Rome had opinions.
Rome always had opinions. It was a city of a million people, each with a perspective, and those perspectives on the imperial family's choices were expressed in every medium available: whispered in bathhouses and triclinia, debated in the Forum, written in the satirical verses that appeared on walls overnight with the cheerful anonymity of a city that has never quite lost the habit of speaking plainly when authority is not looking.
The opinions were mixed, which was honest.
Some of Rome — the part that had watched the Varro case with discomfort, that had known Marcus Varro as a capable man and had not been comfortable with the prosecution's outcome — received the news with something like relief. Justice had been done, belatedly and imperfectly but done, and the woman who had quietly and persistently and without public drama worked to bring it about was going to marry the Crown Prince. That was, in this version of events, a story Rome recognized: the capable person from the fallen family who had risen through merit, the correction of old wrongs, the future arriving to make right what the past had gotten wrong.
The other part of Rome — smaller but louder, as these things tend to be — had opinions about propriety. Questions were raised in certain corners about whether the Crown Prince had been sufficiently careful in his conduct, whether the timing of the treaty renegotiation was entirely coincidental to his personal interests, whether it was quite appropriate for the imperial family to associate itself with a name that was, whatever the review had found, associated in the public memory with scandal.
Senator Tullus, who was now the subject of an ethics investigation and therefore no longer in a position to shape narratives publicly, had lost the ability to amplify this version. Without amplification, it was what these things usually are: a minority position, gradually losing energy.
Daria's return to the eastern provinces was handled with considerable public grace. She gave a statement, through official diplomatic channels, expressing her warm regard for Rome and the imperial family, her pride in the new treaty framework, and her intention to pursue her own interests and future with the same commitment she had always brought to her public role. It was elegant and said nothing specific and implied a great deal, and the eastern provinces received it with the relief of a people who had watched one of their own navigate an impossible situation and come out of it with her dignity intact and her future her own.
Lady Severa did not give a public statement, which was its own kind of dignity.
Lord Castor wrote to Lucian a personal note — separate from the official treaty correspondence — that said: I have spent twenty years trying to get my sister to understand that the eastern provinces' relationship with Rome should be built on genuine mutual interest rather than personal alliance. I have not succeeded. You and your remarkable future wife have accomplished in three months what I could not manage in two decades. My family owes you a debt.
Lucian wrote back: The debt belongs to Lord Castor's own pragmatism and Princess Daria's courage. Rome owes them both.
Portia threw a party.
It was not a small party. Portia did not do small parties when she was genuinely pleased about something, and she was genuinely, expansively pleased about this. She invited everyone who mattered and several people who didn't and she arranged it in her garden with the extravagance of someone who understood that celebration, properly done, was its own kind of politics.
Livia stood in the middle of it and felt, for the first time in a very long time, that she was exactly where she was supposed to be.
Gaius appeared at her elbow with a cup of wine and the expression of a young man who is very happy for his sister and somewhat overwhelmed by a party at which the Crown Prince is also present.
"Are you all right?" she asked him.
"I'm excellent," he said. "I'm the brother of the future Crown Princess, which is an unexpected development in my life." He paused. "Also someone just told me that my grain distribution paper is being read in the Senate commerce committee."
"Your grain distribution paper?"
"Well." He had the grace to look slightly abashed. "I may have incorporated some of your analysis. With attribution."
She looked at him.
"With full attribution," he added. "It is absolutely your work. I just — compiled it into a form suitable for submission."
She thought about this for a moment. "To the Senate commerce committee."
"They find the approach interesting. There's a possibility of a formal consultation in the autumn."
She looked at her brother — eighteen, brilliant, standing in a party at which the Crown Prince was present, casually informing her that her grain policy analysis was being read by the Senate — and found she had nothing to say for a moment except:
"Gaius Varro."
"I know," he said, with the smallest smile.
Lucian found her a little while later, when the party had found its own rhythm and no longer required managing. He came and stood beside her in the way she had come to know — present, unhurried, genuinely there.
"What are you thinking?" he asked.
She looked around the garden: Portia magnificent and managing everything, her father in conversation with Corvus, Gaius earnestly explaining grain policy to a bewildered senator, Rome doing its infinite Roman business beyond the garden walls.
"I'm thinking," she said, "that three years ago I was invisible and careful and surviving, and I would not have believed this."
"And now?"
She looked at him.
"Now," she said, "I'm standing in a garden at a party for my own engagement, my father is home, my brother is explaining grain policy to a senator, and I'm about to become Crown Princess of Rome." She paused. "It is, on balance, a better outcome than I planned for."
He smiled — the real one, not the not-quite version she had first seen in the palace hall.
"It is not the outcome I planned for either," he said. "It is considerably better."
He offered her his arm and she took it, and they stood together in the garden while Rome celebrated around them, and it was — it was enough. It was more than enough. It was the whole thing.