The rekhet took her hand and touched her palm. Cleopatra flinched at her expression.

“You were,” she said, her fingers traveling over the skin, her tone increasingly hostile. “Though you are not now. Did you not invite the invaders into your bed? Did you not call to the Romans, worship their gods, sacrifice to their altars? All that has happened was your doing. Did you not proclaim yourself a goddess? Now you are dead, or so they say.”

The priestess dropped Cleopatra’s hand, poured something from a tiny, elegant bottle into an alabaster goblet, and sipped from it.

“Are you dead?” she asked.

“I am not!” Cleopatra cried, fighting the urge to strike this crone, this woman who knew nothing about what she was saying.

“Are you certain?” the priestess asked.

Cleopatra’s mind spun. Dead? She was not dead. And a betrayer of Egypt?

What did this woman know about power? What did she know about the demands put on the powerful? She was a priestess of a forgotten religion. The rekhet should be thanking her queen, not judging her.

“What does Sekhmet desire?” the priestess continued, as though Cleopatra had not spoken. “She desires the end of everything. Can you not feel it? There is no place for her in Ra’s boat, no home for her in the Duat. She was banished by her family, and she lives in endless hunger, searching for prey. You brought her sacrifice. You gave her enough to revive her, enough to bring her from the heavens. She desires an ocean of blood in payment for the wrongs that were done her. She will use you to get it. There is no peaceful end for you. You will wander with Sekhmet.”

Cleopatra felt an echoing loneliness rising inside her.

“This is a passing form. Until I have my vengeance on Rome,” she said.

“And then?” the priestess asked.

“Then I will die,” said Cleopatra. “I will join my husband in the Duat.”

The rekhet laughed, a laugh as old and sad as the temple itself. “You will not,” she said. “You are her slave now, and she does not die.”

“Surely, there is a ritual, a spell of separation,” Cleopatra said.

The rekhet shook her head.

“You cannot reclaim your ka from her,” she said. “You gave your soul willingly. She grows stronger each day with your sacrifices. You are a rare prize for one such as she. A queen of Egypt. She’ll fulfill her nature with you. Together, you will make war. Together, you will kill. The rivers will run red, and you will drink the blood in them. You are an immortal now, and you will serve her.”

“I will not,” said Cleopatra, surprising herself, her voice shaking. “I will not be a slave.”

“Yet you will hunger. Will you stop yourself? Can you?” The rekhet looked deep into Cleopatra’s eyes, judging her. “You’ve shed blood. You’ve started wars. It was your nature long before she found you. She chose wisely. Together, you will return the world to chaos. This is your destiny.”