Pharaoh by Karen Essex Read Free Book Online

The muscles were so firm that she worried that her womb would be
     too tough to house a tender baby. Would they give way when the child started to grow inside her? She would rub creams and
     ointments into her skin and coax the muscles to stretch as much as they could to make room for the child, the new emperor.
    Kleopatra lay back down on her bed, reconciled to spending the day indoors. It seemed to her that protecting herself from
     falling off her horse in the heat of a battle, or from the knife of one of her brother’s assassins, was the very least she
     could do while the future of the world nestled quietly inside her womb.

    Arsinoe lacked Berenike’s height, which was a problem. Berenike had been as tall as most men, if not taller, and she had not
     had these infernal large breasts that were good for keeping the attentions of men but got in the way of shooting. Still, when
     Arsinoe pulled back the bow, its string cutting through the leather glove and into her fingers, she saw the target as if it
     were the only object in the world. In that moment she was not a human at all but an isosceles triangle of bow, arrow, and
     princess, with the arrow in a straight line to infinity-only infinity was cut short by the black target before her. She released,
     falling forward slightly, easily hitting her mark. It would have been easier if she did not have to hold her bow six inches
     from her chest, diminishing the strength with which she fired. But she had slapped her right breast many a time to the point
     of bruising, and she did not want to suffer the injury again. It was not form that mattered in the end, but the completion
     of one’s intention.
    Ganymedes handed her another arrow. He was slim for a eunuch, probably because he had trained in the military from early boyhood
     and kept up a strict regimen of swordsmanship and exercise at the gymnasium. He was young still, perhaps thirty, and he wore
     his hair long and curly like the Greek boys of earlier times whose lovers immortalized them in statuary. He had no facial
     hair save eyebrows, and was fair enough to be called effeminate. To assume that his character followed suit would have been
     an unfortunate mistake.
    Arsinoe thought him rather beautiful, far more attractive than her pudgy brother. Every night that horrible creature, the
     image of their late father, came to her room, and she rolled up her nightshirt and let him suck her nipples and rub against
     her until he spilled his filthy seed all over her thighs. Then he would fall asleep and she would clean her legs and pray
     to the gods to kill him, until, mumbling prayers to the underworld, she drifted off into fitful dreams. But he was king, and
     if he were to die a sudden and mysterious death, the little one would probably be no better. Arsinoe prayed that Ptolemy the
     Younger would stay long in the nursery, that she would not have to let more than one brother at a time suckle her breasts
     and feel between her thighs. There was no ridding herself of either of them, at least not yet. Berenike would have slain the
     elder one in his sleep or castrated him, dealing with the consequences later, but Berenike had been executed because of such
     impulsive moves. At least now Pothinus was dead, and if Arsinoe decided that she could no longer bear her brother’s nocturnal visits
     or his silly outbursts in which he pretended to rule the nation, the absence of the eunuch would make it easier to get rid
     of the boy king. As it was, the boy’s outrage over the execution kept him ranting without cessation, and though he was slightly
     less interested in making Arsinoe play with his penis, he still relied on her day and night to be the audience to his tirades.
    Kleopatra was her biggest problem. But by bedding down with the old Roman general, something she had probably dreamed about
     since girlhood, her older sister was sabotaging herself and committing political suicide, thus creating one less impediment
     to