She could see only the back of the temple, but she could hear the movement of only a single Virgin within, muttering arcane prayers and fussing with the sacred fire that marked their goddess’s protection over the city. Selene allowed herself a smile, confident that the five other Virgins, like the rest of the city, were fast asleep after the long day of rousing celebrations. And unless she was wrong, the Virgin left the task of tending the fire this night would be the youngest of them, the one Tiberius would know.
“Urbinia?” Tiberius called, his voice just loud enough to be heard in the temple. Not so loud, she hoped, that it would wake any Virgins sleeping in their nearby house. “Is that you?”
There was new movement inside, and Selene rushed quickly from her hiding place to stand in one of the little alcoves between the temple’s rear columns. Though the stone walls were thick, she could hear the individual footsteps inside. “Tiberius?” It was a young girl’s voice: both hopeful and uncertain. Urbinia.
Selene didn’t take the time to smile now, though she felt the lightness in her heart of fortune’s grace. She moved as quickly as she dared around the southern side of the temple, in the shadows between it and the long House of the Vestals.
“You’re honored to tend the fire this night,” Tiberius said from the front of the temple. Coming around the side, Selene could see him again, standing five or six paces from the foot of the steps. He looked strikingly natural and confident. He was a better liar than she’d ever given him credit for.
“Everyone else was, um, celebrating,” Urbinia said.
Sneaking closer column by column, Selene could see that the young girl—was she nine now?—was standing in the temple doorway. The backlight of the fire inside danced on the drapes of her linen mantle. There were red and white ribbons beneath her gossamer headdress.
“Well, come down here so I can see you,” Tiberius said.
Urbinia took a single step down, smiling—it was no secret she’d held childish feelings for her older cousin before she was chosen to become a servant of Vesta—and then she froze and started to look back toward the fire. Selene slipped behind a column foundation only a few paces away and concentrated on slowing her own heartbeat, keeping her breathing smooth and even. “I don’t think I’m supposed to,” the girl said. “The fire—”
“Looks strong enough for a minute or two, Urbinia.”
After a few seconds, Selene heard the little girl give a brief giggle before she began skipping down the steps. Selene took one last breath and then hurried out of the shadows and up the stone staircase like a cat, padding on the balls of her feet. The light of the fire ahead was blinding after so long a time in the darkness, but she kept her watering eyes to the ground, watching each step fall, until she was inside the doorway and could duck out of sight.
“What?” she heard Urbinia ask. “Is something—?”
“Oh, nothing,” Tiberius said hurriedly. “I was … I was just thinking what a wonder it is that you get to tend to that fire. My favorite cousin, a Vestal Virgin. But here, let me look at you, all grown up.”
Selene let out a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding, then concentrated on letting her eyes adjust to the inside of the temple. The sacred fire of Vesta dominated its single chamber, blazing in a large brass bowl set atop the blunted, fat pillar of a carved stone base at the rear center of the room. The polished marble floor around it reflected back both the light of the fire and the darkness of the thin, climbing column of smoke that forever rose toward the hole at the apex of the domed roof. Around the thick stone walls were inscriptions of dates and names, reliefs of gods and men, and a waist-high circle of marble-wrought cabinetry of extraordinarily beautiful red and black tones, flecked with a gold that matched tiny plaques over its low doors. Inside, she knew, were the most important documents in the Republic. It was here that Julius Caesar had supposedly placed the will that adopted Octavian as his son and heir, cutting out Caesarion, his natural child with Cleopatra. It was here that her father, Mark Antony, had eventually placed his own will, granting everything he had to his children by Cleopatra and expressing his traitorous wish to be buried with her in Alexandria rather than in Rome. The war that had taken away Selene’s family and her home had begun when Octavian had forced the Virgins to hand the will over, an act of terrible sacrilege that was somehow forgiven in the face of the greater betrayal that it exposed. For a moment Selene felt the urge to open all the doors, to turn over the sacred fire and burn it all to cinders and ash, but it would be a small victory. Not the true vengeance she sought.
Atop the cabinets were some of the greatest treasures of Rome: golden eagles, skulls, consecrated stones, and—she saw it on the other side of the room as her eyes adjusted at last—the Palladium, standing beside the statue of Horus that had been so precious to her family.
Glancing outside and seeing that Urbinia’s attentions were still thoroughly engaged by Tiberius, Selene padded over to stand before the statues, lifting from her shoulder bag the replica she’d purchased two weeks earlier. The object in her hands was not, as she’d told Tiberius, a replica of the delicately crafted statue of Horus beside her. It was, instead, a roughly cone-shaped lump of rock the deep red-brown color of clay, but with the foggy transparency of quartz. In and around it were laced lines of a darker black that gave it the vague external appearance, she thought, of wet wood. No taller than her forearm, the rock was misshapen by rounded protrusions that—seen through the eyes of imagination—could make the stone seem as if it were the statue of a strong woman, the details of her limbs and the drape of her gown somehow melted away. Where the statue’s eyes and mouth should have been the black veins were bolder, creating the appearance of a face. Holding it up next to the real Palladium, Selene could see that it was, indeed, a nearly perfect match. The Roman sculptors were right to boast.
Saying an instinctive prayer to a goddess she didn’t believe in, Selene snatched up the Palladium and put it into her bag, placing the replica in its place. She felt a wash of extra heat in the moment it was done, even beyond the roiling warmth of the fire behind her. Nerves, she thought. Must hurry.
As Selene turned to head back toward the doorway, she heard Tiberius’ voice, too loudly asking a question. And Urbinia, very close beyond the doorway, replying to him. “I’ll just check on it.”
Selene spun away, looking but knowing that there was no way out of the temple but the way she’d come in, and that there was no place to hide. Hoping that Urbinia would just glance at the fire, Selene dove behind the round stone base of the sacred flame just as the Virgin appeared in the doorway.
“But, Urbinia!” Tiberius called.
“You can’t be on the steps,” the girl said, sounding strangely authoritative for her age.
“Oh, I know … I—”
“Just wait. It’s time for more wood.”
Crouching behind the short stone pillar opposite the door, feeling the heat of the fire above her radiating into her skin and singeing the hairs on her flesh, Selene didn’t have to turn to know that the small stash of wood was against the wall behind her. All was lost.