Cleopatra shuddered as they drew closer to the doorway, possessed by a fear she had not imagined herself capable of feeling. She heard something, a faint echo of Sekhmet’s roar, calling her back from the Underworld. A glimmer of wrath and hunger, a god’s voice calling down to a place that did not worship her. She thought of her children left behind in the world above, and then, in spite of herself, she thought of Sekhmet, alone and starving.

Cleopatra looked at Antony and found herself unable to speak. Every part of her insisted that, without her soul, she did not belong in any Underworld. She could scarcely keep from turning and running to the river, so great was the certainty that she should go back.

At the same time, she knew that her own world did not want her. In that world, she was trapped in a silver box, and all around her, suddenly, she could feel its walls.

“I shouldn’t be here,” she said. She could not say that she yearned for the thing she hated. She could not say that half her heart was Sekhmet’s, that she craved the darkness and fury she’d left on Earth. The vengeance and bloodshed, the destruction. How could she desire those things over this? Hades was still and cold, but she was free. How could she long for her enemies?

“We are here together,” Antony said, holding her shoulders. “You are safe with me.”

He was the only person who had ever seen her heart. Perhaps he was the only person she had ever trusted.

Her husband pulled her into his arms, his hands touching her beneath the ragged covering. She stretched her fingers tentatively to run them over his chest. His wound was still there, and she could see it, though she could not feel it when she touched him. He lifted her off the ground to kiss her. She caught herself thinking that nothing had changed, that none of this had ever happened but had been merely a terrible dream.

His lips were cold, but they were his, and she lost herself, forgetting everything, her body against his, her hands in his hair, the curls twisting in her fingers, the coarse silvering strands.

“It is not over,” Antony told her, kissing her eyelids, and she had a flash of memory, back to Alexandria. She had said the same words to him. It felt like centuries ago. “We are not finished.”

“You will go to the end with me?” she asked. “Whatever it is? Whatever we must do?”

“I will not leave you,” he whispered. “I never have. How could I?” She kissed him, feeling his hands caressing her, feeling his arms supporting her. She could forget the echoing sounds she heard, calling her back to Rome. She could forget the pain and hunger for now.

Antony was hers again, and as she lay back on the frozen grass, his lips on her throat, she knew that she would do anything to keep him safe. Snow fell above them, stars of ice disappearing as they touched the ground. The tree branches were heavy with frost, and her husband held her tightly as they made love, no space between them.

He knew what she was, and he had chosen her.

She felt the trees leaning in to cover them, and the grasses bending to offer them comfort.

The wandering spirits of Hades drifted closer, drawn by the sudden warmth, a fire lit in the midst of a wintry world. Soon, Cleopatra and Antony were surrounded by hundreds of pale shades, their eyes large and wondering, stunned that there could be love in the midst of darkness, that there could be lovers entwined so, here in the heart of the land of the dead.

At last, her sight dissolved into a thousand stars, her head falling back into the snow, her body liquid around him, and he moaned, moving faster now.

“I love you,” he said, holding her face in his hands so that he could see her eyes.

Neither of them were whole, Cleopatra knew, but they were together, and together they would petition the lord and lady of Hades.

They would try to reclaim her soul.