“What?” Sybil gives me a skeptical look. “What do you mean you woke something?”
I remember Memnon’s eyes: dark and smoky on the outside, light like honey on the inside. I remember the way those eyes looked at me, as though I were everything Memnon loved and then everything he hated.
“I… After the plane crashed, there was a voice—and magic—that called to me.”
“Called to you?” she echoes, her eyebrows rising in disbelief.
I nod. “My memory of it is a little fuzzy. But that magic…it led back to a tomb.”
“A tomb?” She’s looking at me like I’ve lost it.
“Goddess be damned,” I whisper. “I’m not making this up. I found an undisturbed tomb while on my magic quest, and I fucking disturbed it.” I pause to take a deep breath. “Listen, I know it sounds hard to believe. I’m not Indiana Jones. Still, I followed a trail of magic that led to a crypt, and I entered it.”
“Why would you do that?” she whispers furiously. Now, finally, she seems to believe me.
“I don’t know.” How can I explain the effect his magic had on me? Even now I remember how it whispered in my ear, and tugged on my skin, and drew me ever closer to the tomb. I…couldn’t ignore it. I didn’t want to.
“Okay,” Sybil says, waving my explanation away. “So you went inside a crypt…” She waits for me to continue.
I take a deep breath. “The place was covered in spells, really arcane ones. I don’t know how long they’d been there, but they were still intact.”
Sybil nods. “That sometimes happens with old spells,” she says. “Age can strengthen well-placed magic.” This girl loves magical history.
I continue. “Beyond all the spells, there was a sarcophagus—and I, uh, opened it.”
Sybil pinches the bridge of her nose, then takes a large swallow of her drink. She shakes her head. “You’re never supposed to open shit like that. Tombs—especially old ones—are full of curses.”
About that…
“There was a man inside the sarcophagus, Sybil. He looked just as alive as you or me, except he was sleeping.” I lower my voice even further. “Somehow, he was the one who had been calling to me. I don’t know how he managed to use his magic when he couldn’t wake, but he did. And it looked like he’d been in that coffin for centuries.”
Sybil frowns. “Selene, I say this with all the love in my heart, but are you sure you weren’t just imagining this? Maybe you got a concussion during the crash…”
I give my friend a look. “My memory may not be perfect, but I know what I saw.”
If anything, Sybil looks more horrified, not less. “Then what do you think happened to this man?” she asks.
“He was cursed”—My queen, what have you done?—“by someone close to him, I think.”
“And they buried him alive in that tomb? For centuries?”
It’s a terrifying prospect. “I don’t know, Sybil. There’s obviously more to the story than that. He seemed…like he might have done something to deserve it.”
She stares at me for a long second, her expression strange. “You said earlier that you woke something,” she begins slowly. “Please don’t tell me that he was that thing.”
I swallow. “I mean, I couldn’t just leave him there.”
“Selene,” she admonishes, like I forgot a coffee date and not, you know, let loose an evil ancient dude.
I open my mouth to defend myself, but what is there to say? It was a supremely bad idea. One I blithely embraced until Memnon the Cursed decided I was the asshole who ruined his life.
I run a thumb over the rim of the cup in my hand and chew my lower lip. “There’s one more thing.”
Sybil’s eyes widen. “How is there more to this story?”
I huff out a laugh, even though my stomach is tying itself into knots. “I think Memnon—”
“Memnon? He has a name?”
I nod. I take a deep breath and meet her eyes. “I think he followed me back.”
Sybil looks aghast. “Followed you back? Why would he do that?”
My empress.
My queen.
I can all but hear his words and see the look in his eyes when he said them.
“Memnon seems to think I was the one who trapped him in the tomb, and now he’s after me.”
I’m coming for you.
Fuck. I really must not forget this.
CHAPTER 11
The sheet beneath my body is soft, and the room is full of a set of unusual yet oddly comforting smells—cedar and frankincense, smoke and brine.
Soft light flickers from over a dozen terra-cotta lamps set throughout the room, and out the open windows, I hear the calls of summer bugs punctuating the night.
I glance at the bed I’m lying on, the carved wood frame made of Lebanese cedar, though I can’t say precisely how I know that. Nor can I say how I know before I touch them that there are two golden fibulas—clasps—that hold my dress together at the shoulders. A couple of deft flicks, and the whole dress could fall away.
Movement on the far side of the room catches my eye.
A man steps into the open doorway, and I start at the sight of his face.
Memnon.
The fear I expect to feel is nowhere in sight. Instead, longing wells in me. I forgot how handsome he is, though, to be fair, handsome is too tame a word for his sharp, fearsome beauty. He wears only a pair of loose low-slung trousers, his tattooed upper body on full display.
Those luminous brown eyes are full of desire as he approaches me. He walks right up to the bed and cups my face, even as I wrap my arms around his torso, feeling the hard packed muscles of his back.
“Roxi.” He says the name with a deep, guttural roll, the lids of his eyes growing hooded as they take me in.
An instant later, he’s kissing me like he’s drowning and I’m air. I can’t help but kiss him back. I haven’t forgotten how well he kissed or how he did it with a possessiveness he shouldn’t feel.
I don’t mind it either. I know I should. But all I can think about is the fact this man probably fucks like he kisses, and I wouldn’t mind finding that out for certain.
I stare up at him, my heart beating fast. I can’t seem to breathe, and there’s a pain in my chest that I think is happiness, only I’ve never known happiness to hurt.
He searches my eyes. “My empress. My wife.” And then, as though he can’t help himself, he leans in and kisses me again, his lips rough and hungry. I’m swept out to sea by the glide of that mouth. I fall into the kiss, enjoying how he tastes like wine.
He drapes his body over mine, pinning me to the bed, and I gasp into his mouth, the action tugging at me.
I break off the kiss, my lips already feeling swollen, and I search Memnon’s eyes. “I’ve…missed you,” I breathe.
But no, that’s not what I meant to say. Is it?
He smiles, the action showing off one of his sharp canines.
Memnon leans in as though he’s about to kiss me again. Right when his lips are a hair’s breadth from mine, he says, “I don’t believe you.”
He shifts his weight on me, and all sorts of wanton desires well within me. I’m breathless with them, even though there’s confusion too.