Queen of Kings - Maria Dahvana Headley [142]
Cleopatra clutched its pulsating throat, its burning body, feeling its knife-sharp feathers cutting into her palms. She gasped as it twisted and bit her hand—and this was true pain, unlike the echo of pain her bloodless body had experienced since her transformation—but she held it still tighter, straining all of her muscle and bone against its escape. Its feathers sliced into her as it struggled, and its slender, arrow body twisted in her grasp.
“You will not kill,” she told it, and for the first time, she heard its voice, faint, strangely musical.
And what of you? Will you not kill?
She screamed with rage, feeling a tearing pain as she broke the Slaughterer’s back, snapping its spine.
Her fury was replaced with devastating agony as she held the broken arrow up to the light, Sekhmet’s roar of sorrow rattling her own bones.
“I dedicate this soul to Hades,” Cleopatra shouted, and then she hurled the body of the Slaughterer down, into the dark waters of Avernus, as she’d promised the god of the Underworld she would.
Cleopatra waited for the sky to open and strike her down, but nothing happened.
The waters steamed and boiled as Plague sank into them.
Her skin blistered, her body smoking, her hands burning, and healing cruelly even as they burned, Cleopatra limped back into the cave of the sibyl, sobbing at the loss of the thing she had killed. She did not love it, no, she did not, but Sekhmet did, and what Sekhmet felt, Cleopatra felt. The loss of a child. A dear one.
And what was she? A betrayer. A child killer. Was she not the same as the creature she had murdered? Was she not herself a murderer? At the same time, she had torn herself from Sekhmet. She had done something on her own, something in opposition to the goddess. She had delivered the first portion of her bargain. One more act, the sacrifice of Chrysate, and she would win Antony’s soul and those of her children as well. They would go to the Duat. If that was all she could do, it would be enough. She might be a slave to a goddess, but they would be in heaven.
She stretched herself on the cold stones of the sibyl’s cave. The bats looked down upon her, their faces curious. Their high-pitched song filled her ears and gave her no comfort.
At last, she slept, dreamless.
As she slept, snakes slithered into the cave. Cats twined their sleek forms against the rock walls. In the valley beyond the crater, a bear trundled down a hillside, and a tiger traveled silently across the field. The rhinoceros immersed itself in the lake of Avernus, washing the dust of the road from its rough skin. A small splash, and a crocodile surfaced in the lake, having traveled by water through underground caverns and along coastlines for days.
An elderly lion, toothless and mangy, padded across the mouth of the cave, lashing its tail, and guarding the queen who slept within.
19
Sekhmet reeled on her hilltop, gasping and shaking. The quiver of Slaughterers hummed with confusion. Only six were left, and one had gone into the dark, where she could not see it. Where she could not feel it. Where she could not find it.
Her youngest child had been taken from her, by the human she had made into a god.
Night fell, and still she was broken. Ra did not come to comfort her. He traveled senselessly, silently, his boat traversing the Duat. He cared nothing for his daughter. He’d abandoned her, and she was alone.
The wind spun about her head, blowing and singing, and Sekhmet shook with sudden cold.
The earth rattled with the grief and fury of the sun god’s forgotten daughter, but she could not smite Cleopatra without smiting herself.
20
The seiðkona sat in Selene’s room, her back straight in her chair, her seiðstafr spinning in her hands. The floor still quaked beneath the Palatine, and high above the house, there had been a long and woeful scream. A hungry star had died, and the seiðkona had heard it. A goddess grieved her child. The seiðkona stretched her fingers, paying close attention to the alterations in the tapestry. Sekhmet’s