Page 59 of Cleopatra

I was already running.

“Follow her,” I heard Caesar bark in Latin.

I did not care that my robe came undone, or that my hair fell from the knot Charmion had spent an hour braiding. When my crown tipped to the side I flung it from my head. My slippers pounded the ground as it went from tile to stone to sand.

Soldiers’ bodies littered the harbour, their blood seeping into the beach, but my gaze was on the horizon.

The barge had not got far but was gaining speed. I ran to the end of the pier.

Arsinoe stood at the balcony’s edge, clad in blue, a crown I had never seen before on her brow. Theos stood in her shadow, glinting in heavy gold armour—a gift from Arsinoe last akhet season. It made me question how long she had been planning this very flight.

“What did Pothinus offer you to betray me?” I shouted across the water.

She smiled and called back, “That is not the question you should ask. You should be asking, what did I offer him to betray you?”

I felt my knees begin to buckle. All this time I had thought Pothinus the sting in the scorpion’s tail. But it had been my sister.

Tears fell down my cheeks.

“So weak.” The insult carried over the sound of the waves. “It was not difficult to convince the governors of your inability to rule.”

“You seeded the rumour,” I murmured. There was no way she could have heard me, but she saw the realisation on my face.

“A queen must be cunning, dear sister.”

Queen.

I gave in to my shaking knees and hit the ground.

Arsinoe was making a bid for the throne.

I have overlooked her ambition so completely. When I thought of her, I saw a fickle child prone to tantrums and brooding. But that is the curse of siblings: no matter the years that stretch between child and adulthood, you will always see the echoes of who they used to be.

And in turn she saw me as the older sister I had once been—cautious and considered. She would call it weak. But I had changed too, and was changing still.

I was capable of ruthlessness, as she would come to know.

A pained groan drew me out of my daze. One of the soldiers who had fought Arsinoe’s guards lay not a handful of paces from me. I recognised him.

“Ahmose!”

Blood seeped from a wound in his gut. His eyes fluttered as I kneeled beside him.

“Pharaoh, your sister, she seeks to betray you,” he murmured, blood flecking his lip.

“I know. Rest now, do not worry.”

Ahmose would not survive this injury. It was too deep, too wide. I felt my throat tighten with grief.

Charmion came running up behind me. She made a strangled noise when she saw who it was.

“Get my potions, Charmion.” But she had frozen to the spot, her eyes fixed on the wound in Ahmose’s side.

“Charmion!” I shouted. It startled her from her shock and she nodded, dashing away.

“It was a pleasure to serve you, Pharaoh,” Ahmose said.

“And you will continue to serve me, this is not the end.”