Passion (35 page)

“One step ahead of you, Luce,” Bil cal ed. When she turned, Kafele was sprawled flat on his back with his wrists shackled around the stone ankle of Auset’s likeness.

Bil dusted o his hands. “Teamwork.” He glanced down at the white-faced guard. “We’d bet er hurry. He’l nd his vocal cords again soon enough. Come with me.”

Bil led Luce quickly down the dark hal way, up a short ight of sandstone stairs, and across another hal lit by smal tin lamps and lined with clay gures of hawks and hippopotamuses. A pair of guards turned into the hal way, but before they could see Luce, Bil pushed her through a doorway covered by a reed curtain.

She found herself in a bedroom. Stone columns carved to look like bundled papyrus stems rose to a low ceiling. A wooden sedan chair inlaid with ebony sat by an open window opposite a narrow bed, which was carved of wood and painted with so much gold leaf that it gleamed.

“What do I do now?” Luce pressed against the wal in case anyone walking by peered in. “Where are we?”

“This is the commander’s chamber.”

Before Luce could piece together that Bil meant Daniel, a woman parted the reed curtain and stepped into the room.

Luce shivered.

Layla wore a white dress with the same narrow cut as the one Luce had on. Her hair was thick and straight and glossy. She had a white peony tucked behind one ear.

With a heavy feeling of sadness, Luce watched Layla glide to the wooden vanity and pour fresh oil into the lamp from a canister she carried on a black resin tray. This was the last life Luce would visit, the body where she would part ways with her soul so that al of this could end.

When Layla turned to refil the lamps beside the bed, she noticed Luce.

“Hel o,” she said in a soft, husky voice. “Are you looking for someone?” The kohl rimming her eyes looked much more natural than Auset’s makeup.

“Yes, I am.” Luce wasted no time. Just as she reached forward to grab the girl’s wrist, Layla looked past her toward the doorway, and her face stif ened with alarm. “Who is that?”

Luce turned and saw only Bil . His eyes were wide.

“You can”—she gaped at Layla—“you can see him?”

“No!” Bil said. “She’s talking about the footsteps she hears running down the corridor outside. Bet er hurry, Luce.” Luce swiveled back and took her past self’s warm hand, knocking the canister of oil to the ground. Layla gasped and tried to jerk away, but then it happened.

The feeling of the sinkhole opening in Luce’s stomach was almost familiar. The room swirled, and the only thing in focus was the girl standing before her. Her inky-black hair and gold- ecked eyes, the ush of love fresh on her cheeks. Foggily, Luce blinked, and Layla standing before her. Her inky-black hair and gold- ecked eyes, the ush of love fresh on her cheeks. Foggily, Luce blinked, and Layla blinked, and on the other side of the blink—

The ground set led. Luce looked down at her hands. Layla’s hands. They were trembling.

Bil was gone. But he’d been right: There were footsteps in the hal way.

She dipped to pick up the canister and turned away from the door to start pouring oil into the lamp. Best not to be seen by anyone who passed doing anything but her job.

The footsteps behind her stopped. A warm brush of ngertips traveled up her arms as a rm chest pressed against her back. Daniel. She could sense his glow without even turning. She closed her eyes. His arms wrapped around her waist and his soft lips swept across her neck, stopping just below her ear.

“I found you,” he whispered.

She turned slowly in his arms. The sight of him took her breath away. He was stil her Daniel, of course, but his skin was the color of rich hot chocolate, and his wavy black hair was cropped very short. He wore only a short linen loincloth, leather sandals, and a silver choker around his neck. His deep-set violet eyes swept over her, happy.

He and Layla were deeply in love.

She rested her cheek on his chest and counted the beats of his heart. Would this be the last time she did this, the last time he held her against his heart? She was about to do the right thing—the good thing for Daniel. But stil it pained her to think about it. She loved him! If this journey had taught her anything, it was how much she truly loved Daniel Grigori. It hardly seemed fair that she was forced to make this decision.

Yet here she was.

In ancient Egypt.

With Daniel. For the very last time. She was about to set him free.

Her eyes blurred with tears as he kissed the part in the center of her hair.

“I wasn’t sure we’d have a chance to say goodbye,” he said. “I leave this afternoon for the war in Nubia.” When Luce lifted her head, Daniel cupped her damp cheeks in his hands. “Layla, I’l return before the harvest. Please don’t cry. In no time you’l be sneaking back into my bedchamber in the dark of night with plat ers of pomegranates just like always. I promise.” Luce took a deep, shuddering breath. “Goodbye.”

“Goodbye for now.” His face grew serious. “Say it: Goodbye for now.”

She shook her head. “Goodbye, my love. Goodbye.”

The reed curtain parted. Layla and Don broke from their embrace as a cluster of guards with their spears drawn barreled into the room.

Kafele led them, his face dark with rage. “Get the girl,” he said, pointing at Luce.

“What’s going on?” Daniel shouted as the guards surrounded Luce and reshackled her hands. “I order you to stop. Unhand her.”

“Sorry, Commander,” Kafele said. “Pharaoh’s orders. You should know by now—when Pharaoh’s daughter is not happy, Pharaoh is not happy.”

They marched Luce away as Daniel shouted, “I’l come for you, Layla! I’l find you!” Luce knew he would. Wasn’t that how it always played out? They met, she got into trouble, and he showed up and saved the day—year in and year out across eternity, the angel swooping in at the last minute to rescue her. It was tiring to think about.

But this time when he got there, she would have the starshot waiting. The thought sent a raw pain through her gut. A wel of tears rose up inside her again, but she swal owed them. At least she had got en to say goodbye.

The guards ushered her down an endless series of hal ways and outside into the blistering sun. They marched her down streets made of uneven slabs of rock, through a monumental arched gate, and past smal sandstone houses and shimmering silty farmland on the way out of the city. They were dragging her toward an enormous golden hil .

Only as they drew near did Luce realize it was a man-made structure. The necropolis, she realized at the same time that Layla’s mind became jumbled with fear. Every Egyptian knew this was the tomb of the last pharaoh, Meni. No one except a few of the holiest priests—and the dead—dared approach the place where the royal bodies were interred. It was locked with spel s and incantations, some to guide the dead in their journey toward the next life, and some to ward o any living being who dared approach. Even the guards dragging her there seemed to grow nervous as they approached.

Soon they were entering a pyramid-shaped tomb made of baked mud bricks. Al but two of the burliest guards remained outside the entrance. Kafele shoved Luce through a darkened doorway and down a darker ight of stairs. The other guard fol owed them, carrying a flaming torch to light their path.

The torchlight ickered on the stone wal s. They were painted with hieroglyphics, and now and then Layla’s eyes caught bits of prayers to Tait, the goddess of weaving, asking for help to keep the pharaoh’s soul in one piece during his journey to the afterlife.

Every few steps they passed false doors—deep stone recesses in the wal s. Some of them, Luce realized, had once been entryways leading to the final resting places of members of the royal family. They were now sealed of with stone and gravel so that no mortal could pass.

Their way grew cooler; it grew darker. The air became heavy with the faded must of death. When they neared the one open doorway at the end of the hal way, the guard with the torch would go no farther—“I wil not be cursed by the gods for this girl’s insolence”—so Kafele did it himself. He wrestled aside the stone bolt that pinned the door, and a harsh, vinegary smel flooded out, poisoning the air.

“Think you have any hope of escape now?” he asked, releasing her wrists from the shackles and shoving her inside.

“Yes,” Luce whispered to herself as the heavy stone door shut behind her and the bolt thudded back into place. “Only one.” She was alone in ut er darkness, and the cold clawed at her skin.

Then something snapped—stone on stone, so recognizable—and a smal golden light bloomed in the center of the room. It was cupped between the two stone hands of Bil .

“Hel o, hel o.” He oated to the side of the room and poured the bal of re out of his hands and into an opulently painted purple-and-green stone lamp. “We meet again.”

As Luce’s eyes adjusted, the rst thing she saw was the writing on the wal s: They were painted with the same hieroglyphics as in the hal way, only this time they were prayers to the pharaoh—“Do not decay. Do not rot. Stride into the Imperishable Stars.” There were chests that wouldn’t close because they over owed with gold coins and sparkling orange gems. An enormous col ection of obelisks spread out before her. At least ten embalmed dogs and cats seemed to eye her.

The chamber was huge. She circled a set of bedroom furniture, complete with a vanity stacked with cosmetics. There was a votive palet e with a two-headed serpent chiseled on its face. The interlocking necks formed a recess in the black stone, which held a circle of bright blue eye shadow.

eye shadow.

Bil watched Luce pick it up. “Got a look one’s best in the afterlife.”

He was sit ing atop the head of a startlingly lifelike sculpture of the former pharaoh. Layla’s mind told Luce that this sculpture represented the pharaoh’s ka, his soul, and it would watch over the tomb—the real pharaoh lay mummi ed behind it. Inside the limestone sarcophagus would be nested wooden cof ins; inside the smal est one of them: the embalmed pharaoh.

“Watch out,” Bil said. Luce hadn’t even realized she was resting her hands on a smal wooden chest. “That contains the pharaoh’s entrails.” Luce jerked away and slid the starshot out from her dress. When she picked it up, its shaft warmed her ngers. “Is this real y going to work?”

“If you pay at ention and do as I say,” Bil said. “Now, the soul resides directly in the center of your being. To reach it, you must draw the blade precisely down the middle of your chest, right at the critical moment, right when Daniel kisses you and you feel yourself start to cook.

Then you, Lucinda Price, wil be ung out of your past self, as usual, but your cursed soul wil be trapped in Layla’s body, where it wil burn up and be gone.”

“I’m—I’m afraid.”

“Don’t be. It’s like having your appendix out. You’re bet er o without it.” Bil looked at his empty gray wrist. “By my watch, Don wil be here any moment.”

Luce held the silver arrow so that its blade pointed at her breast. The swirling etched designs tingled under her ngers. Her hands quaked with nerves.

“Steady now.” Bil ’s earnest cal sounded far away.

Luce was trying to pay at ention, but her heart was pounding in her ears. She had to do this. She had to. For Daniel. To free him from a punishment he’d taken on only because of her.

“You’l have to do it a lot faster than that during the real thing or Daniel wil surely stop you. One quick slit on your soul. You wil feel something loosen, a breath of coldness, and then—bam!”

“Layla!” Don bounded into her sight. The door behind her was stil bolted. Where had he come from?

The starshot tumbled from her hands and clat ered to the oor. She snatched it up and slipped it back inside her dress. Bil was gone. But Don was—Daniel was right where she wanted him to be.

“What are you doing here?” Her voice broke with the force of having to act surprised to see him.

He didn’t seem to hear it. He rushed toward her and wrapped her in his arms. “Saving your life.”

“How did you get in?”

“Don’t worry about that. No mortal man, no slab of stone can obstruct a love as true as ours. I wil always find you.” In his bare, bronzed arms, it was Luce’s instinct to feel comforted. But she couldn’t right then. Her heart felt ragged and cold. This easy happiness, these feelings of complete trust, every one of the lovely emotions Daniel had shown her how to feel in every life—they were torture to her now.

“Fear not,” he whispered. “Let me tel you, love, what happens after this life. You come back, you rise again. Your rebirth is beautiful and real. You come back to me, again and again—”

The light from the lamp flickered and made his violet eyes sparkle. His body was so warm against hers.

“But I die again and again.”

“What?” He tilted his head. Even when his physique looked exotic to her, she knew his expressions so wel —that bemused adoration when she expressed something he hadn’t expected her to understand. “How do you—Never mind. It doesn’t mat er. What mat ers is that we wil again be together. We wil always find each other, always love each other, no mat er what. I wil never leave you.” Luce fel to her knees on the stone steps. She hid her face in her hands. “I don’t know how you can stand it. Over and over again, the same sadness—”

He lifted her up. “The same ecstasy—”

“The same fire that kil s everything—”

“The same passion that ignites it al again. You don’t know. You can’t remember how wonderful—”

“I’ve seen it. I do know.”

Now she had his at ention. He didn’t seem sure whether or not to believe her, but at least he was listening.

“What if there’s no hope of anything ever changing?” she asked.

“There is only hope. One day, you wil live through it. That absolute truth is the only thing that keeps me going. I wil never give up on you. Even if it takes forever.” He wiped away her tears with his thumb. “I’l love you with al my heart, in every life, through every death. I wil not be bound by anything but my love for you.”

“But it’s so hard. Isn’t it hard for you? Haven’t you ever thought, what if …”

“One day, our love wil conquer this dark cycle. That’s worth everything to me.” Luce looked up and saw the love glowing in his eyes. He believed what he was saying. He didn’t care if he su ered again and again; he’d forge on, losing her over and over, buoyed by the hope that one day this wouldn’t be their end. He knew it was doomed, but he tried over and over again anyway, and he always would.