Part of me wished he would go further, ask more—I didn’t know if now, in this moment, I could deny him. It might be my only chance to know what it felt like to be with my perfect match, and to give that up in the interest of propriety didn’t exactly feel right. The other part of me quaked in terror at the thought of that kind of intimacy at all, and a teeny, tiny voice worried about the man I would one day love enough to marry—that I would remember this one perfect night, and nothing could ever compare. That I’d know I’d settled for less.
“I do not want to hurt you, Kaia. It surprised me, your confession of love back at our camp, but it stunned me more to feel love in return.” A gentle smile softened Caesarion’s face. “This is all unknown, to me. I have known familial love, and the love of a people, but never this pull to a woman. I find that I want to protect you, even if it means denying myself what I want very badly, to ensure you remain intact.”
Intact was not how I felt. I felt exploded into a million pieces, scattered over the sand and naked in front of the winking heavens. It was vast and impossible to describe, the feeling of being with him, of hearing him attempt to express the same emotions that rolled through me like waves.
But no matter what decision would be made regarding the two of us and how far we would take these stolen days, tonight I was not ready, and his sweet understanding pricked my eyes with tears. “It doesn’t make sense, to love a man I’ve spent only hours with, and yet I do. Love you.”
He didn’t reply, trailing a single finger down my throat until his palm settled over my heart. The Egyptians had been the one to latch onto the idea of the heart as the center of feelings in the body, and even when later sciences confirmed they originated in the brain, the colloquial importance of the heart remained even now, in Genesis.
Caesarion picked up my necklace, toying with it the way I often did when thinking of him. “What is this?”
“A family heirloom.”
His eyebrows pinched together as he squinted at the engravings in the moonlight. “The laurel wreath and the palm branch. Not symbols often paired. What does it mean?”
I closed my hand over his. “That sometimes love doesn’t arrive when it’s most convenient, but that obstacles can be hurdled when people care enough to find a way.”
“There is no way, Kaia.”
I scooted to the side, and he shifted off me and onto his back, propped up on his elbows as he studied the sea. I turned on my side, my head resting in my palm so I could drink him in. “I want to know more about you.”
“I would not deny you a single desire.”
A shiver raced down my spine at the implication I heard in his words, something silky and sexual, even though I couldn’t be sure he’d meant to put it there. Down, hormones. “Why are you not betrothed? You are more than old enough, and a Pharaoh of Egypt.”
He glanced at me, gaze lingering a moment before he lay all the way back with his arms behind his head, peering up at the heavens. “My sister is too young to marry.”
I swallowed the revulsion climbing into my throat at the admission. The Ptolemies were a Greek family ruling Egypt and had intermarried for generations. Cleopatra had been married to more than one brother, I thought, but ignored the bio-tat’s confirmations. They hadn’t known better, and Caesarion had not been forced to cross that strange line yet.
It wasn’t strange to him, I knew, and wasting time explaining the facts and dangers of crossing closely related genomes didn’t appeal to me. He would be gone long before it would become a worry for him, anyway, and we were not given time travel so that we could fix Earth Before.
Except, based on Minnie’s reflection, it seemed as though altering previous outcomes had been a consideration at one time.
Caesarion turned his head to look at me, his blue eyes big and full of wonder. “I never expected to know love, Kaia. I have known pleasure, and my sister Selene is a sweet child who will make a fine wife, but love … It is a thing of myth, reserved for the gods.”
I reached out and slid my fingers between his, locking our hands together on the beach between us. “Until now.”
“Yes, my love. Until now.”
“I understand why the guards think me a sihr, but what did they mean by a dark one? I’ve never heard that term before tonight.”
“There are ancient stories of people dressed in black, who appear out of thin air and murder without touching. Their victims simply collapse, turned to liquid on the inside, and the dark ones disappear in the same fashion as, well … as you do. It is superstition, nothing more.”
My heart rattled against my ribs. It didn’t sound like nothing to me. It sounded like Oz had been popping up other places with his Gavreau waver, and perhaps doing more than knocking over pretty girls. How many times had he traveled, intent on changing one thing or another? It had to have been more than once to start the kind of association the guards had made between my appearance and death.
“What is it? You are as white as the stars, Kaia.”
Words snagged in my throat, partially because of the bio-tat, but more because as soon as I brought up the trouble at home, this time was no longer only ours.
“Please, tell me. Perhaps I can help. I know I don’t look it, but I can be quite smart.”
That made me laugh, and the lump in my throat dissolved. “I think you look clever.”
“And handsome?”
“Of course. And handsome.”
He waited, a soft thumb brushing the back of my hand. My muscles relaxed, one at a time, and I knew it was time to ask for his help. It was the reason I’d come back—one of them—and time ran short. “There’s a boy.”
“I do not like the sound of that.”
“Not in that way, trust me.” I gave him a smile. “Like I told you, we have strict rules about traveling through time.”
“The ones you’re breaking here with me.”
“Well, yes. This boy, he’s breaking them, too, but I don’t know why. I followed him the other day and he interfered with an important development that afterward disappeared from history. I don’t know why, or if he’s working alone, or how he can be sure his actions won’t have terrible consequences. It could erase more things in the future.”