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Memnon really is coming to Rome.

I don’t fully believe it for the first several days, when he casually discusses the sights he’s seeing.

I’m still positive that the only people who actually travel such vast distances are semi-mythical figures, like Julius Caesar and Pompey.

Like Alexander the Great and Augustus, Marc Antony and Cleopatra.

Then again, the boy who has haunted my mind for the last six years has become somewhat mythical to me.

Over the next several weeks, Memnon reaches out to me infrequently, but when he does, it’s often to update me on his movements.

Roxi, I’m mounting my steed for the day. I won’t leave it until the sun sets…

My men and I have entered Roman territory…

I am crossing the Danubius River…

Hope is a god, and it rules my every thought.

I don’t know what will happen once Memnon arrives—assuming he will, in fact, arrive—but the possibility is as exhilarating as it is terrifying.

His threat to my future groom lingers at the forefront of my mind, especially as Livia presses forward with her plan to marry me off.

She’s already picked out my husband, and it is a small blessing that it’s neither of my two initial prospects.

Instead, she has arranged to marry me to the textile merchant Titus’s son, Quadratus, who is apparently taking over much of his father’s business.

I have seen my betrothed a time or two before.

He seems pleasant enough, and I’m sure if Memnon did not exist, I might actually be giddy at the prospect of leaving Livia’s home.

However, Memnon does exist, and he is coming for me, and that changes everything.

When Livia settles on the fabric for my wedding garment and then the veil, I’m unsure I’ll ever wear either.

And when the fabric is tailored to my body, I’m even more confident my Roman groom will never lay eyes on it, nor will his fingers graze the metal fibulae that clasp it at my shoulders.

I will never walk next to him in my orange wedding sandals, and he’ll never smell the sweetness of the rose-and-clove perfume I would wear.

But the weeks slide into months, and my hope falters, held together only by the promises that Memnon whispers in my mind.

Little witch, I feel I’m growing near…

I’ve nearly found you. I sense it. I know you must sense it too…

Near as he is, I don’t know that he’s close enough. A date has been set for my wedding. The festivities have been planned and the guests invited.

Hope might be a god, but it is such a capricious, fickle one. It feels like it could gut me alive at any moment.

And then I’m sure it will gut me alive because, despite all of Memnon’s assurances that he’s closer than ever, my wedding day arrives.