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Love you? I've always loved you. But how can I leave my world? How can I leave behind everything that I cherish? You speak of immortality. I can't grasp such a thing. I know only that here I am Queen, and you're moving away from me, threatening to leave me forever....

She pulled away from him. "Please," she begged him. Where and when had she spoken those words?

"What is it?" he said.

"I don't know ... I can't ... I see things and then they vanish!"

"There's so much I must tell you, so much to be revealed. If only you'll try to understand."

She struggled to her feet and walked away from him. Then looking down, she ripped off the dress, tore the fabric of the skirt to its hem. Pulling it back, she pivoted and faced him.

"Yes! Cast your blue eyes on what you've done! This is what I understand!" She touched the wound in her side. "I was a Queen. And now I am this horror. What is this that you brought back to life with your mysterious elixir! Your medicine!"

She lowered her head slowly, hands up once more to her temples. A thousand times she did it, but it didn't stop the pain inside her mind. Moaning, she rocked back and forth. Her moaning was like a singing. Did that soothe the pain? She hummed with her lips sealed, that strange soft song, "Celeste Aida."

Then she felt his hand on her shoulder. He was turning her around. Like waking it was to look up at him. Handsome Ramses.

Only slowly did she lower her eyes and see the shining vial in his hand.

"Ah!" She seized it and went to pour its contents into her cupped palm.

"No, drink it!"

She hesitated. But he had poured it into her mouth, she remembered. Yes, down her throat in the blackness.

With his left hand, he grabbed the back of her head, and with his right he lifted the vial to her lips.

"Drink it down."

She did. Gulp after gulp and it was gone into her. The light brightened in the room around her. A great lovely vibration shook her from the roots of her hair to her toes. The tingling in her eyes was almost unbearable. She closed her eyes, and then opened them and saw him staring at her in astonishment. He whispered the word "Blue."

But the wounds, were they healing! She held up her fingers. The itching tingling sensation was tantalizing. The flesh was covering the bone. And her side, yes, closing.

"Oh, ye gods, thank you. Thank the gods!" she sobbed. "I am whole, Ramses, I am whole."

Once again his hands stroked her, sending the chills through her. She let him kiss her, let him pull off the torn clothes. "Suckle me, hold me," she whispered. On the tingling flesh where the wound had been he kissed her, his mouth open, his tongue licking her. As he kissed the moist hair between her legs, she pulled him upwards. "No, into me. Fill me!" she cried. "I am whole."

His sex jutted against her. He lifted her and thrust her down on it; ah, yes, nothing remembered now, nothing but the flesh; she went limp in ecstasy, her head thrown back, her eyes closed.

Defeated, he dragged his left foot like a cripple, drawing ever closer to the hotel. Had he been a coward to leave? Should he have stayed, struggling to be of assistance in that war between Titans? With malice in his eyes, Ramsey had said, Go. And Ramsey had saved his life by intervening; by following him, by making a joke of his last feeble attempt to get the elixir of life.

Ah, what did it matter now? He must somehow get Alex out of Egypt; get himself out of Egypt. Wake from this nightmare once and for all and completely. That was the only thing left for him to do.

He approached the front steps of Shepheard's, eyes down.

And he did not see the two men who stopped him until they were blocking his path.

"Lord Rutherford?"

"Let me alone."

"Sorry, my lord, I wish I could. We're from the governor's office. There are some questions we must ask you."

Ah, the last humiliation. He did not fight.

"Help me up the steps, then, young man," he said.

She stepped out of the copper bathtub, the long coarse white towel around her, her hair still damp and curling in the steam. It was a bath for a palace, this room of painted tiles, and hot water running through a tiny pipe. And the perfumes she had found; how sweet the scent, like crushed lilies.