26
Elsewhere in Rome, the senator’s man stood
looking at the piece of green stone he held in his hand. It was
such a small thing, to have had so many people going to such
trouble over it. Nothing precious at all. It looked like old
glass.
Still, he had his instructions. He placed the
holding stone on the ground, taking little notice of the way it
glimmered and shone in the dark. He was paid well for this
task.
The senator’s man picked up the hammer he’d
brought, and with a single blow, he smashed the witch’s stone.
Shards of it flew everywhere, but it was broken irrevocably.
With his heel, he ground the remaining bits of
magic into the dirt of Rome, and then, with a grunt of
satisfaction, he walked on.
Suddenly, she was falling, pulled deep into
the darkness, deep into the cold. The burning of the silver net
where it had melted into her skin disappeared. The walls of the
silver box itself disappeared, and the bed of ash beneath her body
was gone as well.
She was adrift in the night sky, or falling through
the earth, but she was not alone. Someone held her hand in his, and
as they fell, she felt his grasp tighten. Every part of her
demanded that she turn back, told her that she did not belong where
she was going, but he pulled her deeper, deeper, until she lost
herself in his determination. Her body resisted, but there was
nothing to be done. Around the hole where her heart had been she
felt ice crystals forming.
She gasped, and then darkness took her.
She awoke to cold fingers on her flesh. She was
being carried, her body held in rigid arms, her legs dangling.
Cleopatra’s head lay against a shoulder she would have known
anywhere. She tried to sit up.
“Stay still,” a voice—his voice—whispered.
“Don’t open your eyes. Trust me. I am yours. You are mine.”
“In life,” Cleopatra whispered.
“And thereafter,” her husband answered.
Together, they walked downward in darkness.