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‘But let it not come to that. Someone is plotting against you and me alike. I can help to identity the real traitor.’

‘Help me how?’ she said.

‘Meet me in the palace garden tomorrow night, after your staff have retired to bed, and I will show you,’ he said. ‘I will show you the one who truly works against you.’

‘What investigative powers do you have, that I do not?’ asked Claudia. ‘How exactly do you intend to prove it?’

‘I have my ways of finding information,’ he said. ‘Never assume that your enemy knows less than you.’

‘Then, we are enemies?’ she said.

‘That is what we must determine,’ said Darius. ‘Agree, and I will show you. All I ask is that you come alone.’

‘Why alone?’ she said.

‘When you see, you will understand.’

Claudia looked to Gia, who shook her head and shoulders in such a way that said, I don’t know. Your choice.

‘Fine,’ Claudia agreed, turning back to Darius. ‘I will meet you. If you can show me evidence connected to the assassination attempts against me, I will hear it. I will reconsider my position then. You may return to your rooms, but my guards will be stationed outside.’

‘Very well. I will be keeping an eye on you too,’ said Darius, touching his necklace. ‘Just like you, I must protect myself.’

The palace gardens were constructed to resemble a stadium, where former emperors had held their own private games.

Claudia had spent many days and evenings out here in the heat and the cold, trying not to fall asleep as she watched the endless parade of recreational violence her father and brother enjoyed.

Gladiators were often brought in just to fight each other for the emperor’s amusement. Occasionally, one of them died, dragged away by slaves. Decimus would cheer, and her father would say, ‘Next!’, as if their lives were nothing more than a moment’s amusement.

Now, Claudia wondered if this was where she too developed a taste for violence, and a weakness for athletes in armour.

She and Decimus had once raced here in miniature chariots pulled by ponies. He had cheated, of course, causing her chariot to crash into the exterior wall. There was still a crack in the brickwork. She ran her hand over it, lingering at the top of the garden.

She’d been so angry she had actually stood up to him – one of the few times she’d ever dared to, when she was small enough not to know better – and he’d quickly made her regret it, smashing her face into the wall until she screamed.

Her father never punished him, only her for crying, or being dramatic, or embarrassing him in front of his advisors. It was always her fault for reacting, and never her brother’s fault for attacking her.

‘You know what Decimus is like,’ her father would say. ‘Don’t rile him up and he won’t bother you.’

But he always found a way to bother her.

This garden was where she had first learned to ride a horse, and tumble like an acrobat, where she learned to recognize birdsong and catalogue the stars, but it was also where she first learned to fear men.

The enclosed green space created an oasis in the middle of the crowded, built-up city, giving an illusion of privacy. A portico with colourful marble columns ran around the hippodrome gardens, creating a balcony from which to spectate. Servants and guards crowded here, Gia surely among them, watching as Claudia walked alone towards the promenade, where the prince waited beneath a high, vaulted roof.

Darius bowed gently as she approached. Claudia made sure to keep her face hard, despite the crashing waves of emotion inside.

‘I am here, and I am alone,’ she said. ‘Don’t make me regret it.’

‘Then we shall waste no time,’ he said. He gestured with one arm. ‘Let us go to the pond. I can show you there.’

‘The pond?’

‘We seek the clarity of the waters.’

Claudia accompanied him along the curving gravel path, though she anticipated another ambush around each corner as they moved away from the sight of the people on the balcony.

‘If you’re thinking of drowning me, you should know I already survived a shipwreck this year,’ she said. ‘I will not make it easy for you.’