Antony stared beyond the ceiling, his eyes dark.

Had she not known better, she would have thought he grieved over something. This was impossible, though. No shade Chrysate had ever seen was strong enough to resist the forgetfulness of Hades for long, even if the shade was that of a previously formidable man.

“You may eat,” she instructed Antony, though he looked strangely substantial.

He passed to the table, dipping his fingers into the honey and milk all shades craved. Was her memory flawed? His skin had been ashen, and now it seemed less so. His arms had been nearly transparent, and now she could swear there was blood moving through the faded veins.

Had he left the room while she slept?

“What has changed?” she asked him.

“Nothing, my lady,” he answered.

She shook her head. The holding stone was tight in her hand, but something was not right, and her powers were not strong enough to understand what it might be. She wished the girl was ready, but that spell was not complete yet. There was no time to do what she planned for Selene, not before the venatio. Chrysate would have to suffer through the night in this condition and perhaps longer. It would not do to be interrupted.

There was enough power contained within Cleopatra to remove Hecate from her lowly position and bring her to rule over Persephone herself. There was enough power there to do anything Chrysate desired. She had only to capture her, and the change foreseen in the scry would be set in motion.

Chrysate smiled.

Sekhmet must have been foolish or desperate, to tie herself to a human, like a hawk to a chain. If the human was captured, the chain might be reeled in and the hawk seized, or so Chrysate hoped.

She did not expect it to be easy. She’d have to sacrifice more blood to keep Antony in her power. She needed him to lure his wife.

Wincing, she took a long, keenly pointed ritual knife from her garments and ran it across her wrist. Even after all these years, even across the white line of scar first put there when she was a girl, on a body long since abandoned, the necessary sacrifices remained unpleasant. Her skin felt frail and furrowed under the tip of the knife, though it appeared as smooth as silk.

She held her wrist to Antony’s lips.

Antony pressed his mouth to the cut, licking the blood from it. His color improved as he drank, her blood running through him.

Oh, he was hers. There was no doubt about it.

Why, then, did she still feel that something was wrong?

17

The night before the venatio, the emperor was too frightened to sleep. The thought of Cleopatra in his city caused his heart to race. He kept seeing her outside his window, outside his door, in his bed, her scaled skin slipping across his naked chest.

He tossed for hours, his eyes clenched shut, the pillow lumpy beneath his head, his cot as tight and hard as a stone-covered hillside. At last he rose. It had been months since he’d slept through the night, since his ship waited outside the Alexandrian harbor. He cursed Cleopatra and Antony. They had stolen his sleep, and now he walked, half waking, half delirious, through the halls.