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“It isn’t work if it gives you pleasure,” Memnon replies. There it is, my soul mate’s resurrected hobby. It makes me strangely happy to know he’s found it again.

I pull out the chair in front of me and sit down, noting the alcohol he’s already poured for me. “Plying me with wine,est xsaya?” I tease. His eyes flash at the title. “And when I’m not legally old enough to drink?Verybold of you.”

Memnon arches a brow, taking a seat across from me. “You were drinking spiced wine since you were a child.”

That’s Roxilana he’s referring to.

“But if you wish to refrain…” He lifts a shoulder.

I take the wineglass and drink a swallow. My eyebrows rise at the taste. It’s thinner than what I’m used to and flavored with honey and cinnamon.

Once more, the past overcomes me. I can feel the thick press of summer air, the sharp stink of the Roman streets, the desperate dream to leave. Then campfires and creaking wooden wagons and sweaty bodies that smell like horsehair and wild grass. The past is all right there, so close I swear I could step into it.

But as quickly as the memories come, they’re gone again, leaving only an ache in their wake.

The skin around Memnon’s eyes crinkles with mirth. “The flavor is not quite as…pungentas it once was?—”

I laugh, because fuck, that’sright. Some of the wines we once drank had additives like pepper and coriander—even chalk and sea water—in them. The past was wild, man.

“Do you miss it?” Memnon asks after a moment, and he must be reading my thoughts.

Right now?

“Maybe a little,” I admit. “But the past is gone,” I add.

“Not for us,” Memnon says, reverting to Sarmatian. “The past is alive in us. You and I are eternal, my queen.”

I stare at him, caught in his gaze. I don’t want to keep looking at him—I feel like he can see too much—but I can’t seem to look away either.

It begins to rain, the sound pitter-pattering on the tarp above the exposed wood ceiling.

My eyes move up to it.

“You might get wet tonight,est amage, but not from the rain.”

My gaze snaps back to Memnon, and my core tightens. I have a retort already loaded on my tongue, but just as soon as it comes to me, I swallow it back down.

I don’t want to flirt or tease or bicker with Memnon. I don’t want to beplayfulat all right now. I’m feeling nostalgic and bittersweet in this room where the past is still alive.

A phone vibrates, pulling me out of the moment. I think it’s mine, but then Memnon is pulling his own device out of his pocket. He glances at the number, then tucks it back away without answering.

“Who’s calling you?” I ask, curiously. I feel some unnameable emotion at the idea of Memnon having a whole other side of his life that I’m not privy to.

“You could be privy to it,” he responds.

“Get out of my head.”

“I would follow your orders if I could, Empress, but it’s you, not me, who’s broadcasting those pretty thoughts. As for the call,” he continues, “that’s the mage I work for.”

The one who believes he’s bonded Memnon to him.

I raise my eyebrows. “You’re not going to answer?”

“If I do, he’ll likely give me a command that will take me from you, and,est amage, I don’t want that.”

I’m caught in his gaze again, and we’re in Rome, we’re on the plains of the Pontic steppe, we’re in Bosporus. It all comes rushing back—the feeling that I’m on some precipice, waiting to jump. Waiting to fall.

“Whatdoyou want?” I ask.