Page 8 of A Spark in Time (A Knights Through Time Romance #21)

He guided her through more letters, beta, gamma, delta. Each one required his hand over hers, required him to lean closer. By the time they reached theta, she could barely breathe.

“You learn quickly,” he said, finally stepping back. The loss of his warmth felt like winter arriving.

“Good teacher,” she managed.

Something flickered in his eyes—surprise, maybe, or pleasure. Before he could respond, another wave of suppliants arrived.

This time it was women, young ones, barely out of childhood. They approached on their knees, tears streaming down their faces.

“Blessed Siren,” one sobbed, “my brother marches to war tomorrow. Will he return?”

Bebe’s stomach clenched. This was the part she hated—the lies, the false hope. But Lysias was watching, the Archons’ spies were certainly watching, and these girls needed something.

“The gods...” she started, then stopped. The girl’s face was so young, so frightened. Like her cousin back home, always worried about the boys heading to France during the war.

She reached out, took the girl’s hand. It was rough from work, trembling like a bird.

“Your brother is brave?” Bebe asked gently.

“The bravest.”

“Then trust in that. The gods favor courage.”

It wasn’t a lie, exactly. Just not the truth either. The girl kissed her hand—her oily, fig-sticky, divinely decorated hand—and retreated, looking marginally comforted.

“That was kind,” Lysias said quietly. “Also useless. Her brother’s unit is headed for certain death.”

“Then let her have hope for one more day.”

“Hope is cruel when it’s false.”

“So is truth when it’s hopeless.”

He studied her for a long moment, and she saw him reassessing something. “You’re softer than you pretend.”

“You’re harder than you need to be.”

“Athens made me this way.”

“What’s your excuse for before Athens?”

His jaw tightened. “There was no before Athens.”

A lie, obviously, but she recognized the wall when she hit it. Everyone here had things they didn’t discuss, wounds they didn’t show. Even the divine messenger understood that.

The afternoon sun climbed higher, turning the courtyard into an oven. The oil on her skin went from glistening to sticky, the jewelry from heavy to unbearable. She shifted on the cushions, the silk sticking to her thighs where sweat pooled.

“Hot?” Lysias asked, and there was something amused in his tone.

“Divine perspiration,” she said primly. “Very mystical.”

This time he did smile, quick and genuine before he caught himself. “The heat will break soon. Storm coming.”

She looked at the sky—cloudless, endless blue. “How can you tell?”

“The birds.” He pointed to the swallows wheeling overhead. “They fly lower before storms. Also,” he moved closer, close enough she could see gold flecks in his dark eyes, “you taste it in the air. Like copper.”

“I don’t taste anything but fig juice and too much wine.”

“Then you’re not paying attention.” He picked up her wine cup, took a sip from the exact spot her lips had touched—deliberate, provocative—then handed it back. “Now taste.”

She drank, hyperaware of the warm metal where his mouth had been. And maybe it was suggestion, but she could taste it—something metallic beneath the honey-wine, electric, like the air before lightning.

“You’re right,” she admitted.

She remembered the metallic tang before storms on the Nile, copper in the back of her throat as sand whipped across the deck of a dahabiya. The taste was the same here—ancient, electric, a warning older than history.

“I usually am.”

“Modest, too.”

“Modesty is for people who have something to be modest about.”

She laughed—couldn’t help it—and his eyes lit up like she’d given him something precious.

“You should laugh more,” he said. “It makes you look less divine. More real.”

“Careful,” she said. “That sounds dangerously close to heresy.”

“Everything I do is dangerous.” He stood, brushing invisible dust from his chiton. “Speaking of which, the Archons want to see you perform a ritual tomorrow. Something properly mystical.”

“Define ‘properly mystical.’”

“Incense, chanting, maybe some creative interpretation of bird entrails.”

“I don’t do entrails.”

“Then improvise. You’re good at that.” He paused at the archway, looked back. “Wear the blue silk tomorrow. It makes your eyes look like a stormy sky.”

Before she could respond, he was gone, leaving her sitting there with oil-slick skin and racing pulse, wondering when exactly she’d started wanting his approval. When his opinion had begun to matter.

Dangerous, she thought, watching his shadow disappear down the corridor. Everything about this was dangerous.

But then again, she’d never been good at safe.

The bells in her hair chimed as she turned back to the crowd, playing oracle for people who needed to believe in something, even if that something was just a time-displaced flapper with good theater instincts and increasingly complicated feelings about her watchdog.

Tomorrow she’d have to perform a ritual. Tonight, she’d have to figure out what that meant.

She remembered watching staged “rituals” in Cairo for tourists—drums and chants carefully packaged for foreign eyes. This was different. Here belief pressed against her skin, heavier than the oils Theano rubbed into her. If she failed, she wasn’t disappointing tourists. She was betraying a city.

But for now, she sat in her silk cushions and accepted offerings, pretended divinity while nursing entirely mortal thoughts about the way Lysias had looked at her, the way his hand had felt over hers, the way he’d said real like it was something he was starving for.

Dangerous, she thought again.

But she was already reaching for the blue silk, running it through her fingers, imagining tomorrow.