Page 126 of Cleopatra

Once we left, Antonius didn’t speak for some time. It was only when we had crossed the city and boarded the boat that he spoke again.

“You are more benevolent than the stories say.”

I was unsurprised. “And who tells those stories? Romans who wish to discredit me? Courtiers loyal to my siblings, who want to dethrone me? That’s the thing with stories: you must always know the story of the storyteller.”

A fitting reminder to you, my reader.

Antonius looked thoughtful. “Who was the weaver to you?”

“A man who helped a woman in need.”

“I thought perhaps he was an old lover?”

I barked out a laugh. “Because Caesar was my senior you thought my tastes must tend towards the ancient? No, Apollodorus is a friend only.”

“A friend,” he said, as if the concept was foreign.

“Besides, I am less benevolent than you think. I can be cruel and ruthless and—”

He cupped my chin, his thumb resting on the edge of my lips. “Do not say such things about the Pharaoh.”

I smiled. “I do not think she’ll mind.”

“But I will.”

The boat swayed as he moved towards me, closing the gap between our bodies.

“Marcus,” I said in warning. A warning for him or myself, I wasn’t sure.

“Tell me you do not want this,” he said.

“I do not want this,” I said, and he saw the lie in it.

“Tell me again, Cleopatra.”

Something unspooled in me as he said my name. I leaned forward and pressed my lips against his.

The kiss built like an incoming storm. First came the pattering of our pulse against our wrists, and then the thundering of our hearts. His hands felt like sparks of lightning on my skin as they moved from my face to my lower back, and I wondered if he were Re.

For he was surely a god.

I trailed my fingers from his jaw down to his chest. The kiss deepened and I pressed my body closer to his.

He stiffened beneath me and broke away. “We must stop.”

“Must we?” I said.

It was in that moment that his resolve shattered and with gentle hands he laid me down on the wooden slats of the boat.

The ocean currents swirled with our passion, and no one but the night sky bore witness to the birth of our love.

Chapter Twenty-Five

40 BCE

nd so it began, the final song of my heart.

“Show me more of Egypt. Let me travel along her tresses, and glide upon her neck,” Antonius begged. I revelled in sharing my country’s wonders with him. We toured the Nile and Upper Egypt. I took him to Hermonthis to visit the Buchis bull, and to the pyramids to visit the dead.