Free Song of the Nile by Stephanie Dray Page B

victory where all other Romans had failed, he was planning a campaign against the Parthians, so I knew he wanted to be compared to Alexander. He was never content to be himself. Within him still was the sickly boy my father had ridiculed. He was, and would always be, the insecure youth who relied on Agrippa to do his fighting and who felt compelled to kill my brother Caesarion for fear of a rival with the same name. He wanted to be Caesar. He wanted to be Alexander. But I wanted an answer that would please him even better. One that might turn his mind from war and killing. “I say that you are more like Aeneas than any of those three. Like Aeneas, who carried his ailing father out of a burning city, you’ve honored Julius Caesar. Whereas Aeneas built Lavinium, you wish to build a new Rome out of the ashes of the civil wars. Aeneas .”
    “Selene,” he uttered my name in warning, as if I’d spoken something too close to his heart. Then, in a flash of motion, Augustus pulled the curtain shut, plunging the carriage into darkness. It felt strange to be alone with him in such close quarters, closed off from the outside world. I blinked, able to make out only his silhouette, a shadow of himself. “Aeneas had sons , Selene. He had sons to rule after him. I don’t. And you once predicted that my heirs will never inherit my empire.”
    “It wasn’t my prediction. Those were the words of Isis,” I said, for my goddess had sent that warning scrolling in blood and hieroglyphs down my arms. As you refuse Isis her throne, be assured your descendants will never inherit yours. Deny me, and your ignoble name will fade to dust. It had been a threat in retaliation for his mistreatment of Isis worshippers, but he’d believed it was my mother reaching for him, sparring with him from the afterlife. Now, he seemed at last to have accepted that my mother was gone. When he looked for her, he looked to me. “Isis never promised it would be your destiny, Caesar. Honor my goddess and change your fate.”
    His gray eyes were lupine in the dark. “Why isn’t it enough that I honor you, her sorceress?”
    Years ago, such a question would only have been put to me in threat, for the Romans had a fear and loathing of magic. But the emperor valued any power I had—whether it sprang from magic, religion, or my heritage—and he wanted to possess it for his own ends. “I’m not a sorceress.” That much wasn’t a lie. What powers I had, I didn’t know how to control. Not yet.
    “There’s a woman who says otherwise, Selene. She tells everyone who’ll listen that you put your hands upon her and made her fertile again. She was barren, and now she’s with child.”
    I squinted, adjusting to the darkened interior, seeing his face knit in concentration, in expectation that I must disappoint. “Such things happen. It’s the will of the gods.”
    “I need a son, Selene. I need you to make Livia’s womb fertile again.”
    How like him to bring up such a thing with men lying dead behind us in the road. “I can’t help you.”
    He made a dangerous sound, the snort of an animal. “Your mother worked fertility magic for Caesar. It was easy to say her child was of some other man’s get, but I looked at the boy’s face after he died. He was Caesar writ small.”
    It shocked me to hear him admit my eldest brother’s true parentage. “Whatever magic comes to me, comes from Isis. I’m spent of it. I can’t help you. Neither you nor Livia share my faith.”
    “Faith,” he said, as if the word always puzzled him. The Romans built great temples to their gods and made bloody sacrifices, but they didn’t forge personal relationships with the divine. They didn’t pray, at least not without great ritual and fanfare, and rarely in the way that I called upon Isis in moments of solitude and reflection. “Livia could make an offering,” he said. “It wouldn’t do for her to publicly honor a goddess whose worship I’ve banned, but she could do it