I forced my feet the final steps to the gates. My heart pounded so loud it hurt my ears but the palace guards, dressed in animal-skin sarongs with weapons strapped to their bare chests and hips, barely spared me a glance as I entered.
Fifty years into life on Genesis, and as a girl, I still felt dismissed on occasion. It turned out the inclination to judge someone based on their anatomy ran deeper than any other prejudice in our species, and expunging gender discrimination had been the hardest task of the Genesis establishment team. But in Caesarion’s world, my femaleness allowed me access to private grounds that would have been barred to me if I had a penis. Thank you, vagina.
I’d worried Caesarion would still be in his rooms, or already gone from the city. I wound through the lush gardens, dizzy from the cloying perfume on the sea breeze and the lack of sense in my brain, knowing I would never work up the nerve to try another time if I didn’t find him this morning. My crushing disappointment lifted at the sight of a figure underneath a sagging date tree. It was a boy, seated on a stone bench in front of a burbling fountain. My heart slammed into my ribs, and my mouth went dry. What felt like a million tiny little magnets came alive under my skin, tugged me toward the still form, but walking with knees made of water proved impossible.
Something deep in the core of me recognized him, even without seeing his face.
Caesarion.
Chapter Seven
Nothing the geneticists or Sarah or anything ever written about Trues had prepared me for this experience. For this feeling of knowing someone else with a glance, for seeing my whole future open up in front of me. My body felt exposed, all of my nerves open and raw as I stared, rooted in place by a pleasant, buzzing terror.
A tunic of dark purple linen covered his slumped, shaking shoulders and his black hair was shaved close to his scalp. Sadness surrounded him like a cloak, diffusing into the air and burning in my throat. An innate desire to comfort him drew me forward even though I should have turned around the moment it became clear we were alone together.
He heard my footsteps and swiveled his head. Midnight-blue eyes flicked to me for the briefest of seconds, so fogged with grief I doubted they registered much of anything. Then he waved a dismissive hand in my general direction. “You’re very pretty, but passing the morning with you won’t fix anything. Leave me.”
The air between us felt charged, left me short of breath, as though someone had punched all of the oxygen from my body. I dug my fingernails into the rough bark of a date palm to try to anchor myself, but it didn’t help. He’d noticed me. Spoken to me. Shit.
I was in big, fat trouble.
Even though the brain stem tat insisted I leave, that Caesarion—Pharaoh—had dismissed me, moving required muscle control, which required oxygen, which required breathing, and basic motor function felt like the vaguest of concepts. I wasn’t connected to my body, somehow.
Then the reason for his dismissal struggled through the haze, and it felt like an elephant kicked me in the stomach—he thought me a concubine, dispatched to ease his sorrow.
Heat flooded my cheeks. Tingles spread through my skin as I tried to back away from this boy who inhabited a world so impossibly different from mine. Apparently the wardrobe of a lady and a prostitute didn’t differ all that much around these parts, but regardless, this wasn’t going as planned. Starting with the fact that I was absolutely, positively not supposed to be talking to him.
I glanced up at the sky, waiting for things to start blowing up. For the future to start changing here and now because of what I’ve done.
Nothing happened. Yet.
Caesarion’s long fingers curled into fists where they rested on his thighs. His rigid posture signaled his annoyance—perhaps at being glimpsed in his grief, perhaps because I still stood, rooted to the ground at his back. And despite his dismissive, superior air, when he said leave me, I heard leave me alone. I ached with the knowledge that his mother had just died, that the foundations of his world had been crumbling for the better part of his life, and they were about to wash completely away.
I didn’t want to leave him. He didn’t have to be alone.
My fear of breaking the no-contact rule, verbal or otherwise, asserted itself even though I badly wanted to correct his rather insulting—at least to me—assumption. Not interacting was the first and most often repeated regulation pounded into our apprentice heads, and offended or not, my tongue might as well have been sawdust.
Before I could obey the bio tat’s commands to keep silent and turn tail, Caesarion stood on strong legs. I had a brief impression of shorter stature, a sinewy covering of tanned muscle, and an enticing air of power before he stepped over the stone bench separating us and grabbed me.
His fingers bit into the flesh of my upper arm. Terror looped around my heart in a tight coil, squeezing as pain spiked in the base of my skull. I squeaked as the bio tat’s attempt to force me away from my True’s touch almost dropped me to my knees. I gazed up into his face, trying to gauge his intent, or how to escape this situation gone suddenly, horribly wrong, and realized his eyes were closed. I stilled, mesmerized by the sight of his long, black lashes against his ruddy cheeks.
“Maybe it could help,” he muttered. Pain trickled over his face like a dozen rivers that connected in his eyes, spilling a lone tear down his cheek.
His mouth landed hard on mine before I could think to struggle.