"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.

"With him art thou far and away out of thy depth. His soul is awash in blood and his heart fed by avarice. Never forget that. Never become what he is."

"You are too severe. I know him better than thee."

"I see into the hearts of men, my queen. Do not doubt what I know of Caesar's vainglory."

"I doubt not your foresight, Lord. I only question how a god may know the hearts of mortals. Many are the times that thou hast confessed thy want of mortal sentiment; that thou yearns to know what blood secrets enliven the heart and enkindles it to beat for another." Down his granite ridges she moved her fingers, allowing them to trail along his immortal flesh like feathers. Her mouth quirked with feline pride to see that his flesh had not remained unmoved by her touch. "Thou speaketh of the vainglory of man, yet thou comes to me a man." She allowed her nails to trail softly over his thighs, howbeit, she knew better than to divagate whence she had been warned never to trespass. "A man's pride of flesh withal."

The watcher compressed his lips and halted her progress with iron fingers that he wrapped around her delicatel wrists, unwilling to acknowledge the dread that she had awakened along with his lust. All he did say was, "If thou make Rome thy bedmate, understand that it lies there not as thy lover but as a snake waiting to strike when thine eyes close."

"I have thee to protect me, have I not?" With a persistent tug, she gained the release of her hands and reached one up as far as she could—which was hardly higher than his sternum—the gesture invitation enough for him to lower himself and place his cheek in her waiting palm.

Yet he stayed as he was, as motionless now as a Sphinx. "I would rather instruct thee to protect thyself. To be as the Sphinx—to walk both among mortals and lions, but be neither; be mightier than either. That is what I want for thee."

"To be a queen of kings—is that not to be my destiny?" A pretty smile tugged at the corner of her lips.

Ay, he thought, but you would make yourself a pawn of kings. To her, the seraph made no answer. He stepped back and, after a sullen pause, unfurled his wings and soared into the night. He knew she would not listen. Had he given to her what Caesar had...well, then he might have stood a chance, but he was ever aware of the looming abyss that forbade what he desired most to give her. A mortal's love.

In the realm of men, he knew time flew at the speed of a hungry kite and that if he took for himself an hour to brood it might equate to a year on earth. He did not care, for he could no longer watch her with Caesar. Perhaps he would wander among the Babylonians and Assyrians for a time; possibly he might find his hermitic brother still mourning the loss of their sister. Perchance Gadriel might fill him with the wisdom he himself had not taken. The wisdom that now seemed to have fallen far from Kassiel's grasp.

It took years of wandering among the Persians before he finally found the creature that had once been his brother. How grotesque his form appeared now that Heaven's light no longer shone upon him. Hellish wings were now replete with sharp promontories that rose like black peaks above his dark head. At his feet lay a young Jewess, flesh cold and waxen. No breath moved from her frozen lungs and her veins were as hollow as her unseeing eyes.

The eyes of the creature, however, were black with dolor and rage as they fell upon Kassiel. "Hast thou come to gloat, watcher?" He spoke not in the language of the Seraphim but in that of the Akkadians he'd been banished to live among all those centuries ago.

"I come in the name of love, brother."

"Love?" Gadriel gave a sharp-toothed snarl and turned away, his black hair falling over his face like a pall. "Leave me. I know nothing of love, brother."

"Would that I too knew nothing of it, but I find that I have fallen."

Gadriel lifted his head an imperceptible degree and glared through gleaming stygian hair. He was listening.

"I love a mortal."

"I warned thee against straying too near the flock, now it is thee that wears that stupid ovine look." His jaw set with bitter woe. "'Twas never our lot to love them."

"Ay, but she is no ordinary mortal, brother."

"The mortal thou wert sent to watch perchance?" His eyes seemed to darken further. "A child of the hunted ones?"

"Ay, the daughter of Sariel." He had not meant to love her at all, for she was forbidden not only for being a mortal but for being a Nephilim as well. "Only the dangerous are hunted now, brother. She is no Lycaon."

"Lest thou forget, they are all dangerous in one way or another. Most of all to themselves."

"She is different." Or so he had once thought.

Gadriel gave a grunt and shook his head. "Thou art a greater fool than I ever was." He stood and faced his brother, black eyes meeting light. "Yet here I must dwell in the dark, the eternal unclean, and there thou stands, in the light of God." A soft growl fulminated from his breast. "Go back to your throne in the north and steel your heart, watcher, for nothing good comes of loving a mortal." He stretched his wings out like great shadows, the horns glinting frightfully in the moonlight. "Do not search for me again." He slipped into the darkness with a sibilant shuffle of wings, stepping carelessly over the lorn remains of his bloodless victim.

Kassiel watched him go. Thenceforth, despite his brother's premonitory censure, he betook himself directly to Alexandria. He had stayed away far longer than he'd meant to. Cleopatra would be nigh twice the age she'd been when he'd left her.

He was aghast to find the changes that had been wrought. His queen was so much changed, albeit not for the better.

"Thou forsook me!" She turned away when he first appeared at her window. "Thou said thou loved me, god of lies."

"I was ever thine and I love you still." It chilled his blood to know how fiercely he loved her despite her weakness.

"No, Antony loves me now." She clutched her hands together and held them fearfully to her heart, rubbing them fitfully together as though they would never be clean. Hands stained by wayward ambition. Indelible stains that the deaths of her siblings had left.

"Love?" His face contorted much the same as Gadriel's had. "Bah! Thou hast made a mockery thereof! Antony is but a dog that whines and growls at the feet of Octavian, yet thou would fain befoul thyself with such a lowly cur." Thrice she had borne him children, but it was the names of the twins, Helios and Selene, that rankled most. "He has begotten the sun and moon from your wasted womb." Kassiel gnashed his teeth in anguish, his heart breaking anew. "Wherefore didst thou not wait for me? I would have given thee the sun and moon!"

"Even for thee, lord, I could not wait forever!" The kohl ran wet and dark from each of her lower lids like the Eye of Horus.

"Child," said he in warning accents, "you know nothing of forever."

"Then begrudge me not my love for Antony, for he does what thine eyes hath only ever hinted at. And he has never forsaken me."

"He is no better than Caesar! He wants thee for thy navy. He wants control of Egypt through its mistress. Thou hast nurtured thy lands and prospered greatly. Thou art pharaoh of the richest land in the world, my queen, but do not deceive thyself. Rome holds no love for thee and what little love she has for Antony is even now being diluted by the sharp tongue of Octavian." Kassiel had once been so proud of her, and his part in her ascension, but, it seemed, his foresight had been clouded by lust and love for her; he'd forgiven her strange obsession with poisons and forgiven still more. "Thou poisoned thy brother and had thy dog, Antony, murder thy sister. What hast thou become, my love?"

She threw her arms out wildly, her beautiful voice ricochetting discordantly in the vast bedchamber. "I am what thou hast made me!"

"Keep thy voice down!" said he, glancing furtively at Heaven as he retreated from her. He had only meant to prevent her doom, yet it seemed he had only hurried it along in the end. "Thou hast made an enemy of Rome; and I have made an enemy of God." He melted swiftly into the shadows, the sound of his wings echoing off the walls. Nevermore would he watch her again howsoever it wounded his heart. He, an immortal, was out of his depths here. Ay, he had no business meddling in the lives of mortals, nor, indeed, in the business of queens. In the blink of Heaven's eye, he had failed to forefend the ruination of his only love; moreover, it was he that had brought death swiftly to the last queen of Egypt.

❦

Winterly was startled abruptly from his melancholic anamnesis. He blinked away the mists of time and glared down at the girl who had so violently thrust his wrist away from her mouth. His nose fluttered as it filled with rose water and the sweet, earthy perfume of green apple. Amidst her irresistible scent, however, there came a sharp tang of fear that he had come to despise in her. Her bloodied lips were slack with horror as she withdrew from him, gaping.

"Now you know who I am," said he.

"A killer!" Emma dragged her wrist athwart her quaking lips. Lips that still glistened with his dark, unholy essence.

"You knew that ere you came to my bed." He snapped his teeth together, vexed at her continued horror. "Tell me, what did you see in the blood memory?"

"I saw you kill Cleopatra!" With that, Emma lifted her skirts and flew from the library.

♡LOL, I read this chapter to my fiance. "Are people actually into this?" he asked. 😅 I really hope the blood memories chapters weren't too much. I'm trying to get this finished so I can publish it by October. Please let me know what you think. Also, THORNE BAY will finally be available tomorrow. Once I get the free promotion activated, I'll send the link to my email subscribers. Haven't subscribed yet? Head over to jeaninecroft.com. I promise I won't ever spam your mailbox. Sneak peeks, bonus chapters, and giveaways are all I'm interested in sharing with you. And by the by, I will be updating here every Friday, my lovelies.♡