Lady of the Eternal City by Kate Quinn Read Free Book Online

the Empress said. “I’ve always hated that nymph. She has the most sickly expression.”
    Annia’s mother laughed, rising. “You two say your good-byes. I’m going to go take charge of your packing, Sabina. Or we won’t be ready to leave until Saturnalia.”
    Don’t leave me
, Annia thought, eyes traveling a touch uneasily to the curse tablet still lying on the stone bench, but her mother was already gone. And the Empress of Rome didn’t look all that happy about it either, Annia thought.
    “Well—” The Empress rose, fluid and swaying in her black
stola
as she dropped her shawl over the curse tablet. She moved like one of her cats, a kind of lithe, connected glide. “What did you hear, little eavesdropper?”
    “Nothing,” Annia said instantly.
    “Really? Because you strike me as quite an observant little thing. Just like your mother.”
    Annia offered her most wide-eyed expression, the one she adopted whenever anything turned up broken.
You kill people
, she thought.
You write people’s names in curses, and their hearts burst.
She didn’t know what Aunt Sabina meant about being powerless, because killing people with curse tablets sounded like power to Annia. It was children who were powerless. Children couldn’t do
anything
.
    The Empress was still surveying Annia top to toe. “What?” Annia asked, edging backward.
    “You’ll probably be as tall as your father by the time I come back. You already have his hair.”
    “No, I don’t,” Annia objected before remembering that empresses weren’t supposed to be contradicted, and neither were family, and Aunt Sabina was both. But did that count if they were
wrong
? Because Annia’s hair was a soft sandy red, not brown like her father’s with his little bits of gray.
    “Right here”—Aunt Sabina touched a finger to the crown of her head—“you’ve got a stray lock that sticks up no matter how hard you smooth it down. Just like your father’s.”
    Annia touched her hair, defensive. “People think I’m a boy,” she found herself saying.
    “Why do they think that?”
    “The way I play.”
    “And how do you play?”
    Annia jutted out her jaw. “To
win
.”
    Aunt Sabina didn’t smile, as most people did. People smiled with indulgence or they smiled with reproof, but they smiled, and Annia hated that. “Win what?” the Empress asked quite seriously.
    Annia shrugged.
“Everything.”
    “And you shall win.” Aunt Sabina knelt down so she was on eye-level. “You shall win everything; I’ll make sure of it. Even from Britannia, I’ll be watching for you, Annia Galeria Faustina. I’ll imagine you starting your lessons, and playing with slave children, and scraping your knees. I’ll send you presents—a pot of woad like the old warriors used to wear, because you’d rather have war paint than dolls . . .”
    I would
, Annia thought, but didn’t say so. The Empress already seemed to know her far too well. The silence stretched.
    But Aunt Sabina only smiled. “Let’s go find your mother.”
    Annia kept the Empress in front of her the entire walk back through the gardens, warily. “Hug your aunt good-bye,” her mother said as they left, but Annia shook her head. “No,” she said, even though it made her mother frown and Aunt Sabina veil her watchful eyes with her lashes. Because Annia wasn’t afraid of heights or spiders, strangers or blood or the dark—but strange, fascinating, curse-casting Aunt Sabina definitely made her nervous.
    VIX
    Gesoriacum, a port in Gaul
    Any soldier has his good-luck charms; the things that sift out through the rough passage of nomadic campaigns. The things that
matter
, for whatever reason. I had my own collection stowed in my pack. An amulet of Mars, given me by my father to keep me safe in battle. A gold ring with the engraved letters PARTHICUS , given off former Emperor Trajan’s own hand when I saved him from a Parthian archer. An earring, silver and glinting with garnets, from a woman I cared for