LITMIR.BIZ

      Chapter One

      Rome, 80 AD

      She examined the captive’s hands, searching for a sign from the gods. Her very life rested upon this choice.

      “Do you favor him, Clodia? Or shall we look at some others?” asked her sister, Davena.

      Clodia ran her finger down the man’s stomach, sensing him shudder. He was one of so many, his bare torso pressed between so many others—a tragic horde of ill-fortuned souls filling the marketplace with their misery.

      “The mango says these are from Pompeii,” her sister added. “Can you imagine? Surviving the eruption of that terrible volcano? Such brave boys!”

      Clodia marveled at Davena, how easily she sauntered past the men she called “boys,” breathing in the smell of a pink gardenia while her own slaves cooled her with ostrich-feather fans.

      Clodia herself could not pretend any enjoyment. She found the slave market shameful, the essence of Rome’s brutality. Yet she knew that coming here was the least of her sins.

      She was the wife—no, the widow now—of mighty general Paulinus, the man who captured Queen Boudica and brought the wild tribes of Briton to their knees.

      “Glory to Gaius Suetonius Paulinus,” the guests had cheered at her husband’s funeral games. But Clodia could not bring herself to join them. It was no secret that her husband had been a butcher. Over ten thousand Iceni women and children slaughtered in a single battle. Ten thousand innocent lives erased. All for the glory of Rome.

      Clodia begged the goddess Minerva to erase her thoughts. But no matter how much she wished to forget Paulinus’s deeds, she could not. Neither could she escape the thought that in some sense, the blood her husband had spilled was on her hands, too.

      And now, as the Fates would have it, so was his money.

      Paulinus had no men in his family. No sons, nephews or brothers to carry on the Suetonius name. By law, then, Clodia inherited everything.

      It was the worse fate she could have ever imagined. Paulinus came from an old Roman clan, the kind who found Roman law tedious. It was said that Paulinus’s sister, his closest blood relative, had already set a price on Clodia’s head. Or so they whispered at the baths.

      Clodia looked up at the man before her. Somehow, she had not let go of his hand.

      “Apologies,” Clodia murmured, placing it gently by his side. His finger grazed the back of her hand, igniting an invisible spark where it touched.

      When she looked up, the man was peering down at her, a curious gaze in his blue-gray eyes. But before she could blink he was looking forward again, his eyes fixed on some invisible horizon.

      He was lean, filthy, and smelled of the sea. His hair was thick and yellow and grew in serpentine ropes that mingled with his beard, which grew so long and tangled it seemed stolen from Medusa herself.

      He was a ghastly vision, but his power could not be concealed. He stood two heads taller than Clodia, his arms full, his legs long and solid as tree trunks.

      But will he do what I require, when the time comes? There seemed no way to be sure.

      At the edge of the

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