Daughters of the Nile Read Free Page B

the same. The memory makes me drain my cup, then fill it again. Wine will make this night easier.
    Come, Dionysus, and dull my senses .
    “We owe Caesar our fealty,” Juba continues, as if trying to talk himself out of touching me.
    Perhaps he feels as if he needs his master’s permission, which makes me insist, “We owe him nothing more than fealty. If he wishes, let him declare an end to the Roman Republic. Let him call himself King of Rome, the King of Kings. Let him rule the world from the Palatine Hill and settle the squabbles of all his client kingdoms. We can keep ourselves apart, here in Mauretania, and reign in peace.”
    Juba considers my words, staring at the rim of his cup. “It will be no simple thing. You’re a Ptolemy, born to intrigue, drawn to the center of political power like a moth to flame . . .”
    It irritates me that he uses my legacy as an accusation, when it’s my prestigious bloodline that helped secure his throne. “You’re the one who longs to return to Rome, not me.”
    I think he might deny it, but he wipes the corners of his mouth with a napkin and says, “I dreamed all my life of returning to Africa as a king, never realizing that it would be an honorable sort of exile. I pine for Rome because that is the only home I’ve ever known. But Mauretania is our kingdom now and it must become a home for us both.”
    His stark honesty softens me. He must sense it, for he offers me a hand and helps me to rise. My sweat-slicked palm slides through his grip and my cheeks flush. I’ve spent a lifetime masking my emotions, mastering my body down to the slightest tremble so as not to quail from the emperor’s touch. But I cannot seem to cool my blood, which now runs hot with anticipation.
    There can be no going back from this.
    Juba seems as anxious as I am about the long-overdue consummation of our marriage, and when our eyes meet his voice becomes a hoarse whisper. “It doesn’t have to be tonight.”
    He’s wrong. It must be tonight, before the emperor thinks better of having let me go. It must be tonight, before I am again summoned to Rome to play another deadly political game. It must be tonight, before either of us loses our courage. So I tilt my face to him in invitation, sweeping my eyelashes low in the way I have learned excites a man. It has the desired effect. As if resolving an argument inside himself, Juba says, “Cleopatra’s daughter, you are lovely.” Then he catches sight of the pale henna designs on my skin and frowns. “But why must you come to me painted?”
    Because I can never let you see me unmasked .
    The henna is set. He cannot wipe the intricate designs away like he wiped my face clean of paint the night we were wed. These tattoos are, for a time, an indelible part of me. A barrier that he cannot breach. The only defense I have. “Tala said this is ornamentation for Berber brides.”
    “But you are no maiden bride,” he replies, as if to shame me for having attracted the emperor’s lust. “These patterns only remind me I’m not your first lover.”
    It would be easy to let my temper boil with offense, but I am guiltier than he knows. I carry a secret love for a man whose name I cannot say, so my tart reply is without real venom. “Yet I need no henna to remind me that your bejeweled hetaera still graces our court, well rewarded for having prostituted herself to you. She cannot be the only one . . .”
    My husband takes in a breath as if in preparation for a bitter rejoinder, but then chuckles. “Only you would think that a relevant comparison. A wife has a duty of marital fidelity; a man may take pleasure where he likes.”
    It’s pointless to argue, for in truth, I don’t much care where my husband takes pleasure. I know what it is to feel the true stab of jealousy, one that bleeds your soul. I’ve drowned in misery and longing for the man I love. Juba is not that man. Nor is the emperor that man. That man, my true king, the other half of my