Hissing and spitting came from the dark behind her. Cleopatra’s head spun to the side to track the Hydra’s location, and when she turned back again, there were two Antonys.

“Don’t trust him,” Antony said.

“No,” Antony said. “Don’t trust him.”

She still held the sword. The coils of the Hydra slipped past her calves. The invisible areas behind the serpent sparked with intelligence, with evil, and she heard the shifting of the monster’s bones. Her two husbands looked pleadingly at her. One of them stood.

“Follow me,” he said, but she would not. “You know me. I am yours.”

“What are the words?” she asked, her voice scarcely loud enough to be heard. She took a step toward him. He was her husband, surely. His face filled with love for her.

“Te teneo,” said the other Antony.

The false Antony before her hissed, darting forward, venom dripping from his jaws, his mouth open for Antony’s throat. Cleopatra lunged forward and threw herself upon the serpent. A scalding drop of something landed on her arm, and she gasped at the sensation, a blistering fire that did not go out but spread, and lit her fingers like torches.

She screamed in agony, and her husband grabbed her and pulled her from the serpent’s clutches, heaving open the door that led to the lords of Hades, a door gilded with dark metal, glowing with moonstones and black diamonds.

Silence closed around them, a sense of tremendous space, as though they had stepped behind a waterfall and into a cavern. Cleopatra put her hand out and felt Antony beside her.

Only then did she open her eyes.

Their thrones were as tall as buildings, and their robes held the night sky in their folds. In the apex of the chamber’s ceiling, a crescent moon glowed feebly. Cleopatra looked up, shuddering with the pain of the Hydra’s venom.

Persephone’s stony features danced with shadows. She was lit with the cold light of a phosphorescent sea, but her lips were those of a young and beautiful girl, and her eyes shone like the oil the Romans had poured over Cleopatra. Stars hung in her long, twisting hair.

Antony pushed Cleopatra forward.

“I bring you a queen of Egypt,” Antony said.

Cleopatra hesitated for a moment, and then bowed her head.

The goddess bent forward, slowly, and scooped Cleopatra and Antony up in her hand.

“We greet you, queen of Egypt,” Persephone said. She moved her fingers so that her husband could view the two small figures on her palm. “We greet you, though you do not belong in this place. You are not living. You are not dead. We have not seen one such as you here before. The way is hard, and it is not a place most choose to enter.”

“And you? Are you not a king?” The Lord of Hades had a face carved in granite. His voice shook the walls of the chamber, and boulders fell from the ceiling and rolled across the floor.