The first time she had seen him, he had been smiling and playful. The second time he had been in a killing fury. This time she saw him made a Powerful three, which was its own completion. Three times, a heka number. His unearthly face held a troubled severity, and then it lightened into something altogether different as he saw her, something strange that had to do with the way men looked at women. Whatever that strange thing was, it had her heart racing and her hands shaking and her thighs feeling heavy and full.
“Khepri,” he said. His voice was deeper, wilder than she remembered. Or maybe she heard him better now that she was older.
Smiling, she walked toward him, this man who held her soul. “I chose another name when my slave life ended,” she said. “I am Carling now. I should have known you would come.”
He smiled back at her as she reached him. “Why is that?”
“You always come when I die,” she said.
? ? ?
Shock smashed a fist in Rune’s gut.
You always come when I die.
Before he knew it, he had dropped his own knives and grabbed her by the shoulders. Her head fell back and she stared at him, and he castigated himself furiously, Careful, asshole. She’s a fragile human now. He made himself cup her slender arms carefully, feeling her pliable warm flesh under his fingers, and he studied her face.
She had undeniably grown into a woman, but she was too young to be the Carling that had taken the serpent’s kiss, he guessed by as much as seven or eight years. Her face was more rounded, less carved, but she still had the same gorgeous long dark eyes, the fabulous cheekbones, that outrageous mouth. She looked at him with all the open bloom of wonder in her face, and her scent held a fragrance unlike any other.
Spiky, beautiful girl. The most beautiful girl in the world.
“What do you mean, I always come when you die?” Rune whispered. His heart had yet to recover from that one. She had not shaved her head, as so many early Egyptians had. Her long dark hair fell to her narrow waist in dozens of small meticulous braids. He touched one of the braids at her temple and traced it as it fell away from her face.
“You came the first time, when my life by the river ended,” Carling told him. Inside, she was stricken. He was touching her, his hand to her shoulder, his hand to her hair. She had no idea something could be so utterly lovely as a simple touch. She had to work to get the rest of the words out. “Then you came again and ended my life as a slave. Tonight is my last night in this life in Ineb Hedj. Tomorrow I go to another life, away from here.”
Rune stroked her petal-soft cheek with a light finger. “Is that a good thing?”
“I think so. I hope so. It is the first time I have had a choice about it.” Carling widened her eyes, tilted her head and lifted one shoulder in a shrug.
The gesture was so very like the serious, innocent child Khepri, without warning he tumbled head over heels in love with her again. He saw the child she had been, this young, proud beauty, and the amazing woman she would become, and he loved all of them, all of the Carlings past, present and future. He saw her sharpness, her frailties and her strength, and his soul embraced all of it. The feeling was a sword thrust as deep as anything he had ever felt, piercing through his body. It seemed like he had been falling for a very long while, and each time he realized it, he had fallen a little deeper, a little further. He had never known that falling in love could be as helpless and complete as this.
Then just as suddenly, he fell into a panic and he started to shake. It was not simple or quiet trembling, but a violent storm that took him over and rattled his bones. He was really back in time. Really. Back in time. This was not his Carling, not yet. He was not supposed to be here. Another, younger Rune was living his oblivious life in another part of this world.
He couldn’t stay. He couldn’t protect her, this heart-stoppingly beautiful, fragile, brave human girl. And just by being here, he might have changed history again. He might be changing her even now, so that she made some other kind of choice than she originally did, some kind of new and different choice that got her killed.
Carling—his wise and wicked Carling—might have been able to accept the consequences of that, but he never could.
He grabbed her by the shoulders again and hauled her against him, and growled into her gorgeous, unbearably naive, incredulous face, “You listen to me. I am not supposed to be here. It is incredibly dangerous for me to even be talking to you.”
Carling’s expression flared. She gripped his wrists. “Why do you say that?”
“I am not from this time or this place. I am from somewhere else.” He could see she did not understand. How could she possibly understand? He struggled to find words that would have meaning for her and still convey the urgency of his message. He said with slow emphasis, “I am from many human lifetimes away, from so far in your future of tomorrows that the pharaoh no longer exists. Where I come from, all the gods have changed, and everything you see around us is either rubble or has completely disappeared.”