Queen of Kings by Maria Dahvana Headley Read Free Book Online Page B

body. It had been thrown in the struggle and was pinning him to the floor. The blood. The smell of iron, the taste of honey. She gagged, clutching her mouth in horror, and her hands came away from her lips covered in scarlet.
    â€œCleopatra,” her husband whispered. “Come to me.”
    She stumbled to Antony’s side and touched his skin. Stiffening. Cooling.
    â€œYou will not die now,” she told him, her voice breaking. “You cannot.”
    She pressed her mouth to his, breathing her air into his lungs. When she pulled away, the legionary’s blood stained Antony’s lips.
    She’d brought him back from death only to watch him die again. She moaned, listening to the sound that wasn’t. No heartbeat. No breath.
    The stairs rattled with the steps of legionaries. She turned to see them. Dozens of men, armed, shouting. They were coming to take her to their general. She felt strangely calm. They would not take her alive. Nothing mattered now that he was gone. She’d failed, and this was the end.
    The legionaries swarmed around her, their weapons drawn, shouting and shoving, but she was beyond them.
    â€œSurrender by order of the emperor,” they yelled, tearing at her hands, throwing her to the ground, but her hand was already on the ritual knife.
    She twisted and drove it into her stomach, feeling none of the pain she should have felt.
    And when she drew the dagger out of her body, no blood stained the blade.

7
    T hree nights later, the conquered queen of Egypt lit the fire that burned her husband. And they reveled in Rome. A prisoner surrounded by enemies, she could hear their trumpets, smell their foul feasting, carried across the water all the way to Alexandria. The world rang with proclamations of the new ruler’s name as Cleopatra stood before Antony’s pyre stunned, dazed like one in a dream.
    â€œHail Caesar, ” they sang as Cleopatra lifted the torch to Antony’s shroud. He was as still as a statue, yet he had been warm. She had brought him back and lost him again. He’d spoken to her. He’d thought himself betrayed by she who adored him, she who’d summoned the goddess and given up her—
    She did not want to know what she’d given up.
    She did not want to know why she remained here, among the living. This was not where she belonged.
    The ceremony was held in darkness, to keep the crowds from assembling. Not even the royal children were in attendance. Cleopatra wondered where they were imprisoned. Surely they still lived, or she would have felt it. The funerary group consisted only of Cleopatra and Romans, the general Marcus Agrippa, second to Octavian, and a slew of lesser functionaries. Whether through mercy or insult, Octavian did not appear. It was to be Cleopatra’s last act as the queen of her country.
    With a burst of brightness, her love went up in flame.
    Cleopatra tilted her chin and watched the rising cloud of smoke that had been her king. She wanted only to fall into the flames and join him, but the guards surrounding her kept her from moving.
    The smoke obscured the stars, and Cleopatra thought of the gods that had failed her, the goddess that had tricked her. She lived, and he was dead. She lived, and she did not know why.
    She stretched her fingers to feel the flames. Someone barked an order, and the Romans pulled her back. They let her—indeed, they made her—stay until the pyre went out. When everything was ash, she knelt miserably in the char and gathered what was left of her husband’s body. Her tears fell then, for the first time since the horror in the mausoleum.
    As she touched the ash, her mind filled with a strange and roaring sequence of images: galleys saluting Rome, herself naked and sleeping in bed, the buckles of Antony’s armor as they were fastened, the sword he used to stab himself, the lighthouse shining pale in the sky, her own face, blurry and bloodless, grief-stricken. She heaved