Winterly (Dark Creatures Book 1), стр. 106
“I was ever thine and I love thee still.” It chilled his blood to know how fiercely he loved her despite how she’d fallen.
“No, Antony loves his queen! What knowest thou of love?” She clutched her hands and held them fearfully to her heart, rubbing them fitfully together as though they would never be clean; hands stained by wayward ambition. Indelible stains of blood and death—the blood and death of her brother and sister.
“Bah!” The face of Death contorted much the same as the Fallen’s had. “Antony is but a dog that whines and growls at the feet of Octavian, yet thou wouldst fain befoul thyself with such a lowly cur.” Thrice she had borne him children, but it was the names of the twins, Helios and Selene, that rankled most; it was as though she’d chosen those very names just to spite him. “He has begotten the sun and moon from thy wasted womb.” The sun and moon he had failed to give her—had dared not give her. The watcher gnashed his teeth in anguish, his heart breaking anew. “Thou hast lost thy compass, woman.”
“Because my North star deserted me!”
“Wherefore didst thou not summon me to guide thee? I’d have come had thou called.”
“I did! The very heavens shook with my cries! But thou heard me not. Even for thee, my lord, I could not wait forever!” The kohl ran wet and dark from each of her lower lids like the Eye of Horus.
“Little queen,” said he in warning accents, “thou knowest nothing of forever.”
“Then begrudge me not my love for Antony, for he doth act upon that which thine eyes hath only ever hinted at. And he hast never forsaken me.”
“He is no better than Caesar!” At least Caesar had had something of wisdom, not a colt’s lust to run without rein. “He wants thee for thy navy. He wants control of Egypt through its mistress. Thou hast nurtured thy lands and prospered greatly. Thou art pharaoh of the richest realm in all the world, my queen. Thou might have ruled the world, yet thou hast endorsed the wrong Roman commander. Rome holds no love for thee and what little love she has for Antony is even now being greatly diluted by the cunning tongue of Octavian; and thou hast furnished the kindling for his fiery vilification thyself.” He had once been so proud of her, and his part in her ascension, but his foresight had been clouded by lust and love for her. And perhaps his lust and hubris had corrupted the very love he’d sought to empower. “Thou hast poisoned thy brother and inveigled thy dog, Antony, to murder thy sister. What hast thou become, my love?”
She threw her arms out wildly, her beautiful voice ricochetting off the walls like broken glass. “I am what thou hast made me!”
“Keep thy voice down!” said he, glancing furtively at Heaven as he retreated from her. He had only meant to prevent her doom, yet all he’d done was hurry it along. “Thou hast made an enemy of Rome; and I have made an enemy of God.” He melted swiftly into the shadows, the sound of his beating wings and her plaintive sobs and malisons echoed off the walls.
He was out of his depth here—or perhaps already fallen too deep. His brother was right, he had no business meddling in the lives of mortals, nor, indeed, in the business of queens. In the blink of Heaven’s eye, he had failed to forfend the ruination of his only love. It was he that had ultimately plunged Egypt into the nadir of its existence; it was he that brought death swiftly to the last queen of Egypt.
And had he not taken that one last irrevocable look over his shoulder, he might have escaped that yawning abyss; he might have saved himself that final fall. But he did look, and he had acted. And he had fallen.
Markus was startled abruptly from his melancholic anamnesis as Emma violently thrust his wrist away from her mouth. His nose fluttered as it filled with the sweet, earthy perfume of English rose. And yet the sharp tang of fear alloyed her irresistible scent. Her bloodied lips were slack with horror as she withdrew from him, floundering.
“Now you know,” he said.
“Ay, that you are a snake! A murderer!” Emma dragged her wrist over her quaking lips. Lips that still glistened with his dark ichor.
“You knew what I was long before you came to my bed.” He snapped his teeth together, vexed at this unexpected reaction to his gift. “What exactly did the blood memories reveal?”
“I saw you…I saw you kill Cleopatra!” With that, Emma lifted her skirts and flew from the library.
Chapter Fifty
The Invisible Worm
Without candlelight to guide her, Emma stumbled from the library, blinded by shadows and bitter tears. She knew not where she was bound, only that she was in desperate haste to escape. The weight of all the darkness in the world bore down on her, blighted her, and rushed in her blood like wormwood. A terrible and overwhelming sense of loss girded her heart like a cilice. A loss of innocence, and in its place was fear. Emma’s naïveté had rendered her a purblind fool—to think that she had freely given herself to such a creature, offered her very heart to him!
The sound of her steps clattered hollowly over the chessboard flags of the grand foyer. She swiped at her tear-stained cheeks, hoping to banish the images she’d seen through the gossamer veils of time and blood; but the memories—what she’d mistaken in London for strange dreams—rushed with renewed and immutable clarity into her brain to torment her anew. Memories all along, not dreams! Only this time they’d been vivid and clear and achingly real. How could that