Back at the Wolf Den, Felix has added two Spanish dancers, Ipstilla and Telethusa, who have taken over Cressa’s cell while Cressa shares with Britannica. Victoria tells Amara and Dido that Felix wants them to take the new arrivals out to solicit customers. Amara takes Britannica toward the baths, but Britannica intimidates every man she encounters by staring them down and baring her teeth. They turn back after one street.

Finding Cressa prostrate with misery, Amara coaxes her out for air and wine, leaving a distraught Britannica behind. On the slow walk to the harbor, Cressa defends Britannica’s loyalty and intelligence, and Amara promises to make more of an effort with her. Cressa then begins crying at the sight of a small child, whose mother quickly steers him away.

At the docks, Cressa brings up her son Cosmus and reveals that Fabia had quietly tried to help her find out. She then asks for a moment alone. Amara waits at a distance. When a dockworker confronts Cressa for leaning on his goods, she shoves an amphora off the harbor wall and goes over with it, having tied her cloak to the handle. Amara runs to the edge but can’t reach her in time. The dockworker refuses to dive in and demands to know if Amara shares Cressa’s “master.” Unable to swim and afraid of the consequences, Amara denies knowing Cressa at all and quickly leaves.

Amara returns to the Wolf Den and tearfully tells Felix everything. He responds without emotion, remarking only that she was right to hide their connection to avoid paying for the oil and that Cressa had barely earned her keep anyway. Amara, shocked by his cold response, attacks him physically. He restrains her and, in the struggle, reveals that he was born in the Wolf Den, was apprenticed under a father who ran it, and lost his mother—also a sex worker—when he was 10. The outburst stuns them both. When Amara gently touches his arm in sympathy, Felix immediately snarls at her and orders her out.

Unable to face Cressa’s death becoming real inside the Wolf Den, Amara goes to Menander’s potter’s shop. He calls her by her birth name, Timarete, and walks her to a nearby fountain, where she tells him about Cressa’s death and confesses that she denied knowing her. Menander holds her and firmly tells her that she did nothing wrong and couldn’t have stopped what Cressa chose to do. Amara apologizes for sending Dido to break off contact with him after she acquired Rufus as a patron; she admits that she doesn’t love Rufus but feels indebted to him. Menander accepts this and offers unconditional support. He kisses her forehead and leaves.

Back at the Wolf Den, Britannica immediately senses that something is wrong and demands Cressa. Amara waits until Dido and Beronice return before breaking the news. Beronice collapses into violent grief; Britannica curls into a ball. Dido holds Amara. When Victoria hears, she angrily drives out every man in the building, with Amara and Beronice helping to clear them from the door.

The next day, Felix doesn’t confront the women about their lost earnings. Fabia, red-eyed, dresses their hair; Amara thinks of Cressa’s claim that Fabia tried to trace Cosmus and wonders what else she knows. They walk in silence to The Sparrow, leaving Ipstilla and Telethusa at the Wolf Den. Zoskales has already heard the news and serves them food and wine at his own expense. The women toast Cressa, grieve that there is no body to bury, and agree to collect money for offerings and proper rites. They also agree to look after Britannica, honoring Cressa’s final request, though the proposal meets with considerably less enthusiasm than the memorial.

That evening, at Egnatius’s, he reveals that he specifically asked Felix to buy Cadiz-trained dancers—a detail Felix had never mentioned to Amara. Amara and Dido realize that they’re about to be outshone.

At Cornelius’s house, Amara and Dido perform as usual, but it becomes clear that the entire evening was arranged around the Spanish dancers. Ipstilla and Telethusa are brought in at the height of the party to rapturous reception. While they perform nude with castanets, a man named Trebius grips Amara’s thigh absently, his attention fixed on the dancers. She catches Fuscus’s eye, and he has Egnatius quietly remove her to his couch. Afterward, the guests move to Cornelius’s private brothel. Fuscus has sex with Amara in a position chosen for his view of Telethusa, reducing her to a prop for his enjoyment. She thinks of Cressa underwater and of Felix, bitterly concluding that he spent money specifically to diminish her.

When returning at night with their escort Gallus, the group finds Thraso perched on a ladder, hammering at a stone phallus sign on a property that Simo rents as a small street brothel. Maria, one of the women enslaved by Simo, is screaming and trying to shake the ladder. When she sees Amara and Dido, she spits at their feet, declaring that this insult is on Drauca’s behalf. Ipstilla and Maria begin brawling; Gallus sends Amara and Dido to fetch Felix. Felix arrives armed with a metal rod. He mocks the setup, demeans Maria publicly, and subtly threatens her by pointing out that she has no doorman and therefore no protection. He redirects the watching crowd toward his own brothel. When Ipstilla argues that Amara should serve the influx so that the dancers can earn more, Felix slaps her and takes Amara upstairs instead. Alone with Amara for the first time since his confession about his mother, he asks whether the dancers outearned her and then compares her tired face to Cressa’s and states that “no one ages faster than a whore” (370).

At Drusilla’s on a later visit, Drusilla’s maid Thalia dresses Amara. Drusilla shares that she was brought to Pompeii as a small child and barely remembers her family. She shows Amara a heavy gold snake bracelet inscribed by her former enslaver Veranius: Amara is surprised to learn that Drusilla was the fifth woman to wear it, one of them being Procris, who raised Drusilla as a girl and had her heart broken when Drusilla supplanted her. Drusilla reflects that she both loved and despised Veranius and that her freedom came through luck, not special favor.

Drusilla warns Amara that Rufus craves a fragile woman he can save and that he will never feel more for her than he does right now. She urges Amara to ask for something concrete while she still can. Over a private dinner at Drusilla’s, Amara maneuvers Rufus away from impossible talk of marriage and proposes instead that he free her and set her up in her own home as his devoted mistress—loyal, discreet, and no burden to his family or future wife. Rufus warms to the idea, even suggesting that Drusilla teach Amara the harp, and frames it as financially sensible. Amara smiles and agrees to everything, privately terrified that she may have just accelerated the day when he’ll inevitably tire of her.