Cleopatra called upon another scholar, this one Egyptian, to assist in the translation. He startled when he saw the scroll.

“Where was this found? It should not exist. The spell is not to be used lightly,” he informed her indignantly.

“Lightly?” Cleopatra asked. “I do nothing lightly. Do you believe that Egypt is governed lightly?”

“It is forbidden,” he insisted.

“I am a queen. Nothing is forbidden. It is not a spell for commoners. I will do it myself.”

“Then you are a fool,” the Egyptian said, looking her in the eyes.

She was shocked. How dare he speak so? She was still the ruler, though she did not know how much longer that would be true.

“The lost portion of the text would contain spells to protect the pharaoh who summoned the goddess. Do not think that your station will force Sekhmet to obey your wishes. She destroys. That is her nature. Such a one will not be easily controlled.”

“I thought you were a man of letters,” she said. “Not a common villager. Translate the spell. What I do with it is none of your concern.”

“I will not,” he replied, his voice shaking. “I cannot.”

“Then you will die,” she warned him. How dare he delay Alexandria’s defense?

“I would rather die by the hand of a queen than by the hand of this goddess.”

She stared at him a moment, impressed by his bravado but disgusted by his resistance. She had him beheaded, and Nicolaus nervously translated the remainder of the scroll himself.

Now, as her blood filled the goblet, Cleopatra felt the dread she’d banished that morning rising again. She placed the goblet beside the icon and lit a pyramid of incense, breathing in deeply. The scent of death, she thought, and instantly corrected herself. No. It was the scent of victory.

A year had passed since the Battle of Actium, and Octavian, the man Cleopatra still thought of as the child general, had spent it mocking Egypt, while gathering his forces to invade it. The slight boy with the pale gray eyes was a child no longer.

It was sixteen years since she’d seen him last, during a visit to her then lover, Julius Caesar. She was twenty-one and the new mother of Caesarion, Caesar’s first and only son. Octavian was stretched across a sickbed, a reedy, fevered skeleton by the time Caesar and Cleopatra arrived at his mother’s house.

How she wished that she’d known then what she knew now: that the frail great-nephew of Rome’s imperator would one day besiege her city. She might have killed him and saved herself years of pain.

Instead, she sat beside him on the bed and smoothed his fine, curly hair from off his brow. Octavian had just turned seventeen, but he looked twelve. He opened his eyes to survey Cleopatra.

“Am I dying?” the boy asked her. “They will not tell me.”

“Certainly not. You will live a long life,” she promised, though she could see his heart racing beneath nearly translucent skin, and the edges of his bones protruding, birdlike, all over his body.