The afternoon after the games, Amara and Dido buy lilies before performing at the house of Aurelius, a wine seller and friend of Fuscus. Amara hides a bruise from a rough customer. On the way, she confides to Dido that seeing Menander has made everything feel worse; Dido gently argues that loving another enslaved person offers no practical hope, wondering aloud whether a client like Salvius might one day buy Amara. Both agree that neither Salvius nor his friend Priscus is likely to purchase either of them. Back at Felix’s apartment, they overhear Victoria having sex with Felix in the next room and are astonished to hear Felix himself groaning with pleasure. Victoria’s repeated, pleading declarations of love follow, which Amara and Dido dismiss as an act. Dido alerts Victoria to their presence by slamming a door; Victoria hurries out afterward, avoiding their eyes. That evening at Aurelius’s dinner, Amara is seated beside Pliny, the Admiral of the Fleet—an austere scholar visiting Pompeii to research plants near Vesuvius. When Pliny makes a dismissive remark about women’s herbal knowledge, Amara retaliates by quoting the physician Herophilos in Greek. Pliny apologizes and asks about her background. Explaining that her father was a doctor, she takes his wrist and demonstrates the theory of the pulse, showcasing her medical knowledge firsthand. Impressed, Pliny asks to borrow her for a week. Amara silently signals Dido to handle Felix and leaves the party with Pliny.

Pliny takes Amara to a borrowed house near the Forum. His room is stacked with scrolls and painted with naval scenes. He asks her to undress while he reviews his notes. He then examines her body with clinical detachment, noting the bruise on her arm with disapproval. He asks about contraceptive practices; she describes her methods, drawing on Herophilos’s writings on midwifery. He then requests her entire life story. She explains that her father died when she was 15, and without his income, her mother became destitute. After a few years of increasing desperation, her mother sold her into enslavement to save her from starvation. Eventually, she was sold to a brothel in Puteoli. Pliny is outraged by her parents’ failure to protect her dowry. When Amara admits that she once dreamed of becoming a doctor, he says that women scholars aren’t unheard of and offers to read Herophilos with her. He settles her in his bed while he works late. When he eventually joins her and she attempts to initiate sex, he stops her gently, saying that there’s no need—her company is pleasure enough. He rests his hand on her waist and falls asleep.

Each morning, Pliny wakes Amara by stroking her hair and then leaves her free to read in the garden while he writes. His enslaved domestic worker Secundus keeps her supplied with food and treats her with careful, formal politeness. She spends hours reading Homer and Apollonius, and in the afternoons, she reads aloud from Herophilos’s On Pulses as Pliny takes notes. Over dinner, she sings the story of Nausicaa and Odysseus, as she did for her parents in childhood, moving Pliny to sadness. He acquires more modest women’s clothing for her. Each night, she attempts to initiate sex, and he declines, saying that he simply likes looking at her. As the week progresses, Amara becomes desperate for him to purchase her permanently, quietly observing his habits and imagining herself as his secretary.

On her sixth day, she overhears two of Pliny’s acquaintances mocking her as a lovelorn fool. Secundus, also listening, makes clear by his expression that whatever favor the men came to seek will be denied. That evening, Pliny is unusually warm, and Amara realizes that he’s saying goodbye. When he confirms it, she collapses to her knees, begging him to buy her as a devoted secretary. He is momentarily tempted, but he tells her that he has sufficient staff and no desire for a concubine. Amara weeps uncontrollably; Pliny grows weary and irritated, dismisses her, and returns to his desk. She cries herself to sleep.

The next morning, Amara wakes composed and apologizes; Pliny is relieved. He asks for a parting favor: His friend’s nephew, a young man named Rufus, will call shortly, and he wants Amara to be a steady, discreet companion to him. After the household maid, Sarah, treats Amara’s swollen eyes and arranges her hair, Amara waits in the garden. When Rufus arrives and Pliny steps away, Amara carefully corrects Rufus’s assumptions about her relationship with Pliny, presenting herself as a doctor’s daughter to be treated with scholarly respect. They discover a shared enthusiasm for theater, and Rufus invites her to a performance. When she reveals that she lives at the Wolf Den, he recoils but recovers, vowing to treat her with kindness. After Rufus leaves, Secundus brings Amara her belongings and mentions with quiet amusement that she cost him a denarius—he had lost a wager with Pliny that she would demand expensive gifts—and makes clear that Pliny won’t be returning to say goodbye. Among her packed clothes, Amara finds Pliny’s parting gift: a copy of Herophilos’s On Pulses.

Amara returns to the Wolf Den to a warm reception—Dido is in tears, and Victoria is teasing but clearly relieved. When pressed about Pliny, Amara says only that he was the kindest man she has ever met. Her old cell is now occupied: Felix used Pliny’s payment to buy a new woman—a tall, pale, red-haired Briton the others have nicknamed Britannica—who speaks no Latin and cycles between rage and terror. Cressa is the only one she responds to. Victoria argues that Britannica’s screaming and resistance are putting everyone at risk; Amara recalls her father describing British warrior women and refuses to dismiss her. Thraso hauls Amara to Felix, who searches her new clothes and the scroll for hidden valuables. When she mentions Rufus as a potential long-term client and suggests a modest introductory rate to encourage his loyalty, Felix is pleased and agrees. Felix then taunts Amara about being spoiled by Pliny, grabbing her painfully and making her fear that he will rape her before he abruptly lets her go. As Amara leaves, he takes the scroll, saying he might find a buyer for it.

Rufus takes Amara to her first play: The Eunuch by Terence. Rufus is enraptured throughout; Amara watches more critically, registering the dark comedy beneath the surface, particularly a scene in which a man disguised as a eunuch assaults an enslaved girl to audience laughter. After the performance, Rufus proposes returning to the Wolf Den; Amara steers him to his own house instead, flattering him by claiming that Felix will punish her if she shows happiness with anyone. At his home, Rufus moves quickly to initiate sex, and Amara halts him with genuine anger, demanding that she be treated with respect. The tactic works entirely: Rufus surrenders, apologizes, and takes on the role of patient, charming pursuer that she has set out for him. She lets herself be gradually won over by his humor and sincerity but leaves at the end of the evening without sleeping with him, calculating that restraint will sustain his interest.

One night, Britannica’s screams bring the women into the corridor; she is in her room with two customers—one holding her down while the other rapes her. They stand helplessly while she calls Cressa’s name and begs in her own language. Victoria argues that intervention is impossible and will only make conditions worse for everyone; Cressa and Dido are devastated. When the men leave, Amara looks up to find Menander entering the Wolf Den, having paid for time with her simply to talk. She pulls him into Dido’s cell and initially lashes out, but his quiet honesty disarms her. She tells him that she can’t be intimate with him in this place; he accepts without question. They spend the night talking: She describes Pliny’s house and her brief experience of freedom; he describes how craftwork sometimes makes him forget he’s a slave. They share imagined versions of a life together. Amara can’t bear to challenge his hope. At closing time, Thraso barges in and shoves Amara aside; Menander instinctively moves to intervene, and Amara stops him with a look. After he leaves, she stands alone pressing her palms against the wall, consumed by the need to escape.

At the local tavern the next morning, a subdued argument breaks out: Victoria insists that Britannica’s resistance endangers everyone, while Amara defends her courage. Amara returns early to the Wolf Den to attempt to teach Britannica Latin. She finds Cressa nauseated and clearly pregnant and takes over Britannica’s care while Cressa goes to eat. Amara names objects slowly, tries to wash Britannica’s face, and combs out her tangled red hair—the only activity Britannica tolerates. When Felix arrives and produces a small knife, Britannica falls silent and cowed, and Felix tells Amara that a firm hand is all that’s needed. He then shows her a note from Rufus demanding that she be housed outside the Wolf Den. Felix has agreed to a retainer: Amara will work two nights a week in the Wolf Den and otherwise live upstairs in the storeroom with Paris. She’s told to move her things at once. Paris receives the arrangement with undisguised contempt and tells her that she can sleep on a pile of empty sacks in the corner.

Amara settles uneasily into the storeroom. Sleeping above the Wolf Den rather than working in it is a relief, but the sacks are uncomfortable, and she can hear her friends below. Her friendship with Victoria remains damaged, and she feels increasingly peripheral to the group. Rufus visits roughly twice a week; her feelings for him have become a tangled mix of genuine affection and calculation. Her most unexpected new role is assisting Felix with his loan accounts. She works quietly in his study, noting how he combines flattery with intimidation to draw out clients’ secrets. Reluctantly, she recognizes his discipline, perceptiveness, and underlying loneliness. She also uses a free afternoon to cultivate goodwill at The Elephant, bringing Felix a new borrower and taking quiet satisfaction in building influence of her own.

Rufus takes Amara to a rooftop restaurant, where their dinner is interrupted when Quintus arrives with Drusilla, a confident and visibly woman who was once enslaved before her enslaver died, bequeathing her freedom and a substantial fortune. Rufus grows briefly jealous about Amara’s prior acquaintance with Quintus, insinuating that he hopes she was never intimate with him; she firmly shuts him down, reminding him that she never had a choice about whom she slept with. At his house afterward, Amara sleeps with Rufus, framing the encounter as a gift freely given rather than a service rendered. Afterward, Rufus declares his love and presents a silver necklace set with amber. Amara explains that she can’t keep it at the Wolf Den and instead proposes that he store it and give her a cheap bracelet she can wear openly. She also declines to stay the whole night, knowing that continued scarcity will preserve his attachment.

When Amara returns before dawn, Felix is waiting, surprised to see her back before morning. She frames her early departure as a strategy to hold his interest. He then surprises her again by asking her to accompany him on his daily errands. He takes her to a cramped bar to meet a group of associates; she realizes that the gathering concerns a protection racket. Felix uses Amara as a display of status while the men talk over her head. Back at the apartment, Felix sends for Paris to serve him sexually, sparing Amara. In the morning, Paris blames her for his night’s suffering; she’s firm but recognizes the years of damage underneath his hostility. She then finds Victoria crying alone—an unprecedented sight. Victoria, furious at Amara’s growing proximity to Felix, eventually confesses that she genuinely loves him, believing she sees a tender, remorseful side of him that no one else does. Amara is disgusted but holds her tongue. All the women then gather around Cressa, who is seriously ill and visibly pregnant. Cressa reveals that Felix has already told her that he will leave the baby at the garbage dump rather than sell it. Having already been separated from her son Cosmus, she can’t bear to give up another child.