No, he thought, his breath coming too quickly, his head spinning, the safest course would be to wall her up with the man she’d wanted so badly. The proper rituals, a funeral fit for a queen, for a wife. That would placate her. That was what she had wanted, after all, this soulless creature, this thing. Love.

“Don’t touch her!” he shouted as one of the men laid a hand on the queen’s arm. What if she woke? The men, accustomed to carrying out peculiar orders, lifted the couch with Cleopatra upon it and carried her over their heads, making a funerary procession. But Agrippa remained, eyeing Octavian worriedly.

“What happened?” Agrippa asked quietly, and Octavian shook his head. He could not answer.

Cleopatra had stayed motionless as they lifted her, a smile on her lips, as though taken with a pleasant dream.

The monster slept, Octavian knew. She slept. But for how long?

“And chain her,” he ordered.

15

She awoke in darkness. The sound of marching steps encircled the building she found herself inside. High above her, the pale heat of moonlight transferred through the stone. Here, the smell of new mortar and dust. Her mouth was dry. She shook at the cloth that covered her and stretched her fingers. They curled at the touch of teak.

She was naked, she realized now. Naked but for her crown, and a silver chain that wrapped about her body, binding her to the wooden slab.

The pain of the silver had woken her.

The queen knew the place now. This was her own mausoleum, but the room was changed, all its treasure stolen, even the pearls pried off the walls. How had she come to sleep here? How had she come to be bound? Where was her gown? She’d been dressed in her finest garments, she remembered, glorious in her silken wedding clothes, decked in jewels.

The chain scored her flesh, wrapped about her body like a strangling serpent, pressing in upon her tender skin, biting at her. It crossed her at the shoulders and bound her arms to her sides before wrapping again across her breasts and, again, over her stomach. Her legs were chained together, and her entire body was secured to the wooden pyre she lay upon.

Dread filled her. Was she to have her liver plucked out by birds, as in the Greek story? Was she to be immobilized as she was tortured, crying out to the gods, unanswered?

The smell of burning flesh lingered still. Antony’s ashes. The silver box sat on the pyre beside her, open to the air. She could taste his bones each time she inhaled, and worse than that, she could taste his sorrow, his great losses, his fears. Until the end, he’d believed that she had traded him for Egypt, given him up to Rome, conspired secretly with his enemy. Her eyes welled, but there was nothing she could do to change it now. Her beloved had died mistrusting her.