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I go sprawling, falling into warm, sticky mud. The screams are louder out here, though they no longer belong to my family. Around me, people run through the streets while strangely dressed men dash around, swinging swords and slicing people down with them. Everything else is obscured by fire and smoke. Ash swirls in the darkness, and I’m sure this is the end of the world.

“Mother! Father!” My throat burns as I shout.

I’m about to scramble to my feet when my attention drops to the lump I tripped on. My gaze crawls up a bloody body and lands on my father’s slack face, the flames dancing in his lifeless eyes.

I scream again, the sound mingling with all the other cries out here. I scream and scream and scream until I vomit, and then I scream some more.

Our house collapses fully then, the walls and the last of the roof caving in. I continue to scream, the sounds only interrupted by my frantic shouts for my mother and brother to escape and for my father to wake up.

It feels like something cracks wide-open inside of me, unleashing more than my terror and pain. I reach a hand to my chest, where a throbbing pain has started up, sure I’ve been struck, but I don’t feel a wound there.

Someone grabs me with a roughened hand then, someone who wears leathers and armor that slaps and clangs as they move. There’s a sword in their grip, and as they drag me off the ground and force me forward, they cut down a neighbor running by.

I’d scream again, but my throat hurts and there’s that sharp ache in my chest. My father is dead. My mother and brother… I—I think I know their fates…but no, they cannot be gone too.

As for my sister, I do not know whether she’s alive or dead, only that she’s not among the ashen-faced villagers these armor-clad men have taken captive alongside me.

Eventually the screams and the flames subside. The silence that sweeps in is somehow worse than the noise.

And when the sun rises, all that’s left of my town are its smoking bones and a graveyard of unburied dead.

CHAPTER 2

ROXILANA, 12 YEARS OLD

48 AD, Rome, Roman Empire

I stareout the doorway of the apartment I live in, watching the early-morning goings-on of the lively courtyard of our insula.

Beneath me, many of the other occupants of this complex are already up, washing laundry or chatting as they get ready for the day. A few kids play knucklebones and street sellers set up baskets filled with produce and bread. A young mother soothes her crying toddler, holding the child close in her arms. At that brief show of love, a terrible yearning seizes me, and I have to tear my eyes away.

It’s taken years for me to acclimate to this city—its language, its people, its customs, its sweltering stink. And as my gaze lands on two Roman soldiers passing through the complex’s courtyard, I’m sure Istillhaven’t fully acclimated. Not when my breath hitches at the sight of them and my skin grows clammy.

The childlike terror is an old, familiar sensation, but the rage that festers like a boil beneath my skin—that is new. These Roman soldiers might not be the same evil men who killed myfamily and burned down my home, but they could have easily destroyed someone’s life, killed someone’s family.

“Girl!”

I tense at the shrill sound of my adoptive mother’s voice coming from inside our apartment.

“Girl!” Livia calls again. The irritation in her voice is unmistakable.

I wander back inside, bracing myself.

Livia stands by our kitchen table, which is littered with folded bits of cloth, some wound yarn, and a few stray loom weights.

She has a bit of gossamer-thin gauze fisted in her hand, her dark eyes flinty. “Why is the gold detailing on this veil not finished?”

My heart hammers as my gaze drops to the translucent yellow fabric in her hand.

Livia runs a thriving business tailoring clothes for the elite, and as her dependent, she expects me to assist her in all ways, including tailoring garments myself. But my hands are clumsy, and I work too slowly to make up for it. She knows this, but she also knows there are too many items and not enough time anyway.

However, mentioning all of this will only stoke her anger, especially when she caught me daydreaming, so I swallow my explanation before I can voice it.

This time, my silence angers her all the same.

“You useless,worthlessthing,” she spits out, shaking the veil in her hand and crinkling the delicate material, one of her deep brown curls loosening from her updo. “I saved you all those years ago, sheltered you, fed you—” Her chest is rising and falling faster and faster, and I’m trying not to cower or back up, which has only ever spurred her on. She takes a threatening stepforward, and now my pulse races. “All for you to be a lazy, sullen girl. Now, answer me: Why isn’t this finished?”

“I was about to?—”