Page 156 of Cleopatra

“The fate that binds your family to the gods has come to pass this day. You are the last to suffer from it.”

“The gift of the gods?”

Isis laughed and I winced—the sound was like grinding metal.

“Gift?” she said. “No, indeed. When your ancestor came to Egypt he pillaged and desecrated the tombs of old, searching for the lost arts in the Book of the Dead. For there was once a time when we gods walked the earth with men, and he sought to bind us once more.”

I shook my head in disbelief. But of course a god would not lie.

“He uncovered a spell that bound the soul of Serapis to his temple. We gods do not do well in cages. He invoked our wrath, and so we cursed his descendants with a power that would prove their downfall.”

“Our divine gifts are a punishment?”

She laughed again, and this time it sounded like the crack of thunder. “Look at your family. Betrayal, murder, deceit. The curse held true. Each of you branded with the god who would weave your demise.”

I could not hide my shock. My hand went to my neck where my precious mark of Isis lay. How many times had I touched the skin there and believed myself blessed?

I thought of the many tales I had heard about Sōter: songs, poems, performances. How they had rejoiced at his powers! How they had venerated his deeds!

I’ve spoken on your historians’ lies, but the greatest deception was my own.

“But what of my children, born without the mark?”

“Ah, now we gods are ruthless, but not cruel. Babes born of love would come into the world free of the curse.”

Am I weeping? Or am I laughing? I could not distinguish the feelings that overcame me.

“You see, you understand it all much better now,” Isis said.

“The curse ends with me. There is no one left.”

“Your curse will never end,” she said.

I looked at her questioningly.

“You wish to know what your power is to be? It is the greatest of all my talents. Resurrection. Never shall you die.”

“No.”

“Yes. Every time you depart the realm of life, you shall find yourself back here, in the waters of my womb, to be born again as you are now. Bound forever in this body, time and time again.”

Then her hands came down on either side of my neck and she pushed me through a crevice that had opened in the ground.

I felt as though I was falling for half a day. Terror tightened my throat with screams, my stomach lurching upwards, my arms flailing until they grew numb with fatigue.

On I fell.

And fell.

I wanted to die. I wanted to live. Hope and horror battled within me.

Then I blinked and found myself beside the bodies of Antonius and Charmion.

“No,” I whispered. “No, it cannot be.”

I reached for Charmion’s wrist; though it was still warm, it was as lifeless as Antonius’s.

The twin beads of blood caused by the hairpins were yet to clot on her arm. They matched my own.