The Passion of Cleopatra (Ramses the Damned 2)

Her miserable wails were consumed by the ocean wind whistling around the stateroom's porthole, the ship's sway causing the brass fixtures in the room to knock inside of their sockets, a sound he'd found soothing at the outset of his voyage, but which now seemed to taunt them both.

"What am I, Teddy?" she whispered. "What is this thing that I am?"

He grabbed her by the shoulders. He almost shook her, but managed to stop himself in time. He poured his anger into his words instead. "You are Cleopatra VII, the last queen of Egypt. One of the greatest queens the world has ever known. You are descended from Alexander the Great. You ruled an empire that fed Rome, and your capital city was the center of all learning, the center of all art. The center of the very world. And you, its queen. And your son. Your son, Caesarion. He survived you and became--"

For a moment, it had seemed as if his lecture had taken hold in her. But at the mention of one of her children, her expression twisted into a grimace.

Too painful, this memory? Had it been a mistake to include it? He'd also read the history books he'd purchased for her. Caesarion had survived her for only a short time before being slain by Octavian's men. But Teddy thought it would save her from despair, to be reminded that her suicide in defeat had not been the true end of her family line.

"Caesarion." She said the name as if she had never heard it before. "Caesarion..." She was testing the feel of it on her tongue.

And then, whatever alarm she saw in his eyes, brought the look of torment back to her own.

"Who is Caesarion?" she asked in a trembling whisper, tears sprouting from her eyes. His lips parted, but he couldn't bring himself to answer. "My son? My son, you say?"

"Yes," he answered. "The child you bore with Caesar."

She shook her head, as if she was trying to jostle the memory of him back into place.

It didn't work.

He would have preferred to see her tear the stateroom apart in a rage. If she had needed to hurl him into the nearest wall in a moment of forgetting her own strength, he would have allowed her to. Anything would have been preferable to this convulsive despair.

She shook with sobs as he carried her to the bed. He forced her to drink.

Water, first, and then some of the remaining coffee, black, in hopes that it might center her, perhaps bring some clarity to her mind.

But what a vain, foolish hope. What could a substance as ordinary as coffee do for a creature such as her?

What could he do?

This question tormented him once again as she curled her body against him.

Her sobs quieted, and then it seemed she had left the room in her mind, even as she lay in his embrace. Her stare was so glassy-eyed and vacant he gave in to the nagging urge to jostle her every few minutes to make sure she had not slipped into some kind of coma.

Sibyl Parker. He played the name in his mind again and again. Something familiar about it.

British or American? He wasn't sure. And why the familiarity?

Finally, it struck him. A book he'd read while working in the Sudan. A spectacularly diverting tale of magic and ancient Egyptian kings and queens. He could barely remember the plot, only that he'd fallen into it with utter enjoyment. The author's name, Sibyl Parker.

"I must leave you for only a moment," he whispered suddenly. "I'll bring more food and drink when I return."

No pain or fear in her expression when he said these words. But she did reach for him. He took her hand. She seemed to study him with pity. "You claim to love me, Dr. Theodore Dreycliff. Is it still so?"

"It is not a claim," he said. "It is a statement of fact."

"How? How can you when you do not know what I am?"

"I know what you are," he said, taking her face in his hands. Even though their lips were only inches apart, her eyes studied him, coldly now. "I know who you are, even if you do not. And I know who will save you from these troubling visions. We will see him soon enough, and we will stop at nothing until he gives us the answers we seek."

No kiss, even though his position made him ripe for it. Instead she caressed the side of his face with one hand. Gently, absently, as her focus wandered past him, and she once again stared into the void of her own despair.

"Minutes, my darling," he said. "I will be back in only minutes."

Disorienting to be rushing about the ship now, after days of having been so isolated from its hustle and bustle while he'd watched over her in the stateroom.

He found the ship's library in no time.