There were petitioners and senators, armies and advisors, and all of them demanded his attention. On the table beside him was a tall stack of oracular prophecies, discovered in a cave and newly unrolled from amphorae, along with a message from Agrippa stating that they must be read.

Augustus did not feel like reading.

Augustus had even summoned his favorite poet Virgil from Campania, but the man failed to bring him rest. Nothing Virgil said, no matter the beauty of the words, could keep Augustus from thinking about Cleopatra. The poet seemed to have a special liking for poems about Hades these days, and the verses only made Augustus think of Antony. At last, the emperor had dismissed his poet.

He poured theriac into his cup and drank. His original dosage of two drops had begun to seem ineffective, and now he poured it in equal proportion to his wine. He’d lost his appetite for food other than this. With each sip, he felt his twisting mind smoothed and relaxed.

In her chambers, Chrysate lit the fire. With the queen captured, with Selene in her possession, Chrysate should have been at her most powerful. Augustus had given the girl to Chrysate three days after the battle at the Circus Maximus, transferring her sleeping chamber to the one beside the priestess and telling Selene that she was to be an apprentice. But the girl was resistant to her spells. After her flight from the Circus Maximus, Selene had spent two days hidden somewhere in Rome, finally sighted by a centurion and brought back to the emperor’s house. It should have been easy to woo her, but Selene looked at Chrysate with dark, suspicious eyes, and the priestess found herself scarcely able to accomplish the simplest things. She’d spent the past nights trying to communicate with Hecate, to no avail. Her goddess was still bound in the Underworld, and nothing Chrysate did brought clarity. The scry was blurry, everything bloody, but the future was invisible. Now that she had Cleopatra, she did not know what to do with her. There was no clear way to bind her, and the power contained within Cleopatra was inaccessible.

Had she captured the queen for nothing? Was she no longer linked with the goddess? Was there anything inside the silver box at all, or had it all been an illusion? Had the Northern witch tricked her? Did she have Cleopatra? Or did the Psylli? The box rested in its silver room, and Chrysate left it there. At least if something went wrong, Cleopatra would be trapped in the second prison.

Chrysate opened her hand and looked at the green holding stone. She shut her eyes, clenching her fist, and said the name of the man who was tied to the synochitus. She might send a message to Hecate through him. He could pass through Hades and find the goddess.

Her call should have brought him, but it did not. Her powers had ebbed too far, she assumed. She could not find Antony, and she could not understand what had happened.