Page 24

WhatamI doing?

Before I can come up with an answer, the man’s eyes snap open.

I stumble back, a hand going to my mouth to muffle my scream.

His irises are a beautiful brown color—dark along the outside edge and light like bourbon on the inside. His pupils dilate as they take me in.

Memnon draws a deep breath, his chest finally rising. As he does so, several scales from his armor slide off his chest, clinking as they fall.

“Roxilana,” the man breathes, still staring at my face.

My breath catches at his voice. It’s no longer echoing and disembodied, and the rough, human quality makes it all the more intimate.

If longing were a sound, this would be it.

His eyes seem to devour my form. “You found me. Saved me.” He’s still speaking in the same language written on the walls. I don’t know what it is or why I understand it.

Memnon sits up, and dozens more metal scales fall from his chest.

I take a step back, then another.

He places his hands on the lip of the stone coffin and rises.

Oh, Great Goddess,he’s getting out.

In one fluid movement, he steps out of the sarcophagus. His clothes slide off his body, and his scale armor falls like rain to the ground, tinkling as it goes.

The undead man doesn’t seem to notice any of it; his eyes stay fixed on me.

I, however,donotice—both because it leaves him naked and because his exposed skin is covered in strange stylized tattoos, the images mirroring that of the artwork around me. Animals and flowers twist up his arms and spill onto his chest and neck. More wrap around his calves and climb his thighs. There are a few others sprinkled onto his lower abs, and there may be more on his back that I can’t see. It looks like the ink is slowly closing in on him from his outer extremities to the very center of him.

He strides toward me, staring at me like I’m his oxygen, completely oblivious to the fact he’s mostly naked, save for the few remnants of armor and clothing that cling to him like linen wrappings.

“I knew you would come, my queen.” The air stirs around him with his magic, it fills the space and brushes against me.“I knew it wasn’t true. It couldn’t be. A love like ours defieseverything.”

His words evoke images I can’t make sense of. I see miles and miles of grass stretching in every direction. I hear the snapping of tents in the wind, the clopping of hooves. There’s skin on mine, flickering lamplight, and a voice in my ear.I am yours forever…

The images slide away as quickly as they come.

“Vak zuwi sanburvak,” I say, not needing my magic to respond to him in the same language. It’s there, buried in my bones.You are mistaken.

“Mistaken?” He laughs, and holy shit, whoever or whatever this man is, he’s got a really nice laugh.

He steps up to me and cups my face, and I’m taken aback by how proprietary the touch is. Not to mention the way he’s looking at me.

“I’m not…I don’t know you.” The words don’t exactly match up with their English translations. Whatever old language this is, the lexicon doesn’t even focus on the same things English does. I feel like a different person when I speak it.

“You don’t know me?” His lips twist into a playful smile. “Come now, what sort of game is this, Roxilana?” His eyes twinkle, and he really doesn’t give a shit that he’s naked right now.

I wrap my hands around his wrists, ready to push him away. But at the contact, he lets out a ragged exhale, closing his eyes briefly.

“Your touch, Roxi. How I have yearned for it. I was caught in a nightmare I couldn’t wake from.” He opens his eyes, his expression painfully raw. “Long I have languished. Through it all, I held on to the hope that you would come and save me, my queen.”

Okay, something is very, very wrong here. I’m not this Roxilana, nor am I a queen or an empress. And I’m definitely nothis.

I open my mouth to say this very thing when Memnon leans and kisses me.

I suck in a sharp breath.