The house of Senator Cornelius was smaller than the palace — most things were — but it possessed the particular elegance of old money that did not need to announce itself: fine mosaics underfoot, flowers in simple ceramic vessels, wine that was poured without fanfare and was therefore extraordinary.
Livia arrived with Portia, who had materialized at her door that evening with the invitation in hand and an expression of dangerous curiosity.
"Cornelius doesn't usually invite junior senators' daughters," Portia had said, which was her way of saying she knew exactly who had arranged this and intended to observe every development closely.
Livia had said nothing, which was her way of confirming it.
The Alexandrian poet was named Kallimachos — young, dark-bearded, with the restless energy of someone who had traveled too far too fast and found the world insufficient in comparison to what he imagined. He read from a long poem about Troy, but not the parts everyone knew. He read about the women on the walls. The ones who watched the war from a distance and survived it and carried it forward in silence.
Livia found herself leaning forward without intending to.
She found Lucian across the room watching her lean forward. He looked away before she could catch his eye, but not quite quickly enough.
After the reading, the gathering broke into smaller conversations, and Livia was methodically working her way toward the door when Lucian appeared at her shoulder. He said nothing for a moment. Neither did she.
"The women on the walls," he said finally, quietly.
"Yes."
"That was you. The way you listened."
She turned to look at him directly. "You presume a great deal, Prince Lucian."
"I observe," he said. "There is a difference. You told me that." The ghost of that not-quite-smile. "I remembered."
Around them, the room moved and murmured with conversation. No one was looking. Or perhaps everyone was, with the careful peripheral attention of people practiced in politics. It did not matter. They were standing two feet apart in a room full of people and it was perfectly appropriate and somehow more charged than the moonlit garden had been.
"Tell me something true," Livia said suddenly. She was not sure where the impulse came from.
Lucian considered this seriously, which she appreciated. He did not deflect or perform.
"I have been engaged to Princess Daria since I was twenty-two," he said. "She is not an unworthy person. She is perfectly pleasant and thoroughly suitable and I have felt, in her presence, absolutely nothing." He held Livia's gaze. "Until three weeks ago I had assumed that was simply the nature of things. That feeling nothing was the acceptable cost of doing what was required."
The room seemed to contract slightly around them.
"And now?" Livia asked, because she was, apparently, no longer capable of wisdom.
"And now," Lucian said, "I am standing in a senator's library having the most interesting conversation of the past several years, and finding that 'acceptable' is a word I am having difficulty with."
Portia appeared at Livia's elbow with the precision of a woman who had been watching very carefully.
"Livia, darling," she said smoothly, "Senator Cornelius is asking for you specifically. Something about your father's old water rights legislation."
It was almost certainly a fabrication. Portia was an artist in fabrications.
"Of course," Livia said. She met Lucian's eyes briefly. Something passed between them — acknowledgment, or warning, or both. "Good evening, Prince Lucian."
"Good evening, Livia Varro," he said, and she walked away carrying his voice like something precious and inconvenient that she had not asked to be given.
In the corner behind a potted laurel, a man in nondescript clothing noted the duration and proximity of their exchange, the subtle angle of their bodies toward each other, and the way the prince's eyes followed her across the room.
By the next morning, the report was on the desk of the imperial chamberlain.
And by the afternoon, it was in the hands of Princess Daria's mother