Fear flashed in Caesarion’s gaze. My heart shattered into so many pieces it would take poor Isis a hundred lifetimes to find them and put me back together.
Steely acceptance banished the other emotions racing across his face. When his eyes raised to mine, they held love and sorrow in equal measure. “If I must die, I want it to be in the arms of the woman I love, not at the hands of a cruel executioner.”
The words squeezed the air from my lungs. The request should have made this easier, but somehow it made it worse that he trusted me enough to give me his final moments. To share them with a girl who had made everything in his life harder from the moment she’d walked into it.
I nodded, and tried to gather some courage, because that’s what I had come here to do—kill him. Make sure that the time line was righted before the repercussions were too many and too far-reaching to be recalled. I slid from the horse onto the marshy ground, then pulled my Historian cloak from my bag and secured it around me. One of the biggest barriers to sonic weaponry during its early development was that the person holding the device became as susceptible as their unsuspecting victim, but the cloaks were built with an adequate barrier. I tied it at my throat, ensuring all of my vital organs were covered, except my face. I would do that last.
Tears spilled down my cheeks. “It will be fast. It won’t hurt.”
Caesarion dismounted and beckoned his guards to do the same, then walked to my side. “I will send them away. If they see you kill me, they will take your life.” He moved a sweaty piece of hair off my forehead. “We can’t have that. You’re going to live a long life, and be happy.”
Happiness seemed impossible in this moment, sacrificed at the altar of my disobedience.
As my True spoke with his guards, who eyed me with distrust but led the horses away until they dropped from sight, I palmed the waver and secured my hood over my hair. My thumb flicked the safety off, the device slipping against my sweaty skin.
Caesarion closed his eyes, pushed his shoulders back, and waited. Tears burned in my throat and I squeezed the waver harder, trying to remember the thousands at home instead of the one in front of me. It wasn’t working. I wasn’t ready.
Everything Caesarion had taught me about duty felt like faraway concepts when faced with putting them into action. I had been kidding myself. I was still the same silly Kaia—a girl who broke the rules but couldn’t grow up enough to handle the consequences.
He’s already dead, I told myself, trying to use the truth as reassurance.
I couldn’t do it. Failure crashed through my system, the hot despair and self-loathing like slime in my veins, but none of it spurred me into action. I dropped my arm to my side. Caesarion opened his eyes when a sob tore from my throat, but didn’t move to touch me. My weakness was making this harder for him, and that killed me more than anything else.
“I’m sorry.” His face blurred through my tears and I gripped the waver tighter. “I can’t.”
Before he could move, Oz popped onto the scene behind him. He held a second waver in his outstretched hand, his body cloaked from head to toe. His gray eyes flicked wildly about the scene, probably searching for Caesarion’s guards. “Kaia, close your hood,” he shouted.
My grief cleared immediately, making way for a panic that jammed my racing heart into my throat. It couldn’t be this way. “Oz, no!”
Caesarion paused, looking between us with fear returning to his posture. The scene moved in slow motion as I ran to his side, but as Oz pushed buttons on his waver and tugged the strings to shield his own face, I instinctively did the same.
The telltale, invisible thrums, like the heartbeat of a small animal in your palm or a million lead balls dropped onto a silent gong at the same moment, shook my blood. I stumbled the final steps, blind with the shield in place, and crashed into Caesarion’s body as it crumpled. We landed on the ground in a heap as my arms found my True Companion’s and held on tight.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“Kaia. Kaia, you have to get up. We have to go.”
The words sounded far away, as though Oz spoke underwater, and for a moment I thought he’d liquefied my organs, too. Then raw sobs replaced his voice, proving I was alive. And the one making a racket. My fingers tore at the strings of my cloak, freeing my face to see Caesarion.
He lay with his eyes closed, looking at peace but for the fluid leaking from his ears and nose, his hand slack in mine. I clutched his tunic, begging my mind to take hold of the rest of me.
“I’ll be seeing you,” I whispered.
My emotions settled sooner than expected. My anger toward Oz for taking this responsibility from me, for robbing Caesarion of final moments filled with love and replacing them with confusion and fear, ripped through me with shocking ferocity. I stood and threw myself at Oz, pummeling his chest with my fists. My hair stuck to the sweat and tears on my face, but as big a mess as I must have looked, it was my insides that would never return to normal.
He’d stolen my job. Ignored Caesarion’s last request. Made me feel as though everything I’d been through with my True had ended in failure, and in that moment, I hated Oz almost as much as I hated myself. “What the hell do you think you’re doing? This was my job. I was doing it!” I shrieked, too mired in loss to think about being overheard.
“Not fast enough. Kaia, I—” He held me at arm’s length and took my beating, his eyes darkened by sorrow.