Page 167

I am underwater. Deep, deep underwater.

Come back to me, my love, my queen…please… I need you…wake…

I draw in a deep breath, and my body feels all wrong. Too leaden. Even my eyelids feel heavy, and it takes an alarming amount of effort to open them.

There is torchlight, shadow and flame, illuminating the marble walls of a temple. And leaning over me like a dark omen is Memnon, my Memnon.

His hair is roughly shorn, and his beard is as patchy as the day I met him.

Am I in a memory?

He stares at me, and it looks as though he’s the one seeing a ghost.

“Memnon?” I whisper his name, confused.

I was…somewhere else. Not here. But now I am.

My husband’s lips part, and then he smiles, so fiercely. A moment later, he gathers me to his chest and holds me fast, his face buried in the crook where my neck meets my shoulder.

Wasn’t there pain there a moment ago? It doesn’t hurt now. Strange…

Memnon’s body shakes against mine, and absently, I thread my fingers through the shortened strands of his hair.

“My love,” I say softly, “are you all right?”

My words are the wrong ones. I feel anguish and joy, such fearsome joy, and the question seems to break something in him. Memnon sobs against me, though I cannot tell whether he is laughing or crying. Only that he shakes his head against my neck and clutches me tighter.

My brows draw together even as I continue to stroke his hair, my mind trying to sort itself out. A chill has not quite been cast from my bones, and the raw smell of iron and meat clings to my nose. Then there’s this silence that cloaks us like a garment.

“Memnon?” I say again, unsure.

Slowly, he pulls away from me, and his face looks haunted, so haunted. A tear slips out of one of his eyes, then the other. I reach out, my movements a little clumsy as I wipe away the moisture.

Then Memnon’s kissing me, kissing me like he might lose me if he stops. He kisses me breathless, and though I saw no blood on him, I taste the coppery tang of it on his lips.

A shiver wracks my body, and I glance down at my torso. My kurta is pristine, save for a few tattered holes where stray arrows must’ve embedded themselves before they were removed.

I…do not remember any of that.

But there had been blood on me, right? Enough to bathe in.

I touch my kurta, my skin pricking. This feels wrong—Ifeel wrong. It’s a bitterness on my tongue, a churning in my belly. A sense of knowing that something terrible has happened.

And then there is Memnon, who is also changed in some indelible way, though I cannot quite say how. Maybe it’s a touch of coldness in his eyes or the hardness of his jawline. I reach out and trail my fingers over his face, and the look is gone, replaced by the familiar softness he holds in his expression just for me.

Before I can examine that face further, a dark shadow leaps onto the cold slab I rest on and a wet nose bumps the side of my face, followed by the rub of a furry cheek against my own.

“Ferox,” I say softly, wrapping my arms around the panther. He makes noises deep in his throat, not quite purrs but happy noises all the same. “You’re not usually so affectionate,” I say. “What have I done to…?”

My words get caught in my throat as I catch sight of the floor of the temple.

Heaps of bodies cover the temple floor, all of them cut open at the neck. But the blood that should pool around them is gone; only singe marks remain.

“What happened here?” I ask, leaning a little against Ferox. I am used to the sight of the dead strewn across the battlefield, but to see them piled up within a sacrosanct place? The desecration raises the hairs along my arms.

My gaze returns to Memnon, Memnon who is not bloody but tastes of blood. Again, there is something in his eyes that is new and foreign.

“I nearly lost you,” he says softly. Down our bond, I feel half-remembered anguish.