Cleopatra heard it all, and yet she could not find herself any longer. The voice inside her was too loud. It felt like her own heart speaking.

“Dress me,” said Cleopatra. She’d go into the world as she had planned. The beautiful, throbbing world, the dark, the songs and dances and brothels. She would not go out a peasant, though.

She would go out a queen, dressed in her finest gown, radiant, jeweled. She had not been a goddess in her previous life. She’d been a woman pretending to be divine, pretending to be immortal. She was a goddess now, and nothing could stop her. She felt the girl’s blood filling her, rushing through her, and the feeling was of pure, clean power.

“Dress me in my wedding robes,” she said. “And bring me my crown.”

When Charmian had tied every ribbon and fastened every clasp, washed her feet and fitted them into her sandals, and veiled her hair with cloth of gold, Cleopatra bent her head as though in modesty.

“How do I look?” she asked.

“Beautiful, my queen,” the girl said, a thrum of delicious hope moving through her now. She was to live. She would be free.

“I would pay you for your service,” said Cleopatra.

The girl was not accustomed to being paid. She stood on her toes, startled. Then she thought she would take what was offered. Gold, perhaps. Enough to keep her quiet, and certainly enough to make a life elsewhere.

“Thank you,” she whispered. “Thank you for the honor.”

She held out her hands.

More, said Sekhmet’s voice, rising up from inside Cleopatra. More.

Deep inside the queen, a tiny human voice cried out in opposition, demanding to know what she was doing, ordering her to stop. She banished it. She was no one’s slave. She would not take orders, least of all from something so weak, so powerless.

“I pay you the greatest honor of all,” Cleopatra said to her slave. “You feed your queen.”

When she finished, she lay back upon her gilded couch, dizzy with pleasure. Her body was sated, and her eyelids felt heavy for the first time in days.

While drinking from the girl’s throat, something wonderful had occurred. A reward, perhaps, from the one she fed. Her heart, quiet all these days, began to beat. Slowly at first, and then more quickly.

She had not lost it after all, and with a heart, she could still enter heaven. If her heart was in her breast, it could be weighed in the Underworld. It could tell Osiris of her deeds on earth and bear witness for her in the court of the dead. She would be allowed into the Duat.

With Antony.

It was his death that had given her this power. It would not be in vain. The heartbeat hadn’t lasted long, just a few minutes, but it had been enough to reassure her that she still lived, that she was still Cleopatra.

She would avenge his murder. She would fling these villains from her palace. She’d seize her children from their clutches. She would find Caesarion in Myos Hormos and bring him home. She needed no army this time. She had the strength of a thousand, here, in her fingertips.