Juba’s fingers were tight against Selene’s. “For the Peace of Rome,” she said.
Juba let out his breath, and his fingers relaxed in hers. “Peace,” he agreed.
Octavian’s eyes shut for a moment in a look of pure relief. Even his breathing seemed easier, as if a great weight had been lifted from him.
Had he been worried, Selene wondered, that they would turn against him? Had he so well guessed the truth of those dreams of vengeance?
“One thing more,” Octavian said. His eyes opened, and he stared at Juba.
“Yes?”
“When you leave me, when you go to Mauretania, you will take the Trident and the Lance with you.”
“Take them?”
“I wish never to see them again.”
Juba opened his mouth, but then simply nodded.
“They are yours now,” Octavian said. “Do with them what you will.”
“Yes, Caesar.”
Octavian seemed to relax even further. “I should rest now. And you must prepare.”
Selene and Juba thanked him, bowed, and stood. But just as they were leaving his bedside, Caesar spoke once more. “I would be rid of them, Juba. Destroy them. Throw them into the sea. I felt the darkness. They aren’t meant for us.”
* * *
The sun was setting as Selene lay nestled in her husband’s arms. Her head resting on his shoulder, her hand making circles across his chest, she watched his breathing beginning to slow and felt the last tremors of his pleasure pass through his body.
“Thank you,” he said, and the muscles of the arm beneath her rolled as his hand came up and ran through her hair. It was the first time they’d made love since Vellica. The distance that had been between them was gone. He was her Juba again. And she his Selene.
Selene’s eyes fluttered as a breeze rolled gently through the open doors to the balcony, tasting of the clean sea, so different from Caesar’s room. Out in the distance, she could hear the calls of the seabirds following fishermen as they brought in the last of their day’s work to the harbor. She felt more at peace than she had for many weeks, for a moment even forgetting the darkness growing within her.
“So how are you?” Juba asked.
Selene smiled, and she raised her head to kiss him in answer before settling back down again.
Against her cheek she felt his smile. “You’ll be a great queen, my wife.”
“Mauretania,” she whispered.
“I’m sorry. I thought you’d be happy.”
Selene hadn’t realized that she’d been frowning. She turned it into a smile and kissed him again. “I am happy. Sorry, I was just thinking about home.”
“I understand. It isn’t my home either. But you know he can’t have me in Numidia, just as you can’t be in Egypt.”
“I know.”
“But we can make it our home, Selene. Far from Rome. Far from all this. We can just be you and me there. Alone together.”
“Alone together.” Selene playfully poked at her husband’s ribs. “I like the sound of that.”
Juba grinned. “Until we have children anyway.”
Selene gave the quickest of smiles before she turned away from him to hide what she could not keep from her face. She tried to steady her racing heartbeat as she made a show of gathering up the blankets that had been kicked down to the foot of the bed during their lovemaking. “A new start,” she finally managed to say.
His fingertips ran along her naked back. “A chance to put everything behind us.”
Not everything, she thought to herself. She took a deep breath, pulling up the gathered covers as she crawled back up to him and nestled against him once more. “A king. I know no one who could be a better one.”
“I hope so,” he said. “With you at my side I feel I can take on anything.”
“Well, I’m not going anywhere.”
His arms enfolded her in a hug.
For a moment Selene said nothing as she thought about what it all meant. “Can we truly do it?” she finally asked. “Be loyal to Rome?”
“I don’t know anymore.” Juba’s voice was unsteady, uncertain. “I have so much cause to hate him. But what he wants to build, what he wants to achieve—”
“The Peace of Rome,” Selene whispered.
“He really did talk to you about it?”
Selene nodded. “Just before the battle started. He told me that Rome is civilization and justice. He told me how peace reigns in Rome, and that wars like that at Vellica might be necessary right now, but that peace is on the other side of them.”
“Do you think he’s right?”
Selene bit her lip, thinking. “I think my mother would have thought the same thing. I think there’s a reason that she worked so hard to ally herself with Rome. So, yes. I think he’s right. And a part of me hates him even more for it.”
Juba squeezed her again. “I think so, too. And I think he cares for me. Truly, like a brother. I think I’m one of the only friends he thinks he has in this world. And if he ever treated me badly it was only because he loves his dream even more.” He took a deep breath. “I may not have known that before, but he’s sick because he tried to save me. That’s what he was talking about. When he grabbed the Trident, he couldn’t control it and it almost killed him. He did it to try to save me.”
Selene nodded, thinking back to that moment in the Cantabrian prison. “That’s why you couldn’t leave him.”
“It’s why I’m loyal, I guess.”
Selene looked up at him and saw the mix of emotions there: the feeling that he was betraying his father, betraying his home, betraying her. Her fingers brushed his cheek. “I know. I understand.”
He smiled at her, dampness at the corners of his eyes, and she felt the relief coming through him. She was glad he didn’t know what Tiberius had done. It would ruin him.
Outside, the world moved closer to darkness. She laid her head back down and held him close, not wanting to let him go.
“And now he’s given us the Shards,” he finally said.
Selene stared out into the coming night. “What will you do with them all?”
She felt him shudder. Memories, she knew, of their escape. Memories of what he’d done, how many men he’d killed in the impulse of a moment. He had nightmares about it, nearly every time he slept, though she pretended not to know.
She pressed herself closer to him, wishing she could shield him from the pain. “You saved our lives. All of our lives. You did what you had to do. You had no choice.”
“That still doesn’t make it right,” he whispered.
Selene didn’t know what to say. How could she? In these last years not a day had gone by that she did not hate herself for bringing the asp to her mother, though she knew it was what she had to do. And now, these last weeks not a day had gone by that she did not hate herself for what Tiberius had done to her, though she knew she’d had no choice.
Her hand, without her thought, rested on her belly.
“I never dreamed of this.” He shivered beneath her. “I don’t want them. I don’t want the power anymore.”
Selene at last raised up to look at him. She saw that he was staring off into the shadows of the room. “I think that’s why you must have it,” she said. She tried to smile. “And that’s why you’ll make a good king.”
She saw the corners of his mouth lift slightly, but still the darkness fell heavy upon him. She was wrong when she imagined that her old Juba had at last come back to her this afternoon, she decided. A part of him was still in Vellica, and might always be.
“Four Shards of Heaven,” he said.