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Oiled and coiffed, Berenice welcomed Archelaus to her chambers that night. As he reclined upon the divan, she looked at him with fresh eyes. From a distance, bronzed with the sun’s heat, he gleamed, a painting quickened off the palace wall. But when he was near at hand, her eyes sharpened at his wears. The skin around his knuckles cracked from the wind, his eyes squinted even when the sun was bent, his gait lagged from some injury she couldn’t name. He scarcely looked like the same man who’d wooed her in the menagerie that day. That man had shone with hope. And yet this one needed her—he did. She saw that clearly in his eyes. He might lie about many things, but not that: the aching in his gaze.

“My love.” She knelt beside him. “My love, what troubles you?”

“It’s poor luck,” he murmured, running a hand along her waist, “for a general to share his wife’s bed before battle. I should be out in the elements with my men.”

They shared this too, she realized, this lying about what they needed. That gave her courage. Perhaps this lying might reveal another sort of strength.

“Your men,” she teased, “sleep on soft mats in the lodges of my forefathers. For many, these past weeks have been the most luxurious of their lives. There’s no shame for you in indulging as well. Tomorrow, you march. Tonight, we should enjoy each other.”

He turned away. Berenice felt him slipping from her grasp, his worries creeping up on him.

“My love.” She aped Seleucus’s patterns, invoking words to force sentiments. “My love, what frightens you?”

She slipped her hand down his taut stomach. His body tensed beneath her fingers.

“Nothing frightens me.” His tone belied his words. When he looked at her, whatever truth had crossed his face was hidden. It didn’t matter. The truth didn’t live between them anymore. “It’s Aulus Gabinius who should be frightened now.”

“I’m sure he quakes within his tent, lying on the hard, unwelcoming ground.” With her finger she traced his mouth. It, too, was lined with cares. He bent to kiss her, and her lips met his eagerly. The sweat still lingered on them. He lifted her as he stood; his heart pounded against her own as he laid her on the bed. Warm fingers slipped along her sides, teasing the cloth from her skin. The room was hot, too hot; the fire blazed too bright. Its heat prickled at her flesh. In one swift motion, Archelaus lifted the chiton over her head, letting its pins fall where they may. And then her trembling began. She couldn’t help herself—no matter how many times they made love, the beginning frightened her. That lurking threat of Seleucus, of pain and spite—that she could never quite forget.

Archelaus’s kisses grew more urgent. Berenice fixed her eyes upon the hearth. She hoped it might calm her quaking form.
He won’t hurt you,
she whispered to herself.
He never has.
He’d freed himself from his robes. Her pupils burned against the flames. He entered her. She did not cry out in pain. A dozen separate licks consumed the fresh sycamore, in yellow and orange, a taste of blue. With crackling fingers, the flames lurched onward, devouring branch after branch. Their appetites insatiable. The dead man twitched on top of her and collapsed.

Time stretched thin before he stirred. And when he did, there was a strange look in his eye, an intensity that Berenice hadn’t seen before. He sat back on his knees. His gaze fell slowly from her eyes down to her belly. Impulsively, he kissed her stomach, and whispered to her womb.

“May the gods let a child blossom here.”

“May they indeed,” she echoed back.

And then he nestled against her, his head buried in her breast. She stroked the hair curling on his head and neck until his body twitched and his breathing slowed with the quiet rhythms of sleep. And for a long time afterward, she lay stiff and frozen, fearing that the slightest motion might disturb him. This was love, she realized, for she loved him deeply then, with a ferocity she hadn’t felt before. She was desperate to protect him, willing even to trade his death for hers. When dawn pried open her lids, she was surprised to find that she’d slept at all.

Morning brought other changes as well. Weary Archelaus had been rekindled as a raring, burgeoning version of himself. There had been some truth in Leda’s words: her husband had needed her and this—it had restored his vigor. This bold and jumpy creature had stolen the worn one’s place and was pacing back and forth across her onyx floors. With a quick kiss, he slipped from her, anxious to rejoin his men, his mind already flitting over his new plans.

From the eastern portico, Berenice watched the army ride into the rising sun. When the last packhorse disappeared over the horizon, she turned to Merytmut. She had known this moment would come, though she hadn’t wanted to admit it. Not even to herself. Not when she could still feel the remnants of his seed spilling out between her legs. The maid’s eyes were blank and unreadable. Better her than Leda.

Berenice spoke harshly to mask her regrets. “There are methods to ensure that a child won’t latch onto the womb. You’re familiar with such potions?”

The girl nodded.

“Good. Brew some for me tonight. And bring me a tonic to help me sleep.”

Berenice walked back into her chambers. She would not weep. She’d known this too, this price she would pay for loving him, for wanting him. If Archelaus returned, they’d make another. But she could not be saddled with a dead man’s babe.

Younger

T
he library’s great reading room was drained clean of men. The sardonyx pillars that, like Atlas, heaved up the limestone sky made for dismal companions. The lion-clawed benches clustered about the meeting tables looked lonesome, crying out for the scholars’ return. Arsinoe wondered where they’d gone. Had they returned to the refectory to weather the coming tempest, or had they fled Alexandria entirely? Did the city stand empty too? After all, the void reverberated to every corner of the royal complex. Only her sister Berenice remained, shuttered away in her private rooms, as a skeletal set of guards, slowed by wounds and years, haunted the halls and courtyards.

Here, Aspasia and Hypatia lingered too, slouching on one side of the table, whispering secrets as though nothing had changed, while Arsinoe and Alexander sat across from them, knowing full well that everything had. The chamber was warm, the air close and sticky, her eyes bleary with sleep. But then a page would crinkle or a quill would scratch, and she turned all ears: alert. And the guards burst through the ebony doors.

“Arsinoe.”

They dragged her screaming from the room.

“Arsinoe.”

She fought them, tooth and nail and talon. She tore away their flesh, and feasted on it with her beak.

“Arsinoe.”

A claw pinched her skin above the knee. Alexander.

“Ouch,” she mouthed to him, rubbing the red mark on her thigh. His eyes darted anxiously to Ganymedes.

The eunuch swelled when angry, and he was swollen now. As swollen as she’d ever seen him. When he phrased the question again, he pronounced each word with exaggerated care: “Tell me, Arsinoe: why does Electra respond as she does to her brother’s appearance? Why won’t she believe he is who he says he is?”

She sucked her upper lip. What did it matter anymore why Electra believed her brother’s claims?

“That’s simple, Ganymedes,” Arsinoe stalled. “Any child knows why Electra, daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, doesn’t believe that her brother, Orestes, is who he says he is.” Repeating the query was her favorite dilatory tactic. They’d been discussing Aeschylus—she remembered that much. But whenever she read that early version of the tale, she skimmed over the brother-sister bits. She was too eager to reach the description of the dreams, first of Cassandra, and then of Clytemnestra. Arsinoe clung to the hope that these might shed light on her own.

“Tell me, then, if it’s so simple.”

“Electra, daughter of Agamemnon and Clytem—”

“We know who her parents are. Stop stalling.”

“I’m not stalling!” She hated when the eunuch caught her at her tricks. “Electra is surprised to find that her brother has visited their father’s tomb. She thought she was the only one, the only one who mourned Agamemnon’s death.” Shorn of embellishment, her words wandered on, listless, daft. Like this lesson. Why did Ganymedes insist on pretending that nothing was wrong?

“Indeed, she did suspect that. But any child, as you say, with a passing knowledge of the myth might give the same answer. We study Aeschylus’s interpretation, it would behoove you to recall.” Ganymedes’s eyes bent to the other children. Hypatia picked studiously at her nails, and Alexander fixed his eyes on the unbound scroll before him. But Aspasia smiled and met the eunuch’s gaze.

“I know why Electra didn’t believe it was Orestes at once,” she answered in her lesson voice, prim and proper.

“I didn’t ask you, child,” Ganymedes chided. “I asked Arsinoe. As our princess seems to be too distracted to attend her lessons, the rest of you may go. Arsinoe alone lacks understanding of this work.”

His words stung. It wasn’t fair to shame her before her friends. “I understand—” She started to object, but the eunuch cut her off with a glare.

Aspasia looked disappointed—she’d grown ever more determined to show off. But Hypatia could scarcely conceal her delight. Of late the fair-haired girl had been looking especially eager to rush from their lessons. Arsinoe suspected that there was some secret reason for her playmate’s glee. Some boy, perhaps. But she’d never know the truth of it. The two girls, her sworn companions, were distant with her now. As though Alexander’s nearness polluted her royal blood. She didn’t mind. She didn’t care for them either.

“Go,” Ganymedes barked. “Now.” Hypatia and Aspasia fled.

Alexander lingered, rolling his scrolls slowly and meticulously, one letter at a time. He, too, had perfected the art of stalling.

“Alexander,” the eunuch snapped. “What are you doing?”

“I’m minding the scrolls, Ganymedes,” the boy protested. “I know they’re very old.” The eunuch only glared, and under his watchful eye, her friend finished his business quickly and fled the room.

“Your studies don’t wait upon your leisure, Arsinoe,” Ganymedes scolded loudly, as though he wanted the whole library to hear. “You must pay closer heed to the lines in question. Begin by reading Electra’s antistrophe with the chorus. The one that starts ‘What should our prayers be saying.’”

Arsinoe cleared her throat. “‘What should our prayers be saying, that we suffer the pain of our parents? She tries to fawn, we’ll not be charmed, like savage wolves, we’ll not be tamed, no mother comfort soothes our rage.’”
^*

That line gave her pause. She liked the ring of it. And that was how she was too: savage and uncharmed. Her mother had abandoned her, the stranger that she was, and she would not be soothed. Not like her weak-willed brothers, reared on mother’s milk, nor like Hypatia and Aspasia, who’d never understood what it meant to be alone. Only Alexander did. He’d been left by his mother first and then his father too.

When Arsinoe looked up again, she was surprised to find her tutor still there. Usually, he prompted her quickly when she got lost in her musings. But now he watched her from across the table, matching her in silence and stillness. And then, all at once, long after her companion’s footsteps had faded, he seized her wrist. His voice cut in a hoarse whisper: “Follow me.”

Heart pounding, Arsinoe did as she was told. The other flight, their failed one, flashed vividly before her eyes. Achilles with his throat split, fading in the servants’ corridors. But she had no choice: her tutor’s comfort was as close to a mother’s as she would get.

Ganymedes tramped through the library, farther and farther from the halls that bordered the palace grounds. Arsinoe knew that there was an entrance that adjoined the street as well, but she’d never passed through it herself. Surely that must be their destination—why else go through these strange halls and atria she’d never seen before? These rooms looked shoddier than the ones on the royal side. The benches here were hewn from ordinary wood, ungilded. She suspected that common citizens might even be allowed to visit on occasion.

She panted, racing to keep up. “Where are we going?”

“You tire of our cloistered lessons, Arsinoe, so the time has come for practical ones.” Ganymedes spoke in the strange, breezy voice he used when she was certain he was spinning excuses from the ether. “There’s no better way to see which way the wind blows than on the city streets.”