Free Queen of Kings by Maria Dahvana Headley Page A

seductive laugh, but from afar, she watched herself, horrified by her own actions. What was she trying to do? Surely not.
    â€œFree my wrists,” she cooed. “And see if the stories you’ve heard are true.”
    He bent closer, closer still. She felt her lips parting, as she inhaled the smell of his skin.
    â€œShe’s supposed to be beautiful, but she doesn’t look beautiful to me,” the other soldier complained.
    Her wrists were free. She spread her hands and readied herself. The boy’s pale throat was inches from her mouth. His sweet smell was in her nostrils. She pressed her fingers against his chest and leaned toward the glorious, pulsing vein in his neck.
    At that moment, the other soldier drew the curtain back, and the newborn sun came in, a blinding rise as it broke over the horizon.
    â€œThere,” he said. “Now we’ll get a look at her.”
    But the queen was cringing away from the burning light, stunned by what she had almost done. She threw her body into the shadows and turned her face to the wall. Her hands trembled, and with effort, she forced her muscles to be still. She was salivating, and her tongue felt rough, like that of a cat.
    â€œLeave me,” she said, and when they hesitated, she screamed the words again. “LEAVE ME!”
    They left, disgruntled. Changeable things, women. One moment ready for love, the next for war, and men never knew which was coming. They muttered their way down the corridor, their long bodies banging against the tapestries, the smell of their histories fading.
    The queen drew a breath. The danger was over.
    In the window, a bird appeared, and before Cleopatra knew what she was doing, her hand had snatched it from the sunrise, its hollow bones shattering in her grasp. The softness of its feathers. The throb of its racing heart. It still lived.
    She would not—
    She could not—
    She sobbed as she drank the swallow’s blood.

10
    T he tutor stood outside the entrance to the palaces, cursing himself. He could stay in Alexandria no longer. He’d miss the royal children. The girl was bright, a fiery thing. The boy, her twin, was dull in comparison, always wanting to play at battle, while his sister read in seven languages. In the employment of the queen, Nicolaus had set about training the children into scholars, though only the girl took to books. Now it was all for nothing. The city was taken, and no matter what had truly happened, he would be considered an enemy of the state.
    Though Cleopatra was imprisoned, he suspected she would not be for long. Allegiances would shift. He heard she’d met with Octavian, and perhaps seduced him. The people of the city were convinced that soon she’d be ruling again, this time with more power than before, new mistress to the Roman emperor. Their queen was resourceful in such matters.
    There were things about Cleopatra that only Nicolaus knew, however, and they disturbed his sleep.
    He’d felt it the moment she summoned Sekhmet. In the air over Cleopatra and Antony’s mausoleum, a flock of birds fell out of the sky. He knelt in the courtyard of the Museion, and picked up one of them. Its feathers were mysteriously singed, as though it had flown in the path of a meteor. Something had gone wrong with the spell.
    His spell. Nicolaus took off at a run for the mausoleum and Cleopatra, but he was too late.
    When he arrived, it was only to witness the queen of Egypt, her wrists tied behind her, being lowered out of the upstairs window by Octavian’s centurions. Her hands, face, and gown were covered in blood, and her eyes were black and bottomless with suffering. Nicolaus quickly turned away so she would not see him.
    He’d be blamed, whether the spell had failed or succeeded.
    It did not appear that it had succeeded.
    Later, though, Nicolaus bribed a physician to view the body of the legionary Cleopatra had killed. In the underground chamber in the Museion, he