Excerpt
PROLOGUE JULY, 44 BCE They say a comet burned across the Roman sky the summer after he died. A streak of fire. Brilliant, unnatural, divine. Some said it was a sign from the gods. Others said it was a god. The soul of Julius Caesar, ascending to the heavens, leaving behind the body they’d stabbed 23 times on the Senate floor. The people called it the Sidus Iulium, Caesar’s Star. Because what do you do when a man like that dies? You immortalize him. You rewrite the laws of nature. You pretend the sky had always planned for this. You name a star after the man who broke your world open and rebuilt it in his own image. Julius Caesar wasn’t supposed to happen. Rome was a Republic. Cold,...