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“My queen.” Merytmut bowed. Throughout her nearly two years at court, the girl had flouted all its courtesies, and now that she’d embraced them, it was too late. There was a bitter irony in that.

“Did any messages come in the night?” Berenice’s desperation coalesced around that question. She should have insisted on facing her father’s forces in battle, rather than agreeing to rot away here in the palace. In camp, she would have known the outcome at once, not be forced to watch for fire signals and messenger birds.

“None, my queen,” Merytmut answered. “All silent.”

The need to act—to do something, anything—overwhelmed Berenice even though she knew there was nothing to be done here in Alexandria. Nothing that mattered, at least. She grasped at the empty air.

“Summon my councilors,” she told the girl. “In an hour, they’re to attend a meeting in the atrium.”

“Your—your councilors,” the maid stammered.

“My councilors, yes. Are you deaf or simply dumb?” She cursed Merytmut, and her own softness too. She’d asked for the potion with good reason. Why dwell on the life that had drained from her? What fate would have met the son she might have borne after her father stormed the city? The boy’s head would be smashed against the stone, if he even lived that long. Regret was an affliction of the weak.

“But my queen, Dryton rode with Archelaus to the battle.” The girl answered gingerly, as though addressing a child or someone of feeble mind. “And the eunuch…you’ve banished him from your sight. And—”

“Bring Thais, then,” Berenice snapped. She didn’t need this accounting of who’d left her already and who merely intended to. She cared only about those who remained.

“I’m afraid Thais has not been seen since the army marched against Gabinius’s men.”

“Damn him,” Berenice spat, more for effect than for any other reason. She could hardly feign surprise. Her reedy adviser had shown no backbone in the easiest of times; of course he’d fled when the breeze changed. “He’s no great loss. Send for Nereus, then, and be done with it.” Fitting that the last man who remained to her was the one whose underhanded loyalties she knew for certain.

Merytmut’s voice trembled as she answered, “The old man is no longer with us.”

The blows came quickly now, one after another. It had begun with Pieton plotting with the concubine. And now the rest had left her—for her father, or for the underworld.

“What do you mean?” Berenice tried to recall how Nereus had looked when last she’d seen him. He’d appeared hardy enough, though she supposed a man of his years might die at a moment’s notice. “Why didn’t you tell me at once?”

“It happened while you were ill,” the girl protested. “And I thought it best to spare you.”

Berenice brushed away her hurts with callous words. “Men die. Old men die often. What does it matter—” She cut herself off. Merytmut’s face, so often blank with mystery, told the plain truth now. “He didn’t die, then. He deserted me as well.” She should have foreseen this—one treachery always wrought another. Her father had taught her that lesson long ago. First he turned against her mother and then against her, the first child of his loins.

“It’s said that he fled to Antioch. To tend to some bastard babe of Seleucus.”

“Of—of Seleucus,” she stammered, unbelieving. Old men were plagued by foolish fits of devotion too. After all these years, he still loved Selene, dead Selene, enough to wed his fortune to her infant grandson.

What had she done to earn such little loyalty? Did they sense the softness in her, the weakness she’d fought so hard to hide? She’d inspired men—inspired soldiers to fight for her. What happened to that woman riding among Seleucus’s men, men who had hated her with every fiber of their being? She’d won them over with her words; she’d amazed them with her strength. She’d hoped that one of her advisers would stand by her still. That thought, too, reeked of regret. Only one had ever cared for her: Pieton. And she’d cursed him and sent him away. There was no use in dwelling on that. She would be strong—she would show Alexandria her queen.

“Run a bath and dress me for court,” she told the maid. She couldn’t stand another moment alone with her own thoughts.

Though Berenice had steeled herself for silence, the quiet of the great courtyard stunned her. Some guards remained, men withered deep into their years, but they numbered few enough to make her uneasy. And they did not shift nor spit nor laugh the way their younger comrades had. Their spirits had already been worn away. Resigned to their fate, these men merely stood, watching and waiting for the end. The two who looked after her were not much better, though at least they had a proper number of teeth between them. Archelaus had begged her to let him leave fitter guards, but she had dismissed the idea. She wouldn’t have the tales say that the battle was lost on account of her delicacies.

As she neared the royal atrium, the palace grew lonelier still. A few courtiers lingered about the further colonnades, but even they shunned this place. For the first time that Berenice could recall, her father’s splendid floor mosaic was on full display. Dionysus, his copper curls crowned with ivy, sat on his leopard, a gourd of wine in one hand and a staff of fennel in the other. Satyrs danced, hands clasped together, whirling madly about the god. In the far corner, set off from her divine consort by a solid border of rolling blue waves, lay naked Ariadne, her dark hair drifting over her breasts. Forsaken and useless. Like the woman that she was.

As Berenice climbed up to her throne—and it was her throne, not the Piper’s—she wondered whether it would be the last time. Ever since she’d watched the bloody rise of dawn—even before, when she’d first seen the blood leaking down her thighs—she’d known that her husband wouldn’t win this battle. His recruits couldn’t stand against so many men, so many
Romans.
She’d taken her pleasure—and sent him to his death.

The hours ticked slowly onward. The sun slid through the windows at ever-changing angles, as though this day was no different than any other. Berenice’s seat grew numb. She shifted on the gold-plated ivory; it was never meant to be a comfortable chair. Even her father had known better than to swathe its harshness with cushions. Not that he’d much cared for public audiences. The lightest excuse—a hunt, a banquet, a woman—always proved enough to send him on his way. “A good king,” he’d told her once, “knows when to send an adviser to do his bidding.” She wondered at her memories of him, of the foolish lessons he’d imparted to her about what it meant to rule. Could she trust those recollections? All those years ago, as her mother birthed those monstrous babes, had her father truly regarded her as his heir? Or had that, too, been part of some childish dream?

“Queen Berenice the Shining One.” The herald’s voice cut off her musings. “A messenger begs an audience.”

“Show him in,” she answered. From the corner of her eye, she could make out her nervous guards sizing each other up, deciding who should move first to defend the queen. Or, more likely, they were merely bored, preoccupied with the minutiae of their own small lives. She couldn’t imagine that they cared much whether she lived or died. Not even her sometime councilors did.

The boy who stumbled through the greatest archway looked even younger than the usual ones. He quaked with each passing step. These commoners were always quaking when they bore the messages of their betters. A few sprigs of hair—the beginnings of a beard—trembled on his chin. He must be nearing manhood, Berenice supposed—older than she’d first thought.

“What news do you bring?” she prompted.

“My queen, I—I—” he stuttered. “My queen, I…” His voice trailed off. His eyes lingered over the barren atrium. Even this lowborn child recognized her peril. “I didn’t wish to disturb—”

“Do I look disturbed?” Berenice gestured about the empty room.

“No, my queen. I—”

“I look to be quite alone. I can’t imagine why your presence would be a disturbance to me.” Her feeble heart wished to delay his words—to cling to her last moments of hope, to ignore the truth, the knell of death.

He flushed purple.
Never show them you are soft.

“Out with it.” She pushed the reluctant words from her mouth. She clutched at strength.

“My queen, the battle’s lost. Archelaus is gone—dead, it’s thought. The Romans surround the city walls.” The boy dispatched his words quickly. And then, shaking, he left her too.

It had come to this. She was encircled by Romans, by blood and death. And she could do nothing to stop the onslaught. It would take someone far harder and braver to halt Rome’s inexorable rise and return her dynasty to its lost glories. No regrets, no weakness here. And yet she could not sit still and be patient. Instead, she paced about the atrium, taking a strange delight in kicking at Dionysus’s face. Her footsteps shuddered through the palace; she took pleasure in the sounds as well. These pounding steps as the battle soured would be her last remembered act as queen. Servants would tell their children and their children’s children how the dreadful Berenice had seethed and roared in the last days of her reign. “Take care,” they’d warn as they tucked in their little ones at night. “I hear that fearsome creature still haunts these halls, howling for Archelaus.”

“Archelaus!” She keened for him, for the dead man who’d shown her that paltry bit of love. Had it been love, as he called it, or simple folly? And whose fault was it but hers that he lay on some battlefield, gasping his last breaths? The moment he quit her halls, she’d marked him as a corpse.
I will not bear a dead man’s son.
She’d bear no sons at all. Not even monsters, as her mother had.

An outside scuffle reached her ears: the sound of flesh on flesh, a servant’s yelp, and then a creaking door. Berenice’s heart calmed; none of it mattered. She was prepared to greet death. She savored this moment before she turned to look her killer in the eye. But it wasn’t her death who stood before her, at least not the one she’d expected. No, it was a far more familiar figure, as shrunken by defeat as she.

“Pieton?” Her voice strained and broke. “What are you doing? Why have you come?”

“My queen…” He hung his weary head. The familiar sadness flickered in his eyes as he shrugged his shoulders. The little girl inside her wanted to run to him and weep, the way she had those years ago when her mother had been driven from the palace and he’d promised her that, one day, she would be queen. But she was not a child anymore. Her tutor had betrayed her, and his treachery cut deepest of all. He’d plotted with that woman—that concubine who’d first turned her father’s eye. No, she did not need his comfort.

“Berenice.” Her name—not “my queen,” not her title, but her given name alone—sprang from his lips. He spoke it as gently as he had when she was a child. She couldn’t bring herself to chide him for the closeness. “Berenice, you must listen to me. I beg you, Berenice. You must flee.”

“Flee?” The sound escaped her body as a sob. “Flee? Flee?
Flee?
” Each repetition stripped the word of its meaning. “
Flee
my throne, my city?” There was no sense in it, in a plea for flight.

“Berenice”—again that name, that wretched, besieged name—“I beg you. There’s no hope left. I—even I have…” Pieton’s voice trailed off. Then he straightened up and met her eye. “I’ve sent word to your father. I’ve offered him my services, such as they are.”

His lips moved, but she couldn’t make sense of the phrases that escaped them. So many times they’d spoken here, the queen and her eunuch. She couldn’t recall a time when he hadn’t lurked at her side, a shadow and a protector. Even when he’d spoken to the concubine, she’d known somewhere in her heart that he’d been acting for her. For what he imagined were her best interests. After she’d sent him away in anger, she’d never believed him truly gone. But he, too, had betrayed her in the end. She couldn’t even hold his loyalty.

“Did you think that your treachery would shock me?” she asked cruelly. She had to be cruel now. “When did you turn against me? Don’t pretend that this marks the first time.”

“Berenice, I have never betrayed your trust. Of all your advisers—”

“Of all my advisers,” she spat. She clung to fury, as though it would stave off weakness. It had in the past. “You’re the only one to come before me and confess your deceit. What a remarkable way to distinguish yourself.”

“And what have the others done?” Pieton asked. “Dryton fought in the battle with Archelaus. Where is he now? Did he come rushing back to rescue you and defend you to the death? And what of Nereus, that wretched old man? Is he lurking about? Or has he, too, scampered off into the night?”

The eunuch knew—he always did, as though he’d been blessed by some second sight. No, she would not marvel at him. She’d curse him and send away his temptations. His promises of life.

“You’re right. I should be grateful that you’ve come to taunt me, that you lacked the decency to merely desert me as the others did.” Berenice bit her lip. She tasted blood upon it. Her skin had begun to crack all over these past few days, around her eyes and her mouth, down even to her toes. Her army’s flaws made manifest.

“I haven’t come to taunt you, Berenice. I’ve come to offer you your last chance. Your father means to execute you. If you don’t leave, you will die.”

The truth—she could still recognize that. And she would cleave to it.