In those moments, he tried not to see what he had seen, the lioness springing at him, her talons stretching for his throat. The serpent, whose eyes had reflected his own small and fearful face. The queen, her naked form quivering in the dirt, looking up at him with grief and hatred in her stare. Her children torn from her embrace. And the way she had wailed Antony’s name.

The fire had not killed her. He saw her body again in his mind’s eye, turning white hot in the net, surrounded by flame. She’d looked into his eyes just before she flew.

He tried to convince himself that this ordeal was finished, but he did not believe it. The things that had happened tonight were only the beginning of the visions he’d seen in Alexandria.

He drank the last of his vial of theriac, swallowing convulsively.

He thought of Agrippa, flung by the snake, a weak man, a flawed defender of Rome. The terror Augustus had banished began to return as fury. Was he not the emperor? He’d nearly been killed, and everyone around him had watched it happen. He saw the box closing around Cleopatra, his witches succeeding where his warriors had failed.

By the time Agrippa opened the door to the emperor’s study, favoring his fractured arm and grimacing with untreated pain, Augustus was in a righteous rage. Chrysate followed the general into the room. Her wrists were bound, though she still clutched the silver box.

“Why is my defender being treated like a prisoner?” Augustus asked, his tone frigid.

“She cannot be trusted,” Agrippa said. “She refuses to surrender Cleopatra, if Cleopatra is even inside that box.”

“You saw her trapped in it,” Augustus seethed. “We all saw it. She is captured.”

“Witches traffic in illusion,” said Agrippa, looking bitterly at the fiend as she curled herself into a chair, her bare legs delicate, her lips roses, her eyes an innocent, luminous green.

“I am no witch,” Chrysate said. “I am a priestess. The thing from the North is a witch. She tried to take the queen from me. I suggest you watch yourself around her. She is a dark creature, and I serve the light.”

“Hecate is not a goddess of light,” Agrippa muttered. His ribs ached, and the pain in his arm was severe. It would have to be splinted. “She stands at the gates of Hades.”

“You know nothing about her,” Chrysate said serenely. “Nor about what she will be.”

Agrippa reached out his good hand for the box and tried to wrest it from her grasp, but her fingers were like iron. His hand slipped from the box, and he caught hold of Chrysate’s arm. He recoiled, stunned by what he felt. Her skin was withered, though it looked smooth.

He glanced quickly up at her face, seeing, if only for a moment, a crone, her teeth long and pointed, a single eye bulging from her face, staring at him.

Then she was a beauty again, virginal and dewy-skinned, transformed back into the girl she had seemed a moment before.

She smiled at him.

“Who are you to say the Underworld may not become this one? Who are you to say the dead may not one day walk in the sun, and the living in darkness? Who are you to say that you will not, Marcus Agrippa?”

The words, though spoken quietly, were a curse. Agrippa’s center twisted. He felt like screaming.

“Do you fear the dark, Marcus Agrippa?” the girl asked. “Do you fear my mistress? Do you fear Cleopatra? Then you should leave us. I, and my kind, kept the emperor of Rome safe tonight. You and all your men failed.”

Agrippa felt himself sagging, her words piercing him. She was not wrong.

“What is the matter with you?” Augustus asked, looking sharply at him.

Agrippa would not fail again. He must protect his emperor, even if it meant protecting him from things Augustus himself had invited in.

He knew this witch before him would not go easily back to her cave in Thessaly now that she’d tasted power. And the queen of Egypt would certainly not stay imprisoned in that box, not if she could survive fire, not if she could transform at will. If the priestess found a way to control her, Agrippa did not want to imagine what would happen. Together, Cleopatra and Chrysate would be even more formidable than each was alone.

“Do not trust her,” he managed, and then he saluted Augustus, mastered his fears for his friend, and left the room.

His task was set. He must find a new weapon, one that could destroy the indestructible. And he must act outside his orders. Agrippa had always believed in his friend, had served at his side for most of his life, but now, Augustus was wrong. The consequences of his error would be severe. If Augustus trusted Chrysate, what else would he trust? What other foolish decisions might he make?

The emperor watched his general depart, feeling the panic rising up again. He certainly could not leave his savior bound. He walked across the room, knelt before Chrysate, and untied her wrists.

The girl was motionless, her skin glowing from within, her eyes greener than ever. Despite his vow to the contrary, Augustus felt himself desiring her again. She was ruthless. To keep her in his employ would bring him power. What might she do in a city built over the bones of so many dead? There were heroes buried in Rome, warriors of legendary prowess. And why stop with Rome? He might take Chrysate to the battlefields of Troy. He imagined it for a moment, himself commanding an army of the glorious dead. What need would he have for Marcus Agrippa, when he had Achilles?

“What have you done with Antony?” he asked.

“He sleeps inside this box,” she said. “And his wife sleeps beside him as long as I hold the stone that keeps him from descending to Hades. They are mine.”

Chrysate could see by the way the emperor’s pulse throbbed against the thin skin of his temple that he was thrilled by her as much as he feared her.

She held in her hands the box that contained the end of the world. The monster within would be like a drop of aconite in a cistern, spreading through a city’s water and killing all who drank. Chrysate could feel Hecate’s strength growing. She’d be satisfied with this, and the goddess long ago sent to the Underworld would rise, feeding off Cleopatra and Sekhmet.

Hecate would rise.

For that, though, for the summoning spell, Chrysate needed Selene. Chrysate’s powers were dwindling even as she sat here in the emperor’s rooms. Despite the love spell she’d worked, the spell that should have made the girl her slave, Selene had run from her in the Circus Maximus, terrified, and who knew where she was now?

Chrysate smiled. At least Selene was not a stupid child. This was good. Intelligent children were more valuable.

She ran her fingers over Augustus’s cheek. He startled at her touch, but she saw his color change, his eyes dilate.

“I saved you,” she told him. “Without me, your enemy would have escaped. Without me, you would be dead. I want the Egyptian girl. Cleopatra’s daughter.”

She licked her lips, moistening them.

Augustus looked at her, bleary, his brow furrowing.

“Selene?” he asked.

Chrysate placed the sealed silver box carefully on the table and untied the sash of her robe. She heard the sharp intake of Augustus’s breath. She wore nothing beneath, and the spell she’d worked had made her body into one that could easily make a thousand ships refuse to leave port. She was well aware of the emperor’s weaknesses.

“Give her to me,” Chrysate whispered, leaning over Augustus, pressing him back onto the floor, letting him feel her softness, letting his hands linger on her skin. “Give her to me, and you will have everything you could desire.”

The emperor’s hands came to life, grasping her thighs. She’d never met a man who could not be manipulated with the simplest tools. They were all the same. She prayed her illusion would hold long enough to accomplish what was necessary. The body beneath the spell was nothing the emperor would want to touch.

“I want only one thing,” Augustus said, resisting her hands. “Cleopatra must be destroyed, by order of Rome.”

She’d thought him more easily controlled than this.

“I cannot destroy such a thing,” she informed him, kissing him hard enough to bruise. “And I do not choose to.”

Augustus sat up suddenly, his hands grappling with her wrists, knocking her off balance. Chrysate was startled to find herself swiftly immobilized beneath him, her wrists held behind her, her cheek against the stone floor. He was stronger than she’d imagined. His injuries should have weakened him sufficiently, but the magic she’d used tonight had weakened her. It had been a hundred years since she’d felt anything like this.

“Do you serve me, Chrysate?” he asked, his mouth next to her ear, the rasp of his beard against her face. “Or do you serve another?”

“I serve you,” she said, and then stretched beneath him, emphasizing the point. She had not lost him yet. “You and I are not so different. We both want more than we’ve been given. Do I misunderstand you, emperor of Rome?”

“You do not,” he said. She could feel him hard against her. One of his hands stroked her throat, pressing roughly. She wondered if he would try to strangle her. There was a thrum of thwarted violence in him, a weak boy made into the ruler of the world, and all she needed to do to rule him was to make him think he’d won.

“Everything in Rome is yours to command,” she said. “And the world is Rome. I am yours to command. Will you give me what I want?”

She slowly lifted her hips off the ground until he was nearly inside her. She felt his pulse quicken.

“Selene,” she said.

“Yes,” Augustus said, and laughed softly. “You could ask for gold, and instead, you ask for a girl. You can have Cleopatra’s daughter if you want her so desperately. She’ll make a good apprentice.”

Chrysate arched her back, and he groaned, pulling her closer.

He thought that he controlled her. Chrysate nearly laughed, but then she found herself moaning. She had not expected to enjoy this. Perhaps she had not been lying when she’d told him they were two of a kind.

“The box that cages Cleopatra must be locked away,” he said. “There is a room lined with silver, here in my house. I had it made for her. You will place the box there, and it will be guarded.”

“I agree. She is precious. She should be guarded,” Chrysate said, smiling. Locks and silver would not bar her from the queen, not if she wanted to reach her.

“Do you not fear her?” he managed.

“I do not,” she said. “She cannot touch me. You can.”

They were finished talking.