Chapter Seventeen
No one knew where Truman had taken me or how long I’d be gone. On one hand, it kind of seemed like the dumbest time ever to sneak back to Caesarion, but I convinced myself otherwise. My friends wouldn’t go looking for me or asking questions when the Elders were involved, and the Elders seemed convinced I was nothing more than an easily distracted, lustful teenager.
Not wrong, just misguided.
Let them think I’d gone back to my room and cried myself to sleep, then woke up telling myself all of the ways I was going to be a better apprentice in the future.
Making my roommates worry gave me pause, but just for a moment. I had the rest of my life to make it up to them, but Caesarion had only a handful of days. A couple of weeks, at best. I considered sending Analeigh a wrist comm, but she wouldn’t let me get away with a vague don’t worry for a second time and besides, it would blow the cover the Elders provided when they grabbed me from Reflection.
By my calculations, even Caesarion’s tentative timeline in our Archives seemed to be off. Historians on Earth Before guessed that his mother had sent him from Alexandria prior to her death, but now I knew he left the same day Octavian ordered Cleopatra to surrender or die. I promised myself that one day I would correct his path in the Archives so my True Companion would be remembered by everyone, not only me.
I jammed in the scrambling chip with more efficiency than the first couple of times and grabbed a change of scarves from Sarah’s closet and a bottle of painkillers, then hurried down to the travel chamber. My Egyptian clothes waited in the broken decontamination drawer where I’d stashed them the other day. A quick switch of the sash from navy to aqua changed enough to make me feel fresh, and the dusty sandals molded to my feet. More and more, ancient Egypt felt like home, but I knew it was Caesarion and not the time or place that suited me.
With time travel, Caesarion never really had to die, at least not for me. If I were a full Historian—one willing to break the rules—I could return to the day in the gardens and meet him for the first time again and again. I could return earlier, run alongside him in the reeds along the Nile, play silly games together as children, or I could arrive in the days before his death and steal the same hours from now until eternity.
But it didn’t feel right. It’s why we chose to return and observe specific moments and events in a linear fashion, and why the Originals had implanted the twenty-four hour self-destruct. No matter the advancement of our technology, or the tattoos and comps that helped us seamlessly adapt to different worlds, languages, and cultures, life was meant to move forward.
As I set the date, time, and place on Jonah’s cuff, then lowered my mouth to the speaker to request that it take me to Caesarion, I knew that once he returned to Alexandria I would never see him again if I could help it.
This was my life, our story, and like all moments in time, it could only truly be lived once. Memories could be recalled and re-examined but never redone. We did our best to say the right things, to express enough, in the moment.
Or we lived with the regrets.
*
Berenice, Egypt, Earth Before–30 BCE (Before Common Era)
My luck with timing my arrival didn’t hold a second time. When I arrived, Caesarion and his party were taking supper by a small fire, and by the looks of things, he was the only one happy to see me.
Shock and anger colored the guards’ features as I shimmered into the evening. Caesarion’s relieved and delighted grin barely registered before his contingent of protectors flew to their feet and rushed me. I didn’t fight, unsure how to best handle the situation and following the instruction flooding my brain through the bio-tat, which insisted I appear as nonthreatening as possible.
Caesarion stood, his eyes hard as one of his guards yanked my arms behind my back and two others pointed swords at my chest and belly. The one behind me twisted my arms hard, and I cried out.
The blood drained from my True’s face, his white-hot fury electrifying the evening. “Do not hurt her, Ammon, or I will snap your head off with my bare hands.”
The guard behind me, who must have been Ammon, loosened his grip in surprise but didn’t let go. My eyes met Caesarion’s in an attempt to convey both my gratitude and to warn him to proceed with care.
“She appeared from nowhere, my Pharaoh. The girl is a dark one.”
“Or a sihr,” a second guard spat, disgust dripping from his chin.
The last word didn’t translate exactly into English or Latin, or even Greek, and it took my brain stem tat a minute to give me a workable definition. It provided a loose translation to sorceress or witch, and then returned a file on ancient Egyptian belief in witchcraft and magic. The knowledge relaxed the tightness in my shoulders. Magic and witchcraft intertwined with daily life for these people, and wasn’t considered inherently evil, as it would be once the Catholic or Islamic Church established a foothold. But a layman, and a female, harnessing the heka raised their defenses, especially around their revered Pharaoh.
“I’m not going to hurt him,” I stated, putting all my honesty on my face. Forthrightness heard in the voice, seen in the eyes and posture, crossed worlds and cultures and centuries. I only hoped they would choose to see my intention. “I love him.”
Caesarion startled at the confession, and Ammon dropped my arms. I took a hesitant step toward my True, stopping short when the other two guards didn’t lower their weapons and the old manservant stepped in front of his royal charge.