She did touch him, an almost him, a faint him, with her fingertips, just as someone leapt upon her and tore her from her husband again.

23

Agrippa and Usem both threw their bodies between that of the emperor and the monster. Agrippa locked his hands about Cleopatra’s throat, feeling the woman’s flesh in his fingers, even as the lioness growled before him. Her fangs grazed his shoulders.

He clung to her, screaming wordless obscenities against a world wherein something that should not exist, that could not exist, could suddenly be before him, attacking his emperor. He howled invective against magic and its unpredictability, the witches surrounding the emperor even now, and yet here he was, fighting the monster, and he was not a witch at all, but a soldier. Agrippa did not believe in magic. He did not believe in witches.

He did not believe in the thing he was doing.

Usem attacked the lioness from behind, his arms locked about her shoulders, his dagger seeking purchase. Would its poison kill her? He had no way of knowing. The Psylli clung to her back, feeling her toss him from side to side, feeling her sandpaper fur and, at the same time, her silken skin.

She was one moment a lioness and the next a woman, and Agrippa held her ferociously, pressing his thumbs into her jugular vein. Even a monster could be killed. Monsters died in the stories, their heads chopped off and buried, turned to stone by the sight of their own hideous aspects, poisoned by their own venoms.

He would kill this queen, this beast, this fury.

Her lips were pink, and then black and feline. Her eyes were golden and slitted, and then dark and long-lashed. Her fingers were dainty and pale, and then curved and taloned. Her waist was tiny and her hips were round, and her thigh came up beside his and wrapped around his back. He gasped, feeling suddenly deranged, and losing his grip on her throat.

Was he killing a woman, a defenseless —

No. He was killing a monster. He saw her jaws opening for him.

Out of the corner of his eye, Agrippa saw the man who was and was not Antony lift his hand in a gesture of command.

“Now!” Antony yelled, and suddenly there were men running toward them. Soldiers. Agrippa could see the flash of their swords.

He felt the Psylli pressing the hilt of a weapon into his fumbling hand. Agrippa looked up and saw Usem yank Cleopatra’s head back. Agrippa thrust the serpent-poisoned dagger deep and hard into the monster’s breast, feeling nothing but her demonic body engaged with his, hearing nothing but her shrieking roars. Her breast. At once creamy and bare and tawny-furred, both lioness and queen, and the blade had struck true, he knew.

He felt the dagger penetrate deep into her chest, and he twisted it, grunting with the effort. Surely, she would die. Surely.

He could hear swords clashing, men surrounding them, his own men, he thought, but he was not sure. Someone tried to wrest Cleopatra from his arms.