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were joining Damian, and his anger that he had to share Damian’s punishment.
    In the hot sun, Vitas wept—not from pain, but from grief as his mind shifted from the villa to adulthood, where he strode through a battlefield in Britannia, the low green hills behind him in cold mist, the bodies of his soldiers scattered among the motionless women and children who had been slaughtered in ambush, his first and only son among them.
    And as time shimmered like a distant mirage across the desert, he felt the joy of holding the hand of his wife, Sophia, sharing a flower-scented walk through the palace grounds of Nero, as they dreamed together of how they might raise their children.
    Then moisture on his face pulled him back to a reality veiled with dull pain.
    Arella had lifted the cloth from his head and pushed a sponge to his face again.
    Yet as he lowered his head to the sponge, the delirium was so intense that he saw Sophia passing along the other side of the road, hemmed in by travelers, averting her face from the horrible spectacle of men impaled upon wood. It was only a glimpse of her face, but so real to him that he croaked in agony that struck his heart with far more force than anything the cross inflicted upon him.
    Arella spoke. “Soon it can be over. Just give the word.”
    “I saw her!” Vitas uttered. It took willpower just to draw air into his lungs. “My wife. She was there. Not dead! Jerome. Did you—?”
    He stopped. The question was useless, and he was wasting precious breath. Jerome’s head was veiled too, with a small protective sheet that the soldiers had allowed Arella to place on him.
    “My child, my child,” Arella told Vitas. “You are dreaming. Drink.”
    He sucked at the sponge and, when finished, gasped for air. As the drug coursed through his body, a vision came to him, so utterly real that he smelled the blossoms and felt the softness of petals drifting over his face. A month after their marriage, Vitas had fallen asleep in the gardens of the estate in Rome. It was midafternoon. Slaves had served a light lunch of cheeses and wine, and he’d leaned against a tree, content—not from the afternoon sun, a perfect temperature on that day, nor the excellence of the cheeses, nor the satisfaction of being able to look around at property that belonged to him, but from the joy that filled him because of Sophia. She truly did complete him, and after far too many years as a soldier and a man alone, he was content to live a life utterly without adventure or excitement. How incredible, to wake each morning beside Sophia, to nuzzle her hair and whisper stories to make her laugh, knowing nothing more was expected of them throughout the day than a chance to stroll through the markets. With those images to comfort him, he’d drifted into sleep, only to be woken by a sensation softer even than Sophia’s hair across his face, puzzled by the colors and sweet aroma until he realized she’d taken petals and was sprinkling them over his face to pull him out of sleep.
    “Have you given it thought?” she asked. “The poison?”
    So completely lost was Vitas in the memory that only after long moments did he realize where he was and that the old woman was talking about something she had promised earlier. To find poison.
    It was a risky promise.
    The soldiers who stood guard had not stopped the old woman from draping Vitas’s head with a cloth, for the same reason that she—and others who came to gather around a husband or son or father dying a slow death—had been allowed to offer water from a bucket. The mercy it extended was also a form of torture. These ministrations lessened the discomfort, but at the same time they would lengthen his life. The victim’s choice then was simply another form of torture. Die sooner with greater pain? Or ease the pain yet suffer it longer?
    But Arella was offering suicide as an abrupt escape from the prolonged agony of crucifixion. If they caught her in the attempt, she too