His eyes were too full of the things he was feeling, a wildness and joy when she mentioned flight, and a certain sense of tragedy she couldn’t begin to comprehend. Bewildered, she watched his throat move as he swallowed. He said, “It was me, Carling.”
She stared at him. “How can you know that for sure? It happened thousands of years ago. You were the most amazing thing I had ever seen. I had never imagined anything like you, but to you, I was just another human child. I had to have been so forgettable.”
“Khepri,” he said. His voice was soft. “You were never at any time in your life forgettable.”
The sadness in his expression wrenched at her. She leaned toward him, touching his arm. “What is it, what’s wrong?”
“Never mind that now,” he said. “This is your story. It’s important you tell it.”
“All right.” She frowned but continued, “I don’t remember much else about our encounter. I remember the color of your hair. It shone golden in the sun, like the lion. You were very large and strange, and we talked for a while, but I was pretty much in shock and I didn’t retain any of what we said to each other. Then you left.”
He looked down at their hands. “Do you remember how I left?”
“No,” she said. “Did you take flight again? I wish I’d remembered that.”
He shook his head but remained silent. He rubbed his thumb lightly against the edge of her kneecap and appeared to be concentrating on the small movement.
“Well,” she said after a moment. “That same day soldiers from the city harvested our village for slaves. They took the young, the healthy and the pretty, and they killed anyone who tried to stop them. I saw them kill my father. It was terrible, of course. I was maybe seven years old. But I’ve had a long time to get over it, and the brutal fact is, I might have lived and died a very short life in the river mud if I hadn’t somehow been taken out of it. I never forgot seeing you flying overhead though.”
He nodded, his head bent. After a moment he asked, “What made you change your name?”
She gave an impatient shrug. “I took my freedom and I took control of my life, and then I took control of my identity as well. I wanted a more modern name, something that was wholly my own creation. Carling wasn’t that far off from Khepri, so it made the transition easy. One day it was time to bury that little slave girl. It actually was a bit of a relief.”
His mouth tightened. “I wish I could have stayed to help you and your family.”
She frowned. What had she said? He looked like he was in pain. “As I said, it happened a very long time ago.”
He stood with such abruptness she sat back sharply. He met her gaze for one burning moment then his eyes slid away. “Sure it did,” he said. His voice had grown hoarse. “I’m going to take a break and stretch my legs. Let’s pick this up again in ten.”
“If that’s what you need,” she said slowly.
He gave her a curt nod and strode out of the room.
She looked at the empty ottoman where Rune had sat and tapped her fingers on the arm of the chair. The intensity of his turmoil was a hot, sharp weight that lingered in the room for several minutes after he had disappeared.
It was obvious something was terribly wrong, but for the life of her she couldn’t figure out what.
Rune tried to breathe as he made his way through the darkened house. A hot, invisible boulder crushed his chest. The adult Carling had looked at him with the same pleasure and wonder that the child Khepri had. Her face was even lovelier when it was washed clean of all cynicism and calculation, stripped of the distance she held between herself and the rest of the world.
How could he look at her wonderful expression and tell her he had not met her in Egypt thousands of years in the past, but here just a few hours ago? What the hell had happened? Had it been an elaborate illusion her mind had created? How could he watch the most pleasure he had ever seen in her turn to horror as she realized how terribly her mind and magic—the two things she took the most pride in—had betrayed her?
He couldn’t. She was facing the end of her life with such courage and a very real, if acerbic dignity and grace, and instead of facing it with her, he was running away like a craven coward. He felt self-disgust and disappointment, but he could also not make himself turn around and face her. Not yet. Not until he’d had a chance to react to what had happened, and he had cleared his head enough so he could be there for her, to add to the situation, as he had told Rhoswen, and not drag on Carling’s already overstrained resources.
A light shone at the cracks of the kitchen doors. He found Rhoswen sitting at the table, her forehead propped in one hand as she watched Rasputin eat his dinner on the floor near the stove. Rhoswen looked up at his entrance.
“I have to think and I need some air,” Rune told her. “Are you up to staying with Carling until I get back?”
Rhoswen wiped her cheek. “Of course.”