Queen of Kings - Maria Dahvana Headley [4]
Cleopatra awaited him in the doorway of their bedchamber.
“It is not over,” she said, breaking his trance. He shook off his thoughts and took her in his arms, relishing, even in these dark times, her shape against him.
“It is,” he told her. “It will be.”
He ran his hands down her back and over the roundness of her hips, pulling her tightly to his chest. Grief nearly overtook him then. If he did not win the next morning, the Romans—his own Romans—would tear her from him, and there would be nothing he could do to stop them.
Antony had been married three times before and had even thought he loved before, but he had been wrong. This woman was all he wanted. She was his general, his queen. The gods had willed it.
Antony put out a hand to run his fingers along Cleopatra’s throat and over her collarbone, and she tilted her head, watching him as he touched her. Her body had borne three children for him, another for Julius Caesar, and still, at thirty-eight, she looked like a young girl, with her smooth, bronze skin, her humorous mouth, her dark, long-lashed eyes. He could see the beginnings of lines around those eyes. The passage of time became her. Her curves had gotten softer, though she was still slender. She’d never looked more beautiful, even in her simple nightdress, her face without its customary paints, her fingers and arms stripped of their jewels. He untied the knots at her shoulders and let the gown fall.
She walked to the window and drew back the curtains to let the full moon shine in on them.
“A good omen,” Cleopatra whispered, smiling at him. “We will win this war.”
He looked at her as she stood naked in the moonlight. Her straight spine, her golden skin, her black hair still twisted up with glittering pins.
“We will win this war,” she repeated, her tone suddenly fierce.
“I fear we’ve already lost it,” he said.
“Perhaps I know something you do not,” Cleopatra replied.
“Is there a legion hidden in the palace cellars?” he asked, and laughed bitterly. He didn’t have enough men. He had known it from the beginning, and he’d fought anyway.
“The gods are on our side. I can feel it,” she said, her jaw tensing with determination. She suddenly leaned out the window, looking at something passing on the street below, her brow furrowed.
Antony rose to see what she was looking at, but she whirled, guiding him away from the window and pushing him back onto the bed.
“Don’t look out there,” she said. “Nothing is wrong. The city sleeps. Look at me.”
Antony wondered for a moment what it was she kept him from seeing, but she stroked him, kissed him, swore to him that together they would prevail.
As ever, he was unable to resist her. In truth, he did not wish to. If this was the end, then let it be spent with his beloved, his hands memorizing the smooth hollow at the top of her thigh, his lips singing the silken folds of her. Antony marveled at the miracle of it, feeling her take a breath in even as he cried out, her fingers clenching his shoulders and her muscles tightening around him.
“Again,” she whispered, and he saw that her eyes were full of tears. He kissed her face until they were gone.
They made love for hours, even as the sounds outside the window grew louder and louder, music and laughing, screaming and shouting.
“I am yours,” she swore again and again, and he believed her, took strength from her.
“As I am yours,” he told her. “Until we both are dead.”
“And thereafter?” she asked.
“And thereafter,” he answered, holding her tightly, feeling his heart beating, and feeling hers as well.
At dawn, he kissed Cleopatra good-bye and marched his remaining troops through the Canopic Gate and toward the hippodrome, resolved to meet his death with honor.
He watched from a hillside as his fleet, rowing in galleys from the harbor, threw themselves courageously against Octavian’s force. Maybe Cleopatra was right. They might win yet.
He drove his fist into the air, preparing