Cleopatra tore at Chrysate’s throat, but it made no difference. She drank of darkness, endless darkness, and the witch was renewed. Her laughter flowed into the queen, drunken and rapturous, as the sky filled with monsters, and the world shook. Cleopatra dug her fingers into the witch’s heart but felt nothing but night. On the ground, her children stared up at nothing. In the air above them, two bewildered ghosts, wisps of pain, fluttered.

Cleopatra screamed with agony and rage, and it did no good.

Augustus aimed the bow, first into the crater, then at Chrysate. Then at Cleopatra. Which was he meant to kill? He could not tell. Usem shouted at him from across the crater, but he could hear nothing. He could see Agrippa’s mouth moving as well, signaling Augustus, but the emperor did not know what to do.

He aimed the bow at Chrysate’s heart at last, the fiend he himself had summoned to Rome. She smiled at him, daring him to shoot, and that was what made his decision.

“You will die,” he said, and pulled at Hercules’ bowstring, but it did not move. How could this be? It was his bow. He had taken it from its hiding place. He, Augustus Caesar, the emperor of Rome. This was his destiny.

The witch looked into his eyes and laughed.

Augustus pulled with all his might, but the string did not move. Augustus, his heart despairing, his shame infinite, his fury unalloyed, recalled the words of the priest of Apollo.

The bow of Hercules could be drawn only by a hero.

Mark Antony looked at him, a shade, his enemy, the man he had painted as a coward, as slave to a woman. He held out his ghostly hands.

Augustus handed the bow to him without a word. There was no other choice.

Antony pulled back the string and drew the bow easily. He aimed, trying to find a clear shot at the witch, but it was impossible.

Cleopatra’s mouth was covered in blood, and her hair flew in the wind. Her eyes were lit with golden wrath, and her body was nothing human any longer. She was a goddess, shining and tremendous. Her feet did not touch the ground as she grappled with the witch. She tore at the woman’s throat and lifted her high into the air, their bodies entwined.

Antony squinted at the light that emanated from her. He could not see for brightness.

“Shoot!” Cleopatra screamed. “Shoot her now! Hecate is coming!”

Antony could not shoot the witch without risking his wife. His fingers hesitated on the bowstring, the arrow trembling. The witch gained the upper position, and he caught a glimpse of her gaping jaws, her claws tearing at Cleopatra’s breast, her strength increased by Hecate’s presence.

Antony looked down. On the grass at his feet, Ptolemy stared sightless at the moon. Alexander lay covered in blood, drained by ghosts. The shades of his children moaned, bent over their lost bodies. He did not know what had happened to Selene.