Then his lips were on mine.
I’d waited so long for his kiss, and it was so much more, so much better than I had dared imagine. Golden sunshine burst behind my closed eyelids as I became a being entwined with the sun.
His hands pulled me against his body and I melted into him, my limbs tingling and warm. Amon’s mouth moved over mine, slowly, like he could make the kiss last forever.
Heat filled my body and I flourished like a rare flower that could blossom only for a day before being consumed by the fire of the sun. A rosy flush unfurled on my cheeks as his lips grazed slow trails over each of them. Warm pulses of energy lapped my spine as he ran his fingertips down the length of it, finally stopping at my lower back.
Amon.
I wasn’t sure if I spoke his name or merely thought it, but the idea of using my mouth for more than kissing him suddenly seemed impossible. My entire body was all at once both sun-drowsed and sun-scorched.
An inferno ran through my veins and my world was molten, combustible, burning. The passionate heat smoldering between us could energize a dozen cities. I wanted to drown in his light. Amon was like the quicksand that had nearly consumed me—liquid, hot, powerful quicksand—and I was lost.
When he finally pulled away, we were both winded. My lips were swollen and hot, my limbs trembled. My skin was luminous in the aftermath. Amon found a loose strand of hair and ran his fingers down its length, smiling as the golden light made it even brighter. “Beautiful,” he said. “You are perfectly, magnificently beautiful. The suffering of every bitter trial I will face for millennia will mellow as long as I can remember the taste of your sweet lips.”
Wrapping my arms around his waist, I buried my face in his chest and asked, “Do you have to go?”
As he cradled me against him, I felt him kiss my hair. Instead of answering, he said, “I want to give you something.”
He stepped away and twirled his fingers. Sand rose and formed a mound in his palm. He cupped his other hand over it, whispering a short incantation as light gleamed from between his fingers. When it diminished, he beckoned me closer.
Lying on his palm was a jeweled scarab. Its carapace was made of green emeralds the same shade as Amon’s eyes when they glowed in the dark. Small flecks of gold and tiny diamonds outlined the wings and head.
He pressed it into my hand. “It’s heavy,” I said.
“It is…Amset,” he whispered. “It is my heart.”
“What do you mean it’s your heart?”
“What do you know about mummification?”
“Um, not too much. I know your body is preserved and wrapped and your organs are placed in canopic jars.”
“That is true, in most cases. But not all organs are taken from the body. The heart is left behind.”
“Really? Why?”
Amon murmured, “?‘The heart is the seat of intellect and the tongue speaks to make it real.’ When we enter the afterlife, our hearts are weighed on the scales of judgment, and if we are deemed worthy we are wrapped in robes of glory. If our hearts fail, we are fed to a demon.”
“Well, won’t you need it?”
“I have never seen the scales of judgment in all the time I have spent in the afterlife. I do not think I ever will. Not unless I truly die.” Amon brushed his thumbs across my eyebrows and kissed me softly on the side of my mouth. “Anyway, how can I keep it? It no longer belongs to me.” He paused for a moment, and then added, “Perhaps it is wrong for me to ask, but in giving you this token, I hoped that you might look upon it once in a while and think of me.”