He leaned closer yet. He pressed his mouth against her parted lips, and then —

The queen’s eyes opened.

14

For the rest of his life, the emperor would remember what he saw that day, looking into the eyes of a dead queen. Visions, he thought at first. Prophecy, he realized as they went on. He was seeing what would come.

He saw the future laid out before him like polished gems on a black cloth, each moment distinct, each moment vibrating with its own horror.

Black clouds filled with slashing lights. Crippled bodies, skeletons. Ships beached on dying shores. Rats swarming bodies, covering them so completely that no skin was left visible. These were the trappings of war, Octavian tried to tell himself. Though he was a young man, he’d commanded armies. He had seen civilization.

This, this blazing place, this horror, was nothing like it.

Here, soldiers herded women and children into machines, tore away their rags, their shoes, their belongings, held metal sticks at eye level as their victims stood against fences, hands behind their heads, waiting for death to take them. Here, child warriors slew other child warriors, brandishing cleavers and metal rods, throwing something that blasted hearts away, carousing in an ecstasy of violence, singing and whooping as they smashed the skulls of less lucky children. Here, the naked and the dying ran through the roads of some dark city, their skin melting away, their mouths gaping with horror.

Wolves prowled cobbled streets, stalking lanes that still held homes. A baby cried out, only to be snatched up by an animal. He saw a flamehaired, white-faced woman crowned with gold, her mouth stretching in a cry of agony, a bearded man throwing his hands into the air, summoning some vast, horned creature. He saw an island of fire, a river of lava, creatures flying through the sky.

A human heart on a scale, a weighing.

A tremendous serpent thrashed and coiled, its fangs shining in the moonlight, high above an arena strangely familiar to Octavian. Metal monsters flew through the air and ignited, screaming people leaping from inside them, and below it all, the blood ran, scarlet rivers of it surging into the oceans and coloring the waters. The great beasts of the sea rose up, fins and teeth, battling over bloated corpses.

The sky rained fire.

Octavian saw himself suddenly as though in a nightmare, a slight, young man walking down a deserted road, and behind him, a lioness padding softly, her maw dripping with gore.

He shouted from afar, trying to send a warning, and the lion —no longer on the road but, impossibly, with him in the palace— turned to look at him, her body shifting, growing larger.

She was a woman now, with a lion’s head, and she gazed upon him, seeing him utterly. He felt his organs dissolving and a red miasma floating over his eyes. The creature’s mouth curved into a smile, and Octavian was transported again to a place that seemed, for a moment, peaceful.