In death, however, Cleopatra nearly glowed, and a sheen of perspiration covered her skin. Her position was appalling, one knee bent, the other leg dangling off the edge of the couch. Her back had arched, seizing in her last moments, no doubt.

It was too quiet in this room, far from the noise of the city.

He’d won. His enemies were dead. It puzzled Octavian that he did not feel peaceful.

He moved toward Cleopatra to adjust her draperies, he told himself, to protect her from prying eyes, but in fact, he wanted to run his fingers over her skin, press his lips to her throat. He wanted to —

“Summon doctors,” he said, jolting away from her. “Let them determine how she fell.”

Agrippa bent over the queen, pulling aside the scarf twined about her neck.

“There’s no need,” he said. “It was an asp. Here’s the mark of its bite.”

Octavian leapt back.

“Kill it,” he ordered, suppressing the tremor in his voice.

“It has gone already,” Agrippa replied. Octavian glanced suspiciously about the throne room. It could be hiding anywhere: in the queen’s garments or those of her maids. Beneath the furnishings. How had it gotten into the room in the first place? Smuggled in, no doubt. The queen was sly. He approached her again, willing himself to breathe normally.

“Show us the marks,” he ordered. “And summon the Psylli. We will do everything that can be done. Perhaps she is not dead yet.”

The marks of the fangs were strangely large, and bright against the pallor of her skin. Octavian looked at them for a moment, disturbed, and then turned away. Whatever had bitten her, it had not been a typical asp but something much larger. It was a painful and strange way to die. Why did she look so calm?

The troupe of snakebite magicians came and knelt to the queen’s throat to suck forth the venom, but she did not revive.

“She is dead,” the leader of the Psylli said, his dark face grave. “But her soul is not far gone. Something is strange with her. She is not as she seems.”

Octavian shrugged at the man’s phrasing. What did Rome care for her soul?

He dismissed the Psylli, paying them in gold. Word of the queen’s suicide and of the emperor’s attempts to save her would be all over the city by nightfall.

Agrippa hesitated at the doorway.

“Go,” Octavian said. “I’m nearly done here.”

When Agrippa had gone, Octavian bent over Cleopatra one last time, to remove her crown. He let his hand rest on her breast, still amazingly soft. One would think her heart still beat.

He bent closer, inhaling her perfume, telling himself that he was simply taking the measure of his enemy. One last conversation with his foe, before she was gone forever.

“Caesar taught me that true leaders fight with words instead of swords,” he told her. “An army hears an order they think is from their queen, and they turn on their commander. A man hears a message that his queen has killed herself, and he acts to save his own honor. Have I done as you would have done, had you come to my country with your army? Now you will travel to Rome with your emperor. You, who said you belonged to no one, belong to me.”