Vampyre Bride ✔️

XXXV⎮Forbidden Fruits Part II

"Thou hast lain with Caesar." The firelight quaked beneath the watcher's veiled wrath.

Cleopatra's eyes snapped open and thereat climbed to the window where the angel stood, his wings rustling ominously against the backdrop of glittering constellations.

With a brusque flick of her wrist, she sent the servants hastily from the room and bade them close the door. After all, it would not do to have a queen engaged in a colloquy with herself. She stood from the fragrant waters of her bath and therefrom, with deliberate and sensual grace, moved lightly across the room to stand beside him.

Her eyes betook themselves across the Mediterranean which lay like a black mantle beneath the stars. "Wilt thou not congratulate me on my brother's defeat, Lord?"

Kassiel'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 lovely complexion. The mark that had drawn the attention of the gods. "To what purpose?" said he. "Thou hast spared no expense in gratifying thyself. It would have behooved thee to mourn thy brother and appease thy people." 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 womb. A life that he resented, though he ought not to.

"Not even a spurious tear shall I shed," said Cleopatra. "I must be true always to myself."

"Care thou for the Roman?" Kassiel watched her carefully for her answer.

"I do."

It galled him to know that she spoke true and that her heart was indeed touched by the general. "He is well-nigh thrice thine age."

"And all but the emperor of Rome," she replied with a regal lift to her chin.

"Ay, one that already has a wife."

"But no son." She 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."

"And where do I fit into thy schemes?"

Her hand stilled over her neck where she had applied a liberal portion of cream. "Didst thou not tell me once that thy sister bore the fruits of a mortal's seed?" She turned slightly to consider him over her creamy shoulder.

"Ay, but Sariel paid the ultimate price." A cost that had been borne even by his brother.

"A pity then. I once hoped that thou might make of me the mother of the sun and moon." She stood from her stool and turned to face him, heedless of her naked glory. Like as not 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? Your wife? I would have loved thee better than anyone."

"Ask not what I cannot give thee." It was not the first time she had exercised her wiles so blatantly; so heedlessly. "I come here not to repeat the follies of my kin but to advise and to love thee." 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. Cannot thou see that?"

After her exile, she had amassed a force and marched on Alexandria only to be thwarted by her brother—or rather by Achillas and Potheinos. She had devised for herself an audience with Caesar, who had lodged himself in the royal palace and appointed himself the mediator between the young co-rulers. How amused Kassiel had been at her antics when she had had herself secreted into the palace rolled up in a Persian rug. How captivated Caesar had been. However, for all her charms—of which Cleopatra had many—Caesar was still and always a politician and a conqueror at heart and not even Cleopatra's clever tongue was worth an ingot of gold. The unprecedented attachment that the young queen had formed to the old man in the wake of civil war had greatly disturbed her guardian watcher.