Cleopatra: Queen of the Nile / Season 1, Episode 4
Shadows of Allegiance
Episode 4: Shadows of Allegiance The night air clung to Cleopatra’s skin, damp and heavy with the scent of jasmine and the faint tang of the Nile’s muddy banks. Her heart thudded in her chest as she crouched behind the low stone wall of the palace garden, her linen tunic catching on the rough edge. Beside her, Apollodorus breathed shallowly, his massive frame hunched unnaturally low for a man built like a bull. The rustle in the bushes had stopped, but the silence was worse—thicker, loaded with the promise of danger. She could almost feel eyes on her, hidden in the dark, waiting. “Stay down,” Apollodorus hissed, his voice a bare scrape of sound. His hand rested on the hilt of the short blade at his waist, fingers twitching. “If they’ve got archers, we’re done for out here.” Cleopatra’s jaw tightened, but she didn’t argue. She wasn’t a fool. The garden was a maze of shadows, the flickering torchlight from the palace barely reaching the outer paths where they hid. Every rustle of palm fronds sounded like a footfall, every whisper of wind like a drawn blade. Her mind raced, piecing together Apollodorus’s words from moments before. A threat from higher up. Pompey, or Caesar himself. She’d known the Romans were circling like vultures, but to send someone into the...