Queen of Kings by Maria Dahvana Headley Read Free Book Online

She’d survived worse than this. She was surviving it now.
    The goddess leapt over the treasure, her teeth bared, her talons extended, and her skin began to shine with the pitiless glare of the noontime sun. Her fingers and limbs smoked, blurring with heat, and Cleopatra steeled herself for the agony that was to come. A burning brand, a sizzling impact, she thought. But this was not to be.
    Sekhmet transformed. A tremendous serpent coiled before the queen. It looked deep into Cleopatra, assessing her weaknesses.
    Cleopatra was grateful. Serpents were the sacred creatures of her line. They were beautiful things, snakes, and this one was no exception. Its scales were gilded emeralds, the eyes cruel rubies.
    Cleopatra glimpsed a flash of diamond fangs as the goddess struck her throat. Still no pain. Only a sense of time stopping, a spinning, the sound of air rushing past. Then her neck burned with a pain that was not pain but a brilliant heat. An overpowering sweetness swept over her.
    Cleopatra discovered that her feet were no longer touching the floor. Her body—she felt such tenderness for it now, for this fragile, mortal body—hung from the serpent’s teeth, and as though from miles away, she watched her own skin pale. Her fingers clenched and then released. Her vision filled with the places beyond the night sky, the blue-white shine of the edge of the moon. She was dying, and yet she cared nothing about it, nothing about anything that had ever happened or that would happen in the future.
    Then the goddess pulled away, and agonizing pain tore through Cleopatra. She was a tree, and each leaf was on fire. She was a city, and every building was pillaged. The streets ran with boiling oil, citizens fleeing, their hair clouds of smoke, their clothing gusts of flame, orange and blue. She was a volcano erupting, and her skin was furrowed with the passage of lava, deep tunnels of searing, searching heat. The soles of her feet melted where they touched the floor, and she staggered to keep from collapsing. The goddess was the light of a thousand suns, and Cleopatra felt her skin peeling away, exposing her very bones. She was turning to ash. No human could live in flame. Her eyes dilated, blinded.
    You think to summon me to serve you? You, who have forgotten your gods?
    The words appeared in Cleopatra’s mind, echoing there like the sound of men stomping over decks, readying themselves for war. She could smell her own blood slipping down her throat and over her breasts, and she could smell the scent of rage as well, emanating from Sekhmet to wrap about the queen’s arms, binding them to her sides as though she were mummified already.
    You are not one of our kind. Do you think I wish for your blood?
    â€œThat is all I have,” whispered Cleopatra, her voice ravaged by smoke and pain.
    Is it? The goddess laughed, a horrible sound. Somewhere in the room, a glass goblet shook, shattered, and turned back into the sand from which it had come. I think you have something more.
    â€œAnything,” Cleopatra managed, looking at Antony. “Anything I have is yours.”
    And then Cleopatra felt a change. The pain was blinding but uncertain. Where did it come from? What had been taken? A sudden sense of loss, a hole at the center of her being. Her body convulsed around this absence, and she screamed and could not stop screaming. She was a husk, as thin as eggshell, and inside her was nothingness, black night, rushing chill, the frigid glow of dying stars. She gasped, searching for air, and found nothing. She was drowning, and her heart, her heart—
    Her beloved moaned.
    She spun toward him and saw his eyelids flutter.
    Joy rose up inside her, replacing the emptiness that had been there only moments before. She was whole, with him beside her. She was herself again.
    She flew to Antony and knelt at his side, her hands on his chest, feeling it expand as he took his first breath. She ran her fingers over his bare