Cleopatra found a kitchen knife. In the dark, she held out a lock of her hair and sawed it off, shuddering as it drifted to the floor, braided strands and loose ones. A single shining twist of silver. Her hair had been beautiful, and the coif she’d been buried with, dressed by Charmian, was complex, each knot signifying something specific. Those things were gone. She grieved them as much as she gloried in her new state. Free, she reminded herself. Free.

Soon, it was all sheared, cut into a rough tumble, and her head bound up in a swath of dirty cloth. She washed the paints from her face with cold, greasy water. She looked like a slave. None of the assembled would know her for their queen. Still, she would cover herself fully, for though the day was waning, the sun shone low in the sky, and she did not imagine she would be immune to its rays. She wrapped the box containing Antony’s ashes in a piece of cloth and slung it over her shoulder before dressing herself in a robe, a pair of leather sandals, and a rough traveling cloak stolen from one of the cook’s chambers.

At last, she veiled her head and made her way into the city, following the sounds of reveling.

Her enemy would be at the execution. She looked forward to seeing his face when she appeared before him.

18

Octavian strode onto the platform where the accused awaited him. Cleopatra was the reason for this. The only reason. She’d forced Octavian’s hand, and he resented it, but he had to find her.

It had taken only a moment to determine that the queen was gone from her mausoleum. The chain that had bound her draped the pyre like a glittering veil, and the fastenings that had bound the chain itself to the teak were destroyed.

Something, or someone, had clawed the wood away.

As for how she’d escaped the building, he could not tell. Octavian himself, claiming that he sought some forgotten treasure inside the mausoleum, had required stonemasons to break into the covered window at the top of the building, and there was no other way in or out, not that he could see. The witch had spirited herself away.

Well, he would spirit her back.

Somewhere out there, she was watching him. He seethed, despite his dread. He was surrounded by guards, and it would not be he who died today. Marcus Agrippa stood beside him, and though he remained bewildered by the episode in the mausoleum, the general was the most reliable defender a man could ask for.

Octavian caught a glimpse of the criminal’s liquid golden eyes, those long limbs beneath the Roman toga, and he feared that he was not making the right decision.

The boy gave him a pleading stare. Octavian turned away and cleared his throat.

“Citizens of Alexandria,” he said, looking down into the wild-eyed crowd. She was not visible, if she was here. “Your emperor addresses you.”