I almost wished Zeke would intercept me on my way out tonight. Then I could pass the buck. Let someone else take the life of the one person I wanted most to live.
But our future was on the line. Everyone’s but most of all, my family’s. Now that Analeigh was involved, her trajectory tangled with mine. Sarah, too, if she really had invented the chip tech for my brother. I wasn’t sure even David Truman’s position would excuse Oz if the Elders found out that not only had he shown me the Projector, but that he’d helped hide my illicit travels and forbidden interactions as well.
I may not have liked Oz very much, but I didn’t want his blood on my hands. Caesarion’s would be enough, even though it had been and would remain on Octavian’s hands. A blood sacrifice that would tie the future imperial seat of Rome up in a neat little bow.
All I had to do was murder the boy I loved. Save the world.
*
Egypt, Earth Before–30 BCE (Before Common Era)
Caesarion looked surprised to see me.
I didn’t blame him. I’d toyed with the idea of sneaking up on him and his guards in the middle of the night and using the waver Oz had handed over, but it didn’t feel right. My True knew he had to die, but Caesarion valued honor and bravery. Murdering him in his sleep seemed cowardly.
Unworthy.
I’d seen many deaths over the past seven years. Some violent, others calm. The ones that left the bitterest taste were the sucker punches, like Jesse James or Dillinger. We’d watched Caesar get one of the biggest ones of all time mere weeks ago, and his son would not die the same way. Not if I had anything to say about it.
Which, it appeared I did.
They were taking a break from riding, the horses grazing along the banks of a stream and the guards wading in the shallow water. Caesarion stood barefoot on the bank, staring down into the trickle of brackish liquid as though it held the secrets to unlocking the universe. Now, with him alive, breathing in front of me, and looking damn sexy in such a relaxed pose, my courage to do what needed to be done withered.
My lips tried hard to smile when he caught sight of me, but I knew they failed. His handsome, tanned face curled up in a sad grin, dusky blue eyes crinkling at the edges. My heart climbed into my throat and throbbed until he blurred into a human-shaped form that reached out and pulled me against his chest.
He whispered words that meant nothing, nonsensical comfort, into my hair. “Kaia, my love, what’s wrong?”
Over his shoulders, all of the guards had sprung from the water and studied me warily, hands on their weapons. They would kill me if they got the chance, and it hurt that my actions would shorten their lives unfairly. Nothing about this was fair.
I shook my head and held on tighter, never wanting to let him go. Staying long would be too great a risk with Analeigh digging through the Archives at home, but maybe a few minutes. Thirty at the most. Caesarion had to die at the end of them, but surely I had time before it had to be done. Before the rest of my life without his touch and his voice and the warm presence of his solid, lithe form.
“I just wanted to see you.”
“I wanted to see you, too. From the moment you left.” He pulled back and studied my face. “There is something else. What has happened?”
Our relationship had begun with a misunderstanding born of the vast gap between our worlds, and there were still so many things he could never understand. I wished that he could return with me to Sanchi, but it was impossible. We had not perfected time travel from the past into the future—the few attempts had not been successful in circumventing the aging process. Caesarion would be nothing but dust by the time we arrived in 2560.
Staying here wasn’t an option. One second past twenty-four hours and my own organs would liquefy. A voice in the back of my mind whispered that perhaps that was the poetic choice—to die with him in a big pile of romantic goo. But Analeigh was counting on me, and the rest of Genesis was, too. They just didn’t know it yet.
“Nothing happened.”
“You are a terrible liar,” he said with a small smile, before bending to kiss me.
I kissed him back, nothing romantic or sexy about the tears and snot and desperation racing through me and pouring onto him. My legs shook when I pulled away and tried another smile, with a bit more success this time. “I’m actually a pretty good liar. You just see through me.”
“I’m not sure whether that makes me feel better or worse,” he mused.
He grabbed me around the waist and hoisted me onto his chestnut mare, then leaped up into the saddle. His lips moved against my ear, sending tingles and excitement through my abdomen that quickly spilled lower, landing in my knees. It was a far cry from the way Oz’s whispered questions had affected me earlier that day in the Maldives.
Caesarion kicked the horse into motion, his guards following a little too close for comfort. I almost hadn’t bothered with period-appropriate clothing but was now glad I had—we would be riding past other contemporaries, most likely, and the fewer people I had to take out with my waver, the better. We rode in silence for a while, the clomping of the horses’ hooves and the far-off patter of human voices a low hum in the late afternoon heat.
“How long are you staying?”
“Not long.” I pressed my back harder into his chest.
“Perhaps until tomorrow?” he nudged.
I didn’t respond. He pointed out animals and constellations as they appeared, but mostly we breathed together in the soft evening. I put my hand over his and pulled the horse to a stop, turning so that I faced him, my thighs draped over his and our fingers clutched together.
My eyes burned and my throat felt raw from holding back the truth. “Your time, Caesarion. It’s now. Not tomorrow. We’ve already changed too many things, and …” I trailed off as my fingers found Oz’s sonic waver in my bag and pulled it loose.