The Secret History: A Novel of Empress Theodora by Stephanie Thornton Page B

goblets.”
    She looked at me as if she’d never seen me before. “Is that really what you think of me? I’d trade every stola I own for a baby and a husband who loved me.” Her lower lip trembled. “I thought Karas would want me back if he saw how popular I’d become, that he’d realize how much he wanted me. Instead, I ruined everything.” She swiped at her eyes with one hand, clenching the clay cup of wine with the other so tightly I thought it might crack.
    I could either swallow the lie I’d told or tell Comito the truth. I owed her that after what I’d done.
    “It’s my fault,” I said. “Not yours. He came looking for you at the Boar’s Eye, but I told him you were with someone else. Which, might I point out, wasn’t entirely false.” Her expression changed as my words sunk in. “I shouldn’t have done it.”
    She stared at me with unseeing eyes, then hurled her wine cup at me, followed by the other cup and the amphora. I dodged the amphora but wasn’t so lucky with the cups. “You filthy, lying viper!”
    I held my hands in front of me and backed toward the door as she searched for more projectiles. “I thought you wanted a patron. I didn’t know you still loved him.”
    She paused, a bottle of olive oil with my name on it poised over her head. “And that meant you could decide my life for me?”
    “I was angry. I thought you wouldn’t help me.”
    She set the bottle down, slowly. “I’ve lost my only chance at true happiness. All because of you.”
    I took a tentative step forward, reaching out my hand. “I’m sorry, Comito. So, so sorry.”
    Her eyes were empty when she looked at me, and she stepped back as if I might contaminate her. “Get out.”
    “What? Now?”
    Her voice was as hollow as her gaze. “I never want to see you again.”
    “But the baby—”
    “I don’t care about the baby!” Her face crumpled. “I said get out!”
    I stumbled into the streets, drenched and smelling like a vat of wine. People stopped to stare—a woman as far gone as I was with child should have been locked from view—but then turned their noses up and continued on their way.
    I’d lost my father, and then Anastasia. Now I’d lost Comito, too.
    And it was all my fault.



Chapter 6
TWENTY-SEVENTH YEAR OF THE REIGN OF EMPEROR ANASTASIUS
    I gasped and grit my teeth. The pain around my stomach crescendoed even as I crouched on the ground like some sort of wild animal. I’d had pains over the last week as I begged for bread and slept wherever I could, including one night spent in the public latrina I’d rather forget. Yet I couldn’t bring myself to beg my sister to take me back. Instead, I’d gone to Communion and worn out my knees praying to God for help. At least the churches didn’t turn me away.
    The stones of the city wall were cold against my forehead, my midnight dig through a taverna’s trash heap momentarily forgotten. The pain passed, and I leaned over the garbage again, but a sudden gush of warm water between my legs stopped me.
    “Not now!” I hit the wall and cursed again at the haze of blood on my knuckles. I could scarcely see through my tears. The wall held me upright as I panted through more waves of agony and pushed my palms against the pain. At some point I became vaguely aware of a woman’s drunken laughter.
    “Once an alley cat, always an alley cat, eh, Theodora?”
    Antonina. The Almighty had a twisted sense of humor.
    “Lord in heaven, you’re not having the cursed thing out here, are you?”
    I was hallucinating. It almost sounded as if Antonina cared. My glare was cut short as I groaned and curled into the pain. Once it passed, I slumped against a crate, one filled with fish, judging from its briny smell.
    “How long have you been at it?”
    I didn’t look at her—it cost me dear enough to answer. “I don’t know.” The moon had moved, so now it perched atop one of the buildings, possibly the last moon I’d ever see. A fierce desire to fight through