“He was never my slave,” Cleopatra whispered, curling into her couch, willing the pain away. “He is my husband. Summon a physician. I tell you, I am not well.”

Octavian gazed at her, impassive.

“Look at the whore’s false tears. I know them, lady, just as I know a whore’s false cries of pleasure. Force the food down her throat if she will not eat it herself,” he said as he left the room. “I will not be seen to starve the queen of Egypt.”

8

In the corridor outside Cleopatra’s chamber, Octavian leaned against the wall, panting with the effort of the conversation. He hadn’t expected seeing her to be so jarring, unpredictable emotions rising within him and threatening to disable his voice. He thought he’d conducted himself well, despite this, but he was not certain. Perhaps he should not have involved the children. Perhaps he should not have met with her at all.

Octavian groaned quietly, seeing Cleopatra as if she were still before him, the diadem in her hair, the soft gown draped over her breasts. The fullness of her lips. She had not looked well, no, but it had been profoundly shocking to see her so close.

She was his prisoner. He might do as he pleased with her —

No. It was not safe.

Cleopatra was a witch, he knew that much. Antony had clearly been under her spell for years. He’d left Rome for her, left glory, left peace. He’d left everything that made him a man in order to follow her like a slave, kissing her feet and carrying her through crowds on his shoulders. It was shameful.

In spite of himself, Octavian’s mind boiled with visions of their lovemaking. It was only with effort that he put it from his mind. He refused to think of her the way he’d thought of her these past sixteen years. He remembered their single meeting quite clearly, though Cleopatra had clearly forgotten it.

If Octavian closed his eyes, he could still summon every detail of the young queen’s weight beside him on his sickbed, of the heavy outline of her milk-swollen breasts, the way they had been revealed when she bent over him, telling him he’d live through the fever that had almost killed him.

It was that sentence that had kept him fighting his way free of the delirium, the hope of seeing her again that had kept him alive.

And now, here he stood in her palace, her conqueror.

When he’d received the news of Antony’s suicide, he’d felt a strange uncertainty rising within him. He’d behaved dishonorably in sending that false message, though only Marcus Agrippa knew what he’d done. To his horror, Octavian had begun to weep in front of all his men. He’d found himself pawing through his trunk, unearthing old correspondence and waving it in the air.

“He was my friend!” he’d heard himself shouting. “I warned him! I tried to warn him away from the witch!”

They had never truly been friends, but despite their differences, they had, until this most recent series of battles, fought for fifteen years on the same side. When Antony had disappeared into Cleopatra’s arms, Octavian illegally raided the temple of the vestal virgins for his will and discovered proof of betrayal.