The crowd cheered for him, and though he knew it to be false —they were Egyptians, after all, cheering for a conqueror— it pleased him.

“This man stands accused of treason,” he continued. Treason? He made up the accusation as he said it. “He is Caesarion, son of Cleopatra, who herself conspired against the Roman Empire and against her own people.”

Octavian had sent riders to Koptos and Myos Hormos as soon as Cleopatra revealed where the boy had gone. His messengers caught up with the boy’s trusted tutor, Rhodon, at a roadside inn, and as the boy slept, innocent of betrayal, the price for a peaceful delivery had been negotiated. Five days before, even as Cleopatra was being buried in her mausoleum, Caesarion had been delivered back to Alexandria by Rhodon, who was paid a bounty in Egyptian gold for the task.

Octavian had been undecided about what to do with Egypt’s heir. He could see his own adoptive father in the shape of the sixteen-year-old’s jaw, and it unsettled him.

“How did my mother die?” the boy asked Octavian during dinner the night he arrived, a strong set to his mouth, sitting straight and true in his chair.

“Suicide,” Octavian replied, and the boy nodded bravely, asking no further questions. Octavian straightaway took him out for weapons training, and the boy excelled, his smooth, copper skin shining in the sun, his form perfect. This boy, this Caesarion, was so obviously Julius Caesar’s son, Octavian could hardly bear to kill him.

Octavian had slept restlessly, dreaming of taking Caesarion back to Rome and installing him in his own house. His wife, Livia, would protest, of course, but what place did Livia have to protest anything? She’d married him while pregnant with another husband’s child, and who would blame him for adopting a male heir when Livia had not provided one for him? This boy was Caesar’s own blood! Far better than Octavian’s stepson, Tiberius, who carried no heroic line in his ancestry. Just as Octavian had been adopted by Julius Caesar, Octavian would adopt Caesarion. It was fitting.

The symmetry had pleased the emperor, and he’d been on the point of announcing his decision when the absence of Cleopatra’s body from her mausoleum changed things.

Octavian needed a lure for the queen, and the son must serve. He announced that he’d changed his mind, that Caesarion could not be trusted.

A bewildered Agrippa resisted this sudden shift in Octavian’s plans, insisting that if Caesarion had to be executed, it should be done in private. He feared a riot, angry Alexandrians resisting the death of their prince.

Octavian could not bring himself to explain that the execution was a trap for a dead woman.

Where was she? He scanned the crowd again.

Perhaps she’d appear in the final moment. He signaled to his forces to remain on guard. The sun was setting, and he must kill the boy or lose the light. The crowd, whatever their loyalties, desired a death. All this was Cleopatra’s fault, and Octavian resented her for it.