She thought at first to return to Virgil’s house, but then the thought of Nicolaus kept her out in the city. She hungered too much to trust herself to return to him. With daylight, she’d hidden in a root cellar, but the sounds of Rome plagued her nonetheless.

As soon as the sun dropped, she was out again, scarcely managing to pass the doorways, the stones, the temples that Antony had once visited, without stopping to look for him. She could almost feel him, but she knew he was dead. She’d burned his body.

Nothing was ever entirely gone; she knew it now.

A cryer sprinted past her, shouting his announcement.

“PRIVATE VENATIO, an hour past sunset, tomorrow evening! To be attended by Caesar Augustus, celebrating the arrival of the children of conquered Egypt and offering a special curiosity: a vision of Mark Antony, brought from beneath the earth to bow to Rome.”

She hissed, hearing it, but thought she imagined things. Her hunger was great now, and she could scarcely contain it. A group of legionaries stumbled from a bar and past her, and she thought she heard them say Antony’s name. She shook her head to clear it.

In an alley near a bathhouse, she caught the scent of Antony, stronger this time. Her eyes filled with tears as she inhaled. It was as though he were beside her. If only that were true.

A legionary passed her, pasting notices of the venatio onto a fence. She paused to look at them. A drawing of a man, his body familiar, broad-chested and tall. She looked more closely. The man in the drawing had a cleft chin. He bowed before a drawing of Rome’s emperor.

Cleopatra tore the notice from the wall and then followed behind the man who was posting them. How dare they mock Antony this way? It would be an actor, painted and costumed, a theatrical show exploiting the memory of her husband.

Still.

She would not stop this time. It had been a mistake. She’d had the emperor, and she could have killed him. This would all be done.

Now it would be in public. That might be better. There would be so many people there that her children would not be in any danger. No frenzy could take her and injure them, not with so many Romans present. Sekhmet craved the blood of enemies, Cleopatra convinced herself, not the blood of loved ones.

The animals Cleopatra had traveled with would fight here, to celebrate Conquered Egypt. She could feel them beneath her, in the cages that had been installed in the catacombs beneath Rome. They’d be prodded up into the light and given shouts and applause when they surfaced in the arena to meet their fighting partners, the bestiarii, gladiators doomed to fight the doomed. Lions, tigers, and crocodiles pitted against men.

She would attend.

The poster hanger paused, looking behind him nervously.

She leapt at him, her talons slashing, her teeth in his throat before he had time to make the slightest sound. If he broadcast the emperor’s filthy lies about Antony, then he deserved to die.

What the emperor said was true. Was she under a spell or sickened with some sort of poison? He did not know what she had become, but he was horrified. He turned and disappeared into the shadows of the falling sun. He could not talk to her. Not now.