Antony felt himself falling, felt his fingers weakening. Cleopatra twisted, her body between Antony and the witch. She strained to hold Chrysate, looking at her husband.

“If you love me, you will do it!” Cleopatra screamed.

He looked at her. His love. His wife, her hair bloodied, her hands talons, and her eyes golden. He could see her inside all of the chaos. Cleopatra was there.

“I am yours,” Cleopatra said, and then Antony shot her.

25

The arrow of Hercules pierced them both, stabbing into Cleopatra’s back and passing through her into Chrysate’s body.

The sounds ripped through the sky. The Earth herself roared. The Earth herself cried out, and Antony’s cry mixed with Cleopatra’s scream of agony and Chrysate’s wailing howl of despair. Sekhmet, bonded to Cleopatra, sharer of her soul, screamed in unison with her, doubled over, holding the place where the Hydra’s immortal venom had entered her body. Stars dropped and scattered.

Cleopatra pressed her hands to the wound, and, for the first time since she had summoned the goddess, there was blood.

The queen released Chrysate, and the witch fell, spinning and screaming.

“I dedicate this soul to Hades!” Cleopatra shouted, her voice strangled.

In the crater, Hecate’s shine dimmed, the water taking her back into itself, the chain of the dead wrapping about her ankle and pulling her down. The crater awaited Chrysate, and in it, the millions of ghosts she had called from Hades.

The army of shades rose up and took her beneath the waters, and Chrysate, witch of Thessaly, was gone into the darkness with her goddess, swept under and fallen upon.

Holding her wound, tears running down her face, Cleopatra hung in the air over the abyss and turned her gaze to Augustus, who stood, stunned, looking up at her.

She smiled at him, and he shuddered, unable to move. Her gaze was the deep indigo of twilight, and darkness rose within it. Cleopatra shone upon him, tremendous, blinding, looking through him. A god.

We are not finished, she said, and her voice was only in his mind. She reached out her hand, and though she did not touch him, Augustus felt a chill invade him. He felt her touching his heart, clenching it in her talons, and then he felt her tear it from him. Was it his heart? Or something else? He could not tell what was happening.

He gasped, feeling a sudden absence at his center, a loss. A searing pain, like lightning striking, shot through the absence, and he felt a wind whirling inside his chest. Cleopatra smiled.

Augustus fell to his knees, limp, bewildered, curling around the missing place.

Cleopatra turned away from the emperor and looked down at her husband.

Antony stood at the edge of the crater, his skin already flickering and fading as the witch who had summoned him died.

“I will see you again,” Antony said to his wife.

“Te teneo,” said Cleopatra.

“As you are mine,” said Antony. “I will wait for you.”