“Witches traffic in illusion,” said Agrippa, looking bitterly at the fiend as she curled herself into a chair, her bare legs delicate, her lips roses, her eyes an innocent, luminous green.

“I am no witch,” Chrysate said. “I am a priestess. The thing from the North is a witch. She tried to take the queen from me. I suggest you watch yourself around her. She is a dark creature, and I serve the light.”

“Hecate is not a goddess of light,” Agrippa muttered. His ribs ached, and the pain in his arm was severe. It would have to be splinted. “She stands at the gates of Hades.”

“You know nothing about her,” Chrysate said serenely. “Nor about what she will be.”

Agrippa reached out his good hand for the box and tried to wrest it from her grasp, but her fingers were like iron. His hand slipped from the box, and he caught hold of Chrysate’s arm. He recoiled, stunned by what he felt. Her skin was withered, though it looked smooth.

He glanced quickly up at her face, seeing, if only for a moment, a crone, her teeth long and pointed, a single eye bulging from her face, staring at him.

Then she was a beauty again, virginal and dewy-skinned, transformed back into the girl she had seemed a moment before.

She smiled at him.

“Who are you to say the Underworld may not become this one? Who are you to say the dead may not one day walk in the sun, and the living in darkness? Who are you to say that you will not, Marcus Agrippa?”

The words, though spoken quietly, were a curse. Agrippa’s center twisted. He felt like screaming.

“Do you fear the dark, Marcus Agrippa?” the girl asked. “Do you fear my mistress? Do you fear Cleopatra? Then you should leave us. I, and my kind, kept the emperor of Rome safe tonight. You and all your men failed.”

Agrippa felt himself sagging, her words piercing him. She was not wrong.

“What is the matter with you?” Augustus asked, looking sharply at him.

Agrippa would not fail again. He must protect his emperor, even if it meant protecting him from things Augustus himself had invited in.

He knew this witch before him would not go easily back to her cave in Thessaly now that she’d tasted power. And the queen of Egypt would certainly not stay imprisoned in that box, not if she could survive fire, not if she could transform at will. If the priestess found a way to control her, Agrippa did not want to imagine what would happen. Together, Cleopatra and Chrysate would be even more formidable than each was alone.

“Do not trust her,” he managed, and then he saluted Augustus, mastered his fears for his friend, and left the room.

His task was set. He must find a new weapon, one that could destroy the indestructible. And he must act outside his orders. Agrippa had always believed in his friend, had served at his side for most of his life, but now, Augustus was wrong. The consequences of his error would be severe. If Augustus trusted Chrysate, what else would he trust? What other foolish decisions might he make?