Poisoned arrows were not the Roman way, or, at least, not a way of honor. There had been tales of poison since the beginning of Rome, however. Augustus knew it as well as anyone. He did not desire to be a poisoner, known in the annals as a man who employed such methods.

Still, the arrows tempted him.

With a poison such as they contained, a man might be the master of all he saw.

The effects of the poison were so great that Agrippa, famously stoic, moaned in his sleeping and waking, his face flushed with suffering. The last of Augustus’s theriac had been given to Agrippa to take away his pain, but once it was gone, the pain dispensed with any hunger. At last, on the third day, Augustus was able to put food into his friend’s mouth, and Agrippa looked at him with clear eyes.

“What happened?” he asked. “Where are we?”

“He is improving,” Augustus said. He hoped this was true.

Augustus was convinced that the world was coming to an end. They’d not seen the fireball again, but he expected they would. It was not the sort of thing that disappeared. It was not the sort of thing that was quickly vanquished. Surely, it was Cleopatra’s doing.

He’d looked back at the temple as they’d ridden away, and seen a priest running down the hillside, his skin smoking. The man had thrown himself off the cliff and into the waters below.

They rode past dying villages. They saw few people on the road, and he could not help but wonder where his citizens were.

Still, he found himself in oddly good cheer.

On the sixth day of their journey back to Rome without theriac, however, conditions quickly changed. Augustus began to wobble in his saddle, his legs feeling too short for the horse, and his mind feeling once again broken and useless.

When at last, under cover of darkness, they arrived in Rome and reached the Palatine, Augustus was scarcely himself. He thirsted for his tonic so gravely that his tongue was swollen in his mouth, and he could not speak. Usem helped him from his horse and half carried him indoors. Agrippa limped behind, carrying the bundle they had risked their lives to obtain.

“We must open the box together and stab Cleopatra with the arrow as soon as she emerges,” Usem told Agrippa, and Agrippa nodded tightly.

“Physician!” Nicolaus cried, entering the residence. “Physician!”

It was not physicians who came forth to meet them but the seiðkona and the household guards, all with grave faces.

“Cleopatra is escaped,” the leader of the guard said. “And Chrysate is gone as well.”

“Together?” Augustus cried. He had misjudged everything. He had been a fool to leave for Krimissa, imagining himself a warrior.

“Not together, no,” said the guard.

Moments later, Augustus stood over Selene, gasping in horror. Her eyes opened slightly, and she looked at him. The wound stretched over her breast and up to the hollow at the base of her throat. She had been cut open like a sheep for augury.

“Where is my mother?” Selene asked deliriously.

“You should not speak,” Augustus said.

“I should not have come here,” she said. “I should not have trusted you. You said that you would protect me if I helped you. You did not protect me.”

What did the witch want with Cleopatra’s daughter? He’d left Rome, and hell had broken free from its boundaries. This was all his fault.

Augustus staggered away from Selene, and ran through the house until he reached the room where he’d arranged for Cleopatra’s sons to be held in his absence. It had seemed the safest course of action to cage them in the same room where the queen herself was caged. The silver box had been kept in a separate case, safe from the children’s hands, but if Chrysate had gotten to Cleopatra, she surely would have gotten to the children as well. He fumbled with the key, and then threw open the gleaming door to the silver-lined chamber.

Amazingly, the two children were there, Alexander Helios and Ptolemy Philadelphus, their small faces blinking in the sudden light. He had that, at least. He still had her children.

Augustus swayed. If he gave them up, she might leave him alone. She might cease attacking him. Another thought occurred to him. If he killed them, he might avenge all the pain Cleopatra had caused him, all the strife and chaos. He’d nearly lost control of Rome, and the sons of his enemy would only grow into new enemies.

And yet—

It was not Cleopatra who had attacked Selene. It was his own witch, Chrysate. He’d brought the creature into the house. He had done this.

Augustus closed the door to the princes’ prison. He slid to the floor, his back against it. What was he doing? What had he become?

“I failed,” Augustus moaned. “I thought to fight monsters, and I became one.”

Agrippa came upon Augustus and looked at him with infinite concern.

“We have a weapon against Cleopatra now,” he said. “We will fight her, and we will fight the witch, too.” But Augustus could not hear him. Augustus could not understand the words the man was speaking. Were they in another language? Agrippa picked the emperor up like a child and, limping with his own wound, carried him from the corridor and into his own bedchamber.

“Where is she?” Usem asked the wind, and a wisp of air fluttered past him.

The Psylli’s face shifted as he walked down the corridor, the arrows of Hercules in his arms. He would not wait much longer, but for his wife, he would stay his hand.