I wanted more. I wanted everything his kiss was promising, but I didn’t want to wait. I wanted to be claimed by him, bonded to him, joined with him. I wanted to feel whole again, because kissing him, feeling my body flush against his, made me realize that I’d been a fractured being since the moment I arrived in this time. I no longer had the luxury of existing as just me, a single entity, but was part of something greater—us. I needed to feel us again.
Moving my hands down the outsides of his thighs, I started gathering up his kilt. I could feel him, so swollen and needy under that fabric, and at that moment, removing that barrier was the single most important thing.
He sucked in a breath when I finally found him, when my fingers finally encircled him. His hand was suddenly wrapped around my wrist, preventing my hand from moving, and his other clasped the back of my neck. He broke the kiss, his breaths hard and heavy.
Leaning his forehead against mine, he said, “Answer me this, Alexandra, and do not lie . . .”
I pulled back, searching his eyes and shaking my head. “Answer what?” I didn’t understand his sudden mood shift. He was still pulsing with desire—we both were—but there was something else, an underlying current of accusation, of anger.
“In the future, are we bond-mates, as well?”
“I—” Had I left that part out? Things had happened so quickly . . . “Yes, Heru, we are. I meant to—”
“I will not be trapped like this.” His voice was hard, and definitely contained a thread of accusation.
I released him, but he maintained his hold on my wrist and neck, and my stomach twisted with dread. “It was not meant to be a trap. I just—”
“I have known you barely six days,” he said, his harsh words cutting through mine. “Why would you think that was enough time for me to bind my life to yours?”
My blood heated, but I refused to let him see how much his words hurt me. Keeping my expression blank and staring into his smoldering eyes, I said, “Remember that I have known you for much longer than that. I was not thinking . . . I apologize.” My eyes stung with unshed tears, but I gritted my teeth and held them back. I’d cried far too much since arriving in this time. I was done with it. “Please release me.”
Heru pulled me closer and searched my eyes. His outrage at nearly being “trapped” melted away. “You must give me time, Alexandra . . . time to know you better . . . time to decide for myself.”
I licked my lips, fighting the urge to raise my face those last few inches to once again feel the soft pressure of his lips against mine. “I understand.” I swallowed back a sob. “I understand, I do, it’s just . . .” The sob fought back up and broke free despite my best efforts to keep it contained. And damn it all to hell, I started crying. “It is so difficult, Heru . . .”
With a sigh, he wrapped his arms around me.
I clung to him, my hands clutching his sides as I gave in to the sorrow, the desperation, the heartbreaking longing I always felt around him. “I miss you so much . . . and being around you . . . but not being with you . . . it is the most difficult thing . . .”
Heru didn’t respond, didn’t console me with words. He simply held me and rubbed my back, giving me as much of himself as he could.
It was almost worse than if he’d given me nothing at all.
27
All & None
I wandered away from camp amid an ocean of sand dunes, seeking solitude. I crested the nearest and started down the other side, looking back over my shoulder every few steps. Once the clusters of long, pale tents and the glow of tiny cookfires were no longer visible, I lowered myself to the ground and bent my legs, hugging my knees to my chest.
I glanced back at Heru, who was standing sentry on the dune’s peak, his hands clasped behind his back. His attention was everywhere, listening, watching, waiting for some imminent attack I didn’t think would ever come. “There is nobody but our people out here,” I said with a sigh. “I think you can leave me alone for a short while, at least.”
Three days had passed since our near-bonding encounter during the sandstorm, since I’d learned that one day, in the distant future, we would have children—or we would perish—and Heru had been keeping his distance, or as much distance as one could keep from another person when one was sworn to protect that person and refused to be released from one’s oath. Of course, he didn’t know about the children thing, but still . . .
Being around him all day, every day, when he was so clearly afraid to touch me, to even move too close to me, was exhausting; he’d even recruited Set to help me practice my slow-to-develop hand-to-hand combat skills. I constantly felt like I was on the verge of tears, and I wanted to punch Heru for being able to do that to me. I’d never been a crier . . . not until I met him.
Healthy, Lex, that’s really, really healthy . . .
But honestly, most of those tears had been caused by Apep-Set, and Heru’s presence had merely been a coincidence. Even my current situation could be laid at Apep-Set’s feet. Thinking that made me feel a little better.
“Well, Heru, if you insist on remaining, at least come sit with me. It makes me nervous to have you standing there.”
“I am watching over you.”
“Perhaps, but you also might be making silly faces at the back of my head, or—”
His lips quirked. “I have not, and I would not. I swear it, little queen.” It was the first time he’d called me that since the sandstorm.
I smiled weakly. “Come sit with me, Heru. Please . . .”
He relaxed his stance and released his hands, letting them hang at his sides as he started down the sandy slope toward me. He sat on my right, keeping a few inches between our hips, and stretched his legs out in front of him. The distance made my heart clench, just a bit.
Taking a deep breath, I forced myself to smile and turned my face up to gaze at the night sky. It was so different than the one I was used to, dimmed by city lights and viewed through a haze of pollution. This ancient, pristine night sky stole my breath every single time I saw it. The stars were brilliant and too many, bleeding together like freckles after too much time in the sun. And then there was the Milky Way, sweeping across the sky in a nebulous arc.
According to one ancient Egyptian creation myth, the goddess Nut would swallow the sun, Re, every evening and give birth to him the following morning, over and over again. I’d read in a book once that the ancients believed the arc of the Milky Way to be Nut’s body, arching over the earth, sheltering us all while we waited for Re to be reborn.
“Does it give you peace?” Heru asked.
“Hmmm . . . ?”
“Staring into the heavens.” He cleared his throat. “You do it so often, I can only assume it brings you some manner of peace to see something familiar in a place that is clearly so strange to you.”
I raised my eyebrows and looked at him, taking in the sharp edges and hard planes of his face, the silvery sheen of starlight in his eyes, the lush curve of his lips. “I see something familiar every time I am around you.” The words were out before I could stop them.
Heru frowned, and averted his gaze. “But seeing me does not bring you peace.”
“Perhaps not, but it does keep me alive and healthy.” I hugged my knees more tightly.
Heru was silent for a long time. “This will make me sound quite dense, but I have to admit that I did not consider that you would be suffering from bonding withdrawals were you to be away from me for too long.” He shook his head. “I cannot imagine what that must be like.”
“No,” I said, “you cannot.” And to ease the sharp edge to my words, I offered him a smile, albeit a sad one. “But one day, you will understand.”
Heru’s eyebrows drew together, though he didn’t respond.
I returned my attention to the stars. “Do they bring you peace?”
“They trouble me.”
Surprised, I lowered my eyes to him again. He wasn’t looking up at the sky, but at me.
“I do not u
nderstand them,” he said, “and things I do not understand trouble me.” I wasn’t sure if he was talking about the stars anymore.
Swallowing, I forced myself to look away. I lay back on the sandy slope and stared up at a scene more beautiful than any piece of art. “In time, people will come to understand the stars better, and then they will start to explore them, much as they will explore every part of this world.”
“Explore the heavens?” I could see him out of the corner of my eye, staring down at me while I gazed up at the night sky. “How could we explore something that is not of this world?”
“Because it is of this universe,” I said, laughing softly to myself. To be the one teaching him something . . . it was pretty damn fun. “The stars are . . . they are like our sun, for the most part, huge orbs of burning gas. But some are like our own world, with lands and seas, and others are giant balls of ice, and others are . . .” Glancing at him, I felt a flush spread up my cheeks and down to my chest. “Sorry . . . I got a little carried away.”
Heru merely continued to smile his small, secret smile and stare down at me.
I sat up. “That probably did not make any sense anyway. An astronomer I am not.”
He tilted his head to the side. “What is ‘astronomer’?”
“I guess you could say it is a person whose job is to study the heavens.”
“Why would anybody make this their job? For what purpose?”
“To learn . . . to understand . . .” I shrugged. “I suppose it serves the same purpose as what I do in my time . . . uncover what ancient people left behind—artifacts, ruins, their bodies—to understand them better.”
“And what do you call someone who does what you do?”
“An ‘archaeologist. ’”
The corners of Heru’s mouth twitched. “So even though you were unaware of our people, that you might one day be able to view times long past in the At, you found your own way to peer into the past.” His eyes squinted as he smiled. “You intrigue me so very much, little queen.”
My receding blush flamed back to life, and I picked at a pulled thread in the skirt of my dress.
“I would like to hear more about these other worlds that are like our own.”
My gaze snapped to his. “Really?”
He nodded.
“Um, okay . . .” I curled my legs under me so I was kneeling, facing him, and started drawing in the sand between us. “So, this is the sun, and—”
“Did you know that when you are excited, you sometimes slip into your native tongue?”
I offered him a small smile. “Sorry.” Returning to my drawing in the sand, I told him about the solar system, providing those details I could about each planet and some of the moons.
Heru found earth’s moon and the sun the most intriguing, likely because those were the two most present in his everyday life. He was fascinated by the fact that the sun was so much larger than the moon, but didn’t appear so in the sky, which only amazed him further because it made him think about how far away the sun really was.
I’d expected him to fight me on the whole “the earth is round” concept, but he merely nodded, his eyes narrowed in thought. Just because he was a younger version of himself, his intelligence was no less sharp, his focus on a subject no less intense.
I was just diving into a diatribe about Pluto, arguing that it didn’t matter to me if there were a million hunks of ice floating around out there just like it, Pluto would always be a planet in my mind, when Heru shocked me speechless.
“Do you have any idea how much I love you,” he said in heavily accented English.
My mouth fell open, and I snapped it shut before I could look like a buffoon for too long. I stared at him, searching his eyes.
“Will you tell me what that means now?” he asked.
I looked down at my fairly elaborate sand drawing of the solar system, poking little craters into Mars with the tip of my pointer finger. “I do not think I should . . . it will make you uncomfortable.”
“Because you did not mistake me for Nuin,” he said. “Because you were speaking to me, were you not?”
I added a flying saucer near the moon.
“Please, little queen—Alexandra.” Heru captured my hand and started rubbing his thumb against my palm. “Tell me.”
Staring down at our joined hands, I swallowed roughly. And then I told him.
“But you were not really speaking to me . . . you were speaking to who I will become.”
I nodded, and hated myself just a little bit for doing it. “Marcus—it is your name in my time. My ba traveled to my present while I was unconscious—it does that sometimes—and I found you there.” My voice grew thick. “You wrapped your arms around me and kissed me and . . .” Blinking, I took deep breaths. “And you told me you loved me, and then I was waking up, and you were right there in front of my eyes.” I looked into his eyes, searching those shimmering silver-gold depths. “I said it to Marcus and to you . . . and to every version of you between then and now.”
“I think that if I were him”—Heru smiled ruefully—“which I am, what would upset me the most about this situation would be not knowing what you were going through . . . not being able to do things like this, to sit and stare at the stars or to know what you were doing all day. Even now, even unbonded, it pains me to think of . . .” He clenched his jaw. “The thought of not knowing . . . I think that would be utter misery.”
I shook my head, heart swollen with hope despite my mind not entirely understanding his point. “What are you suggesting?”
“Why not leave something behind for me to find in the future—a record of your time here? It will give you something to do once we are at the Oasis . . . other than training with Nuin, and with Set, Nekure, and me, of course.”
My lips parted and I grinned. “I think that is a wonderful idea.” My excitement was short-lived, and I bit my lip, feeling the need to keep our budding proto-relationship based on honesty. I gave his hand a squeeze. “I have to tell you something, but I need you to promise to listen . . . to not say anything until I am finished.”
Heru eyed me, his expression contemplative, his eyes wary. “Go ahead.”
I took a deep breath, and then I dove in. “I cannot stay in this time. I—there will come a day, maybe in a few weeks, maybe in a few months, when I must return to my own time.”
He shook his head violently. “No, I will not allow—”
“Be quiet! You promised . . .”
“I did not.”
I rolled my eyes. “Just let me finish,” I said. “When I leave, if we have bonded—if you decide that is what you want—then I will be able to create a shield within you that will prevent the withdrawals—”
“But I will know you are gone, and—”
I shook my head. “No, Heru, you will not know, because I will lock those memories away in your mind.”
He withdrew his hand from mine. “I see.” He seemed on the cusp of saying more, but instead, he pushed off the sand and stood.
His sudden distance, sudden coldness, shredded my heart. “Heru—”
“Let us return.”
I sucked in a breath to protest further, but exhaled instead of saying anything. Deflating, I stood and walked with Heru back to camp. Neither of us uttered another word.
PART FIVE
Netjer-At Oasis
Present Day
28
Seek & Hide
“So it’s true then—you were there when Nuin died,” I said to Aset during one of my how-to-be-a-real-Nejerette lessons. The blood running through my veins felt as electrified as it did when I was around Carson. For nearly a week, we’d been camped beside the jagged, sand-swept rocky lumps that had supposedly been part of the Netjer-At Oasis thousands of years ago, and I’d finally worked up the nerve to ask Aset if she’d been at the Oasis when Nuin died and the whole place collapsed in on itself. Or so legend said . . .
Aset smiled, making her cheeks rounder, which only mad
e her prettier. She was one of those gorgeous people who I just couldn’t hate, even though I really wanted to—I mean, really, who looks like that?—because she was just too effing nice. I supposed it made sense that she would be perfect-looking, since she was Marcus’s twin sister and all, and really, nobody could deny that he was drool-worthy to the nth degree. I also supposed that Marcus must’ve missed out on the “nice” gene . . . or maybe Aset stole his.
“I was there—here—at the Oasis,” Aset said, “but I was not present for the Great Father’s death, no.” She was sitting across from me at the top of a sand dune near camp, her legs crossed and her hands clasped in her lap. “Are you ready to try again?”
I bit my lip. I really wanted to ask her more questions—Are the legends true? Was the Oasis home to a city made of crystal? Did the whole thing collapse when Nuin died? Is that why it looks like a big ol’ pile of rubble? But I was practicing using restraint, hoping doing so would make people stop treating me like a pre-manifestation teen and more like a full-fledged Nejerette.
And I was grateful to Aset, because she treated me like I mattered, like I could help, like she actually gave a shit about me. With Dom, Jenny, Neffe, and Alexander still in Cairo, waiting for Lex’s parents and grandma, and everyone else pretty much expecting me to turn traitor like my mom, Aset was one of two people I could call a friend right now, Carson being the other. I didn’t know why she treated me so well, but I was really grateful she did.
Exhaling, I nodded. “Yeah, okay, let’s check again. Last time it seemed sort of stable . . . or more stable, I guess, and the twenty-third time’s the charm, right?” I smiled at her nervously. Ever since the Set incident, the At had been unstable—damn Nothingness. It definitely wasn’t the best time to learn how to navigate the At, but I’d had some of the best teachers available—first Dom, then Aset—so I’d say I was pretty lucky. “You really think having me with you in there is helping? Or, at least, isn’t hurting?”
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