Winterly (Dark Creatures Book 1), стр. 104

Chapter Forty-Nine

The Fall

The moonlight fell full upon her alabaster throat. Her breasts heaved. She writhed with pleasure beneath him upon the woven carpet, a succulent mosaic of ivory skin, crimson lips, and black kohl-leaden eyes. The darkness mantled her hair so completely that it was only in the brief glimmers of flame light from the clay lamps, undulating in the breeze, that the God of Death perceived the fire in her hair and the embers in her eyes.

No! This was forbidden. He knew that if he stayed a moment longer he would be mortally undone.

Cleopatra slapped his chest with frustration as he pulled away. The weight of his unshed tears failed to quell her rage—she had tears of her own to bear. “Go then!” She sat up and threw a gilt goblet at the wall before turning her back on him.

He watched as the wine fell in anemic rills down the marble. These were her games and well she knew it; he had prided himself on being omnipotent, but he’d begun to suspect her of wielding the greater power between them. Tonight that shift of power nearly cost him everything. He was no longer her preceptor but her besotted thrall.

It was time to put distance between them. Perhaps a year apart might teach her restraint, and endow him with temperance. Besides, her position in the palace was once more secure—she had the ear of Caesar himself. If ever there was a time to cease his watching, it was now. He placed a kiss upon her cold shoulder, committing her scent to memory, and then he vanished from her chamber without a word or sound.

The desert sands shifted while he turned his gaze away; the Nile’s banks swelled and dried with the rhythm of the moons and tides. The seasons sprang and fell in flashes of rain and color. When he could force his gaze away no longer, he returned to her; what he saw embittered him.

The firelight quaked beneath the watcher’s veiled wrath, the oriental drapes shrank back as he alighted on the terrace. “Thou hast lain with Caesar,” he said without preamble.

Cleopatra’s eyes snapped open. Surprise, rage, love—a thousand emotions seemed to flash in her eyes as they traced his face and then his outstretched wings against the backdrop of glittering constellations. With a brusque flick of her wrist, she sent the servants hastily from her chamber and bade them shut the doors. She stood from the fragrant waters of her bath and therefrom, with deliberate and sensual grace, moved lightly across the room to stand before him.

Over his shoulder, the Mediterranean lay like a black mantle beneath the stars. It was into that black nothingness that she focused her attention. “Wilt thou not congratulate me on my conquest of Rome, Lord?”

Death’s gaze dropped to the crescent birthmark that lay beneath her navel like a cup. It was the only blemish, such as it was, upon her glorious flesh. A mark that had drawn the attention of the eyes of heaven.

He had watched on sternly for nights and days as she and the Roman imperator had sailed, triumphant, touring the temples along the Nile in the royal barge with a procession of ships. Even now there was life stirring in her sacred womb. A life that he resented for reasons that were not altogether disinterested. “What conquest? Thou art merely the mistress of an aged general; thousands of women warmed his bed ere thou took up that office.”

“There are not one in a thousand like me,” she quipped.

“Wouldst thou be the servant of Rome?”

“It is Egypt that I serve.”

“Thou art Caesar’s pawn and nothing more.”

“He is all but the emperor of Rome,” she replied with a regal lift to her chin. “And I carry his son.”

“And what of his wife?”

“She is old and has given him no son.” Cleopatra left him standing at the window and sat down to apply her cosmetics. “My sons and daughters shall carry the scepters of Rome and of Egypt for many suns and many moons hereafter.”

“No, I fear thy line shall all too soon be eclipsed by Rome.” The words were out his mouth before he could halt them, savoring of bitter portent.

Her lips drew back in a snarl. “That is not what my priests have divined.”

“Tell me, my queen, where do I fit into thy schemes?”

Her hand stilled over her neck where she had applied a liberal portion of cream. “You promised to make of me a queen of kings; you vowed that my children would rule amongst the stars; you said you would give me the sun and moon, but you forsook me.” She stood from her stool and turned to face him, heedless of her naked glory. He knew she was well aware of what that glory cost his forbearance. “Wherefore didst my lord not take me as his own? Am I not Isis—thy mother; thy sister; thy wife? I would have loved thee eternally had thou let me.” She rested her hand over her womb. “I wanted only the sun and the moon.”

“Ask not what I cannot give thee.” He would not repeat the folly of his brother and sister; he would not—could not—do the very thing he had been charged to prevent. He approached her and took her hands in his. “Caesar does not love thee. He loves and desires only that which thy riches will bring his campaign and himself withal. Canst thou not see