Julius glanced at Mark Antony, knowing it was time. He raised his hands as if to quiet them, while Mark Antony stepped forward. Julius stood very still, his heart racing fast enough to make him light-headed.

Mark Antony held a crown in his hands, a simple band of gold. Julius looked out over the crowd as it was placed on his head, listening, listening for a change in the voices of Rome.

The applause began to fail as they saw what had happened. Julius waited as long as he could, painfully sensitive to the drop in volume. With a bitter smile, he forced himself to remove the crown before the cheering failed completely. Pale with tension, he handed it back.

The change was instant as the crowd responded, waves of sound that were almost a physical force. Julius could barely think at the heart of their bellowing, though a slow fury began to kindle in his breast.

On the steps of the Senate house, a group of young men exchanged guarded glances as they witnessed the event. Suetonius frowned in suspicion and Cassius gripped the arm of another. They did not applaud and yell with the rest. They were a blot of silence in the noisy forum, with eyes that were cold and hard.

Mark Antony did not seem to have understood the reaction of the crowd, and he stepped forward again, pressing the crown onto Julius’s brow. Julius raised a hand to touch the soft metal and knew they wanted him to refuse it once more. His hopes were dashed, but the play had to continue.

He pressed it back into Mark Antony’s hands.

“No more,” he muttered through closed teeth, though his voice was lost in ten thousand others.

Mark Antony did not hear the warning. He had feared the worst when Julius had asked to be crowned in the forum. Now that he saw it was to be a demonstration of Republican honor, he was almost hysterical with excitement, buoyed up on the spirits of the citizens. Laughing, he raised the crown for a third time, and Julius lost his temper.

“Touch that thing to my head one more time and you’ll never see Rome again,” he snapped, making Mark Antony fall back in confusion.

Julius’s face was stained with rage. The gods alone knew what he would say to them now. The speech he had prepared had depended on their acceptance of the crown. He could not see where he had failed, but he knew it was impossible to take the gold band again. They would think it a great game. He glanced up to where Cleopatra stood above the mob and shared a gaze of disappointment with her. She had known his hopes, and to have them crushed before her eyes was more than he could stand.