Her skin warmed as the blood flowed into her lips, hot and pure, perfect. She heard herself moaning with pleasure, her body trembling as it fed, her very skin tightening, her hips shuddering. This was what she had needed. This was right.

She drank Eiras’s desire for the strong soldiers marching into Alexandria, her blushing heat as she stood in the shadows, waiting for the one who would be her lover. She drank the girl’s simple hopes of babies, of a home, of a tree and a garden, of food to eat and pretty clothes to wear. She lapped at her throat, at the sweet liquid, the wine of the gods.

Eiras’s body began to seize. Her hands grappled hopelessly, but Cleopatra scarcely noticed her. She was prey, an insect or bird, and Cleopatra was a cat, playing with her as she ate.

The voice inside her sang for pleasure. Drink, it sang. Drink!

She was the queen, and before that, a king’s daughter. Slaves had brought her trays of food, poured her wine, and formed her honeyed cakes.

Slaves had always fed her.

The spark of life began to leave the girl. Her flesh was still pliant, but she breathed no longer. Cleopatra, her hand on the slave’s breast, felt the girl’s heart stop beating and, her mouth on the slave’s throat, felt the blood slow, the pulsing end. She pulled her lips away and laid Eiras down. She gazed upon her for a moment.

Her body hummed with it, a ferocious, glorious sound, a song, a call to reenter the world. A call to feed. Cleopatra looked down at the girl’s body and felt as though an army had revealed itself. She was not what she had been, a woman, a mortal. No.

She was more.

The dark voice inside her cried out in triumph.

Her eyes turned to the corner, easily picking the other slave out of the shadows, where she hid, hands over her face, crying.

“Please,” Charmian whispered. “Please don’t. I won’t tell anyone. I should never have said those things. Mark Antony was a good king. You are my queen.”

Cleopatra heard her, but these things were unimportant. There was nothing but her body, still quivering with hunger, nothing but the blood that even now filled her, fed her. Her eyes swam with red. She could smell the girl’s terror radiating from her skin like perfume.

Her thirst was boundless, deeper than the sea that surrounded her city, and she felt she could drink until the world was empty.

She shook her head, trying to rid it of the image of blood-filled oceans, of corpses. Suddenly, her eyes opened wider. What was she doing?

Why should you be denied? the voice inside her purred. Why should we hunger?

“Don’t be afraid,” Cleopatra heard herself say, her voice soft, the blood soothing her throat. “I will not hurt you. I need you to do something for me.”

“What would you have me do?” the girl asked, still crying, trying to regain her composure. She would run, she was thinking, as soon as Cleopatra turned her back. She’d go to the country and never leave it again. She thought of her mother and her younger sister. She thought of the riverbank and the old temples, suddenly dear to her.