bowed to his brother, and departed, while she remained, wondering at Amulius’s question. Was it possible that the Silvian line of Latium had erred? Were mistakes and misbehaviors among her family enough to upset the planetary alignment?
What a horrifying thought.
Unlike the Trojans and Greeks, the Latin people maintained a respectful distance from their pantheon. It was a cold and practical relationship, mutually beneficial, and dependent upon the proper practice of word and action. The mortals provided worship and offerings in return for divine blessing. This was do ut des: I give that you might give. And because of this, the Latin gods did not behave like Greek ones, chasing and tricking, using their omnipotence as an advantage in a cruel game. It was a good system, and devout family members like Antho and Numitor preserved the goodwill of the gods, the pax decorum.
But there was nothing holy in Amulius, and sometimes Rhea thought the same of herself—especially after what she had done with Mars at the Latin Festival. Could this somehow be her fault? What cataclysmic events might those illicit kisses have ushered in?
Numitor noticed her disquiet and reached for her, brushing his knuckles across his daughter’s cheek. “There is no need for alarm, Ilia. The sun always returns.”
Later, Rhea would recall this conversation and see its devastating irony: the sun, the son.
The augurs with their bromides and one hundred eggs, her father with his platitudes and faith. It all meant nothing. For there would be no return from what was happening—from what had already happened—as the eclipse passed over a forest far away and a beloved boy saw nothing, for he would not see anything ever again.
CHAPTER III
FROM
THE HISTORIES OF LATIUM
BY AETIUS SILVIUS FLAVIUS
THERE WAS A Latium before the heroic arrival of Aeneas, but there was no Alba Longa.
Aeneas, cousin of Hector and Paris, was forced to flee Troy after the invasion of Odysseus’s wily wooden horse. He left the burning city of Ilium with both his elderly father and the family Penates—figurines representing the guardians of their house—strapped to his back. Though Aeneas lost his wife in the melee, he did not stumble, did not stop until he reached Mount Ida. There, with his son Ascanius and his father, Anchises, Aeneas led the survivors in exodus. The Trojans struggled for many long years to find asylum, tossed mercilessly by the sea. Eventually, after sojourns in Thrace and Delos, Crete and Carthage, Aeneas’s few remaining ships and their browbeaten crews, sailed up the Tiber into Latium.
This is it! sang Aeneas’s beleaguered heart. A safe haven at long last!
Many gods and goddesses greeted him in dreams, but foremost of all was Tiberinus, the Latin god of the river. He called Aeneas forward—to the land—to claim his home and his destiny. And when Aeneas first beheld the Alban Mount, or Monte Cavo, the Trojan warrior saw his journey come full circle. Here was another fated mountain, just like Mount Ida, where he would collect life and preserve it against every resistance and setback until his dying day.
To solidify his people’s successful immigration, Aeneas married the Latin king’s daughter, Lavinia, but more war followed, for Ardea’s Rutuli prince wanted the princess for himself. Men fought over a woman, and people died. Men fought for their pride, and people died. Men fought against outsiders, and people died. But eventually a baby gave these disparate groups a common cause to celebrate. Lavinia gave birth to Silvius, a son of Latium and Troy, and he was cherished by all. Here, finally, was the reason for Aeneas’s divine protection, why the gods had guided him to this place: up this river, to this land, to this woman.
Silvius, so called because he was hidden from his enemies in the forest. Silvius, whose descendants would establish a great empire—the greatest of all—according to the prophecies.
Aeneas knew very few years of peace before his untimely death, but his two sons ensured the future of their family, claiming a new city, Alba Longa, on a lake between two volcanic mountains for their combined progeny. Though Ascanius died with no heirs, the Silvian line continued and flourished.
The Latin League, which precipitated the Trojan arrival, was originally formed as a mutual defense against the Etruscans. This changed with the advent of Alba Longa. Because of Aeneas’s legend, because of Silvius’s success, all thirty Latin cities came to acknowledge the preeminent leadership of Alba Longa and its high king. Alba Longa’s adamantine rule went unquestioned for fifteen generations, for four hundred years.
Until Rhea Silvia, of course.
CHAPTER IV
ANTHO
CLAUDIA RAISED ANTHO in the same manner as her own mother, by one simple commandment: “Keep the house and work the wool.”
Antho was meant to be simple, to be pleasant in conversation, to walk with grace, and to embody the virtues of a good Latin wife: obedience, industry, modesty, and piety. Claudia herself was so neat, so precise—made nearly lifeless through her cleanliness—and worn gaunt by her daily companion, anxiety. (“Anxiety over what?” Rhea had once asked. “Everything,” Antho had answered, glumly.)
Her mother’s fastidiousness made itself manifest in Antho’s careful braids and trimmed nails and immaculate clothes. And though Claudia’s daughter did exactly as she was told, this only made Claudia more demanding, more uptight. Antho was doomed no matter how flawlessly she performed her role.
If my perfection isn’t perfect enough, Antho sometimes allowed herself to wonder, why not be gloriously imperfect?
Who would that Antho be? An Antho who never rose before dawn to prepare the mola salsa of spelt groat and brine, the sacred flour required by the Lares and Penates. An Antho who didn’t refrain from a second cup of wine or kohl around her eyes or the stationed corridors of the Greek guard Leandros.
In short, an Antho who slept well, ate well. Laughed loudly. Felt good about herself. Felt real.
No. Claudia and Amulius would beat that Antho out of her.
For the majority of her shared childhood with Rhea, Antho had been secretly jealous of her cousin, not for her beauty or her title, but because Rhea belonged to a woman like Jocasta, a queen who caught every eye and breath. How would it feel to belong to such a mother, one so munificent, so adoring of children, so lively that even Antho’s father smiled when she was present? Antho pictured herself in Rhea’s family all the time, saw herself amid those adoring brothers, with Jocasta’s nightly kiss on her brow. She used to imagine it so often and with so much ardor that now, even two years after their funerals, Antho still blamed herself for Jocasta’s and Lausus’s deaths. Maybe it was her own insidious envy that had poisoned their bodies. Maybe her ardent longing had upset their family’s balance.
But Antho loved Rhea without hesitation or doubt, for without Ilia’s surplus of strength, Antho would be too weak, too dull and simple. She would become all the insults her parents regularly delivered:
Like a turkey in flight!
All the firmness of a jellyfish!
Soapstone against quartz!
In her heart and mind, Antho was none of these dismissed entities. She had such forceful thoughts and feelings! But besides her cousins, nobody at the Regia had ever considered her as anything more than a wife-in-waiting. Not until recently, that is.
Until the soldier Leandros.
Who had come to Alba Longa in the past year, a Greek son working to free his parents from slavery.
Who didn’t find her diffidence distancing.
Who had spoken words that she recited every night in irreverent prayer: “Your gentleness devastates me, Antho. You do not understand the power your kindness wields over someone like me, who has known only pain and punishment.”
Was it true? Could tenderness be an attribute? She had been raised to believe the opposite.
But perhaps with Leandros, different realities were possible.
“Why do you stare at walls?” Claudia snapped, breaking Antho from her reverie. “Why was I cursed with such an idiot daughter? Antho, move!”
People were hungry, and Antho held back the meal. She finished her remaining tasks quickly and found her seat beside Rhea. All the Regia’s women ate together—the royals, the servants, the foreigners who came to the compound through the sins of slavery. At the head of the long table, Claudia prattled on about a banquet she planned to host when her family from Tibur visited—the dishes she wanted prepared, the decor and entertainment.
“I will procure a peacock for the feast.”
Claudia’s most loyal women expressed their delight. A peacock was certainly a grand delicacy and would make a stunning centerpiece.
“Shouldn’t such an expense be saved for a wedding feast?” challenged Agrippa, a councilor’s wife and one of the late queen Jocasta’s former attendants. “We have all heard rumors of the many suitors vying for Princess Rhea’s attention.”
Though Antho’s mother regarded the woman with pinched disapproval, others shared in the excitement, winking at Rhea and laughing. Antho thought that her cousin’s forced smile looked slightly ill.
“Who will it be, Rhea?”
“Yes, tell us please!”
“The Regia is desperate for some fun!”
“And some fresh men.”
“Princess Antho will also be entertaining suitors soon,” Claudia remarked coolly, silencing the laughter. Antho’s face flushed. Please don’t, she begged. For there was nothing more embarrassing than her mother forcing her into competition with her cousin. It was so obvious a maneuver; surely everyone felt as awkward as Antho.
But then Ursan, a royal soldier, came barging into the women’s chamber.
“Princess Rhea! Princess!”
Rhea dropped her utensils. The dinner table went still.
