Ships were coming north from Africa. The scry showed blood, oceans of it, cities falling and corpses heaped in the streets. Ghosts and their grievances. Beasts and their hungers. The scry showed something tremendously powerful, risen.

Chrysate smiled. Her dilated eyes were as black as the sea below her cave, and her hair hung in a tangled nest of knotted plaits. Her mistress, Hecate, was a patroness to witches and drew her sacrifices from their activities, but they had reduced in number as Rome’s influence shifted the ways of the world. High on this cliffside in Greece, Chrysate was one of the few priestesses left, and her mistress had fallen from favor with the gods and with mortals alike. Hecate was an old god, a Titan who’d once held vast power over earth and sea. In protesting the abduction of Persephone, however, she’d gained an enemy in Persephone’s husband, Hades.

What was abduction became marriage, and now the Lord of the Dead kept Hecate chained near the entrance to the Underworld, presiding over hounds.

Chrysate had waited for this day.

The scry showed that the horizon was scarlet. Soldiers marched overland, searching not for battles but for those like Chrysate, who trafficked in dark magic. Rome sought allies, but the Romans had no notion of what Fates they tempted. No notion of what ancient things they drew.

In chaos, there was opportunity for change, opportunity for reversals of power. Hecate, who had been trapped for centuries, her influence limited, might be released. She’d lived far longer than the gods who now presided over Hades, and her powers were as simple and deep as those of the Earth herself, the scalding of lava, the ice of winter storms. Hecate’s heart was made of lust and hunger, of murder and rapture. The powers Chrysate saw in the scry were similarly ancient. If Chrysate could find a way to channel such power, Hecate might rise up, and her priestess with her.

Chrysate worked her opal ring, engraved with the face of the goddess she served, over her twisted knuckle and dropped it into the basin, breaking the scry. She’d seen enough.

She glanced quickly about her cave, her gaze flicking over the heap of bones in the corner. She took only a few things in tiny leather pouches, balms made of rare ingredients, some beeswax, a knife so ancient and well used that its blade was a mere whisper of metal.

Murmuring to herself in Greek, she walked barefoot down the rocky trail and toward the soldiers.

As she made her way into their path, the knots in her hair untangled themselves. Her slender body became curvaceous, her crumpled skin silken, and her eyes greener and more glimmering.

By the time she reached the legionaries sent by Marcus Agrippa, she looked almost human.