Текст книги "Return Once More"
Автор книги: Trisha Leigh
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Текущая страница: 11 (всего у книги 19 страниц)
Chapter Sixteen
Elder Truman led me down the echoing metal hallway, past a giggling group of first-years who went silent and wide-eyed at the sight of him. He didn’t do much overseeing unless he wanted to experience a particular event again or spend the day with his son, and never taught reflections, with one exception: the reflection on the actions of his ancestor, Harry Truman.
That class revolved around the American president’s decision to test nuclear weapons on defenseless civilians. Oz’s father never tired of dissecting it. We kept our honest opinions unspoken and unreflected around him, but after my certification I planned to revise my file on that event to include the words despicable, thoughtless, and possibly sociopathic narcissism for good measure.
Not everyone agreed, the Trumans included, but witnessing that horrible day had turned my stomach. All of those people. There one moment, gone the next. For nothing. Then again, military tactics had never made sense to me. That’s why there were many Historians, so that history could never be observed and reflected through a singular, distorted lens. I tended toward one side, while people like Oz and his father peered through a vastly different one. Neither was wrong.
Well, that’s what they taught us. I was pretty sure I was right.
“Sit down, Miss Vespasian,” a scratchy old-man voice commanded.
Oh my laundry, Zeke Midgley.
He sat at the head of a long, wooden table in a small chamber in one of the offices. None of the other rooms at the Academy had anything but metal or stone accoutrements, but the additions of heavy cloth drapes and the thick wooden table and chairs made this space eerie. Truly quiet. It would be intimidating even without Zeke and his nearly colorless eyes staring me down from behind his own Historian frames.
If a sighting of Elder Truman was rare, Zeke, the last surviving Original settler of Genesis, was a ghost, a tall tale. And I’d seen him twice in the past couple of weeks.
“Yes, sir,” I managed, plopping into the chair at the opposite end of the table.
No matter how many times they called me on the carpet, it never failed to redeposit all of the moisture from my mouth onto my palms. I’d given in to Analeigh’s protests and left Jonah’s cuff hidden in the mussed covers of my bed, so at least they couldn’t find it on me and take it away. The seat cupped my rear and wasn’t cold, the combination making me long to leap to my feet. I had a strange mental image of the chair sucking me in and eating me for dinner.
Focus, Kaia. You’re in some serious trouble here. Maybe you should hope the chair does eat you for dinner.
Truman slid into a chair on the right side of the table, leaving four empty ones, and Maude Gatling came in, taking a seat on the left. They all studied me until I felt naked. I couldn’t stop swallowing in a desperate attempt to turn my tongue back into a usable organ, as opposed to its current impression of a cotton ball.
“Do you know why you’re here?” Zeke asked.
I shook my head, not trusting my voice. There were any number of reasons I could be here, and opening my mouth upped the chances I’d confess to an infraction that had escaped their notice. My eyes were stretched so wide I worried they wouldn’t stay in my face much longer. Trouble and I were well acquainted, and I’d been sanctioned plenty of times for my wandering eye during observations and a couple of instances of breaking curfew, but this room meant something bigger.
“Why were you reviewing Minnie Gatling’s reflection on the development of weaponry?”
The question threw me. Thoughts jumbled in my head, scattered like a bowl of marbles dumped on the glass floor, but I kept catching the same one—I had only done that this morning, too soon for the Elders to perform a random review of any of our reflections or research paths.
Which mean certain files had to be flagged in the Archives.
They’d never told us that.
My insides bolted seven different directions, unsure what they wanted to hear. “I was finished with my assignment, and my reflections never get very good marks so I thought I would study some of the overseers’. You know, to work on improving.”
Zeke’s eyes narrowed. “Kaia, my dear, you have many talents. Improving yourself without prompting is not usually one of them, unless you have decided to turn over a new leaf.”
“If that is the case,” Elder Truman interrupted, “why did you also initiate a search cross-referencing people instrumental in the development of guns minutes prior to reading Elder Gatling’s reflection?”
Ice ran in my veins. Minnie’s file hadn’t been flagged. The search path had.
I needed to throw them off track, because if they kept digging into my recent actions, they were going to find two unauthorized trips into the travel air lock. “I didn’t realize there were off-limits files in the Archives. Perhaps you should mark them.”
“They’re not off-limits, Kaia, but we do monitor access to the Archives that deal with the major contributing factors to our exile from Earth Before.” Zeke’s empty eyes bored holes into my face.
There was that word again, the same one Younger Minnie had used. Exile.
“I think you know that the System takes a hard stance on the development and use of weapons,” Maude added, her steely eyes kinder than usual. “Given your brother’s current situation, it would be understandable if he influenced you, maybe asked you to do some research into such things? Perhaps he and his pirate friends are looking to create new versions?”
My jaw dropped at the same time relief turned my limbs to wet pasta. They thought this was about Jonah. “No! I haven’t talked to my brother since he disappeared, and I would never support the re-introduction of weapons to private citizens. Read my reflections on the topic!”
“Then why were you so interested in those particular archives?” Zeke demanded. “Stop backpedaling and stammering excuses. A simple answer for a simple question, so we can be done.”
Answers raced through my mind, but none of them were good enough. Or simple, for that matter. They hadn’t bought my line about improving myself, and I couldn’t blame them. I thought briefly about throwing Oz under the bus, but his suspicions of me made it too risky that he would turn the tables, not to mention his father would defend him.
The sweat on my palms traveled to my armpits. The long delay would confirm I wasn’t telling the truth. Lying was my best ally, normally, and now in my moment of need, the nefarious sections of my brain misfired and failed.
Then Truman, the least likely candidate for help, came unwittingly to my rescue. “Is it because my son has been researching the same events for his independent reflection application?”
Zeke grunted, mouth turned down as though he’d bitten a lemon, and Maude shifted, her gaze on Truman. I gathered all of my courage and met Oz’s father’s eyes. He tried and failed to convey a false empathy—all I saw was the typical contempt that withered my courage into fear.
They knew what Oz was researching. Did they know about his travels, too? His interference? Tears burned the back of my throat and welled in my eyes.
These people, the Historian Elders, had raised me from the age of ten. I believed the things they’d told me about our world, about the truth of what had happened on Earth Before, about my duty to protect the past from alteration and ensure a profitable future. It hurt in unexpected places that now, in this moment, I’d lost the ability to trust any of them when I needed it the most.
“Why would I want to copy Oz’s research?”
“He said you’ve taken a special interest in him lately,” Truman clarified.
If he thought I wanted to be more like Oz the Perfect Student or something, let him wander down that path. It was littered with fewer landmines, for sure.
Unless he thought I was interested in Oz. Shit.
A second glance at the smug assumption darkening his eyes suggested he just might.
“Elder Truman, Oz is the True Companion of one of my best friends.”
“I am aware of my son’s unique situation,” he replied dryly. “It doesn’t mean that you have not developed some ill-conceived feelings for him.”
Before I could control my reaction enough to play along—the Elders thinking I had an embarrassing crush on Oz Truman was a far better choice than their learning the truth—Truman turned to Zeke with a dismissive shrug.
Zeke studied his friend for a moment, then checked with Maude before focusing his intensity on me. “Is this true, Miss Vespasian? A teenage infatuation led you to research a path concurrent with Mister Truman’s in order to cultivate idle conversation in the hallways?”
A giant, sloshing pitcher of my pride fought to pour denials past my lips, but I swallowed them back. They burned in my stomach and my face caught fire, growing so hot my hair might have smoldered. My indignation must have looked like mortification to the Elders, but it was best if they believed their ridiculous interpretation of recent events. So I nodded. “Yes. I know Oz and Sarah are together, but he’s just so smart and, uh, handsome,” I managed to choke out.
Zeke pointed a bony, yellow-tipped finger in my direction. “That had better be the truth, Miss Vespasian. Your family was given a reprieve after the egregious betrayal of your brother due to your grandfather’s stature in Genesis. His dedication molded it into the safe haven it is today. But I’m sure I don’t need to remind you that another exception will not be made. We take our mission to protect the future of our System very seriously, and Historians are held to the highest standard. If you hope to join our ranks at the scheduled time, you would do well to remember that.”
“Yes, sir,” I answered, keeping my eyes on my hands and the indignation out of my voice.
Resentment roiled in my chest. That I had to falsely cop to a stupid crush on Oz Truman, that these Elders had been keeping secrets even as they lectured us about duty, and that Zeke threatened my family and insulted my brother twisted my stomach painfully. I clamped my teeth together to keep it all trapped in my throat.
In principle, I agreed with the thinking behind flagging certain files. It should have occurred to me, actually, that anyone researching the trajectory of weapons development—or anything that had contributed to the previous society’s downfall—would be monitored. Humans hadn’t changed, not at their core, no matter what the Originals had hoped. We all guarded against relapse, against a repeat of Earth Before. It was the reason for the Hope Chest. The reason this Academy existed.
The way they’d gone about it felt icky to me, though. Slimy, somehow, as though they’d covered me with a hundred slugs. And Oz. Maybe he had been working on his certification application the entire time, and he’d tripped into that woman on accident, nothing more. It wouldn’t be the first time my overactive imagination had gotten the best of me. His father could have loaned Oz the cuff, given him permission to collect those recordings alone.
Or I could have been right all along.
Everything I’d been told for the past seven years had been upset in a matter of days. Nothing felt familiar. The last time things had felt right, felt like home, had been wrapped in Caesarion’s arms. I might have promised to stay in line but the idea of the slightest bit of peace drove every thought of keeping that pledge right out of my mind.
I was tired of thinking about doing the right thing. So, without much thought at all, I did what I wanted.
Chapter Seventeen
No one knew where Truman had taken me or how long I’d be gone. On one hand, it kind of seemed like the dumbest time ever to sneak back to Caesarion, but I convinced myself otherwise. My friends wouldn’t go looking for me or asking questions when the Elders were involved, and the Elders seemed convinced I was nothing more than an easily distracted, lustful teenager.
Not wrong, just misguided.
Let them think I’d gone back to my room and cried myself to sleep, then woke up telling myself all of the ways I was going to be a better apprentice in the future.
Making my roommates worry gave me pause, but just for a moment. I had the rest of my life to make it up to them, but Caesarion had only a handful of days. A couple of weeks, at best. I considered sending Analeigh a wrist comm, but she wouldn’t let me get away with a vague don’t worry for a second time and besides, it would blow the cover the Elders provided when they grabbed me from Reflection.
By my calculations, even Caesarion’s tentative timeline in our Archives seemed to be off. Historians on Earth Before guessed that his mother had sent him from Alexandria prior to her death, but now I knew he left the same day Octavian ordered Cleopatra to surrender or die. I promised myself that one day I would correct his path in the Archives so my True Companion would be remembered by everyone, not only me.
I jammed in the scrambling chip with more efficiency than the first couple of times and grabbed a change of scarves from Sarah’s closet and a bottle of painkillers, then hurried down to the travel chamber. My Egyptian clothes waited in the broken decontamination drawer where I’d stashed them the other day. A quick switch of the sash from navy to aqua changed enough to make me feel fresh, and the dusty sandals molded to my feet. More and more, ancient Egypt felt like home, but I knew it was Caesarion and not the time or place that suited me.
With time travel, Caesarion never really had to die, at least not for me. If I were a full Historian—one willing to break the rules—I could return to the day in the gardens and meet him for the first time again and again. I could return earlier, run alongside him in the reeds along the Nile, play silly games together as children, or I could arrive in the days before his death and steal the same hours from now until eternity.
But it didn’t feel right. It’s why we chose to return and observe specific moments and events in a linear fashion, and why the Originals had implanted the twenty-four hour self-destruct. No matter the advancement of our technology, or the tattoos and comps that helped us seamlessly adapt to different worlds, languages, and cultures, life was meant to move forward.
As I set the date, time, and place on Jonah’s cuff, then lowered my mouth to the speaker to request that it take me to Caesarion, I knew that once he returned to Alexandria I would never see him again if I could help it.
This was my life, our story, and like all moments in time, it could only truly be lived once. Memories could be recalled and re-examined but never redone. We did our best to say the right things, to express enough, in the moment.
Or we lived with the regrets.
*
Berenice , Egypt , Earth Before–30 BCE (Before Common Era)
My luck with timing my arrival didn’t hold a second time. When I arrived, Caesarion and his party were taking supper by a small fire, and by the looks of things, he was the only one happy to see me.
Shock and anger colored the guards’ features as I shimmered into the evening. Caesarion’s relieved and delighted grin barely registered before his contingent of protectors flew to their feet and rushed me. I didn’t fight, unsure how to best handle the situation and following the instruction flooding my brain through the bio-tat, which insisted I appear as nonthreatening as possible.
Caesarion stood, his eyes hard as one of his guards yanked my arms behind my back and two others pointed swords at my chest and belly. The one behind me twisted my arms hard, and I cried out.
The blood drained from my True’s face, his white-hot fury electrifying the evening. “Do not hurt her, Ammon, or I will snap your head off with my bare hands.”
The guard behind me, who must have been Ammon, loosened his grip in surprise but didn’t let go. My eyes met Caesarion’s in an attempt to convey both my gratitude and to warn him to proceed with care.
“She appeared from nowhere, my Pharaoh. The girl is a dark one.”
“Or a sihr,” a second guard spat, disgust dripping from his chin.
The last word didn’t translate exactly into English or Latin, or even Greek, and it took my brain stem tat a minute to give me a workable definition. It provided a loose translation to sorceress or witch, and then returned a file on ancient Egyptian belief in witchcraft and magic. The knowledge relaxed the tightness in my shoulders. Magic and witchcraft intertwined with daily life for these people, and wasn’t considered inherently evil, as it would be once the Catholic or Islamic Church established a foothold. But a layman, and a female, harnessing the heka raised their defenses, especially around their revered Pharaoh.
“I’m not going to hurt him,” I stated, putting all my honesty on my face. Forthrightness heard in the voice, seen in the eyes and posture, crossed worlds and cultures and centuries. I only hoped they would choose to see my intention. “I love him.”
Caesarion startled at the confession, and Ammon dropped my arms. I took a hesitant step toward my True, stopping short when the other two guards didn’t lower their weapons and the old manservant stepped in front of his royal charge.
Stalemate.
I considered returning to the Academy and trying again after a few hours had passed, when all but one of the guards would be asleep, but then Caesarion shouldered the manservant out of the way and reached for me. My hands slid into his and contentment flooded every muscle. Snuggled against his side, the two of us faced his guards, their weapons still trained on me but all of their faces uncertain. Confused. With the exception of the guard who still emanated anger and hatred.
His shaved head gleamed in the light from the moon, his desire to hurt me reflected by the dying fire. Sweat beaded and dripped toward his hard, black eyes. They filled with distrust, and the smell of his fierce protectiveness broke out gooseflesh on my skin. That man would kill me to protect Caesarion, even if it angered his master, and sleep well that night, secure in the knowledge that he’d done the right thing.
My mind struggled to find a way to explain or to make this right, but it came up empty.
“She might be a dark one, or a sihr, but she will not harm me.”
“Pharaoh … You are a young man and naive to the ways of the world outside the palace. Let Thoth explain it to you—women cannot be trusted, especially ones who claim to love you.” The hateful guard glared, his wary anger as hot as a bonfire. “The dark ones kill without warning, without weapons. We have seen it.”
The explanation spun a web of confusion in my brain. The translator came up with no additional information for the term dark one, and the mention of killing infected me with uncertainty.
Caesarion’s arm tightened around my back, washing warmth through my body and deepening the headache at the base of my neck. I needed to pop some painkillers.
“Thank you for your insight, Thoth, but I am Pharaoh. You will not harm her, and she will not harm me. You will not speak of her presence ever, not to anyone. Do you understand?” His voice took on an authoritative tone that straightened the backs of the guards, who nodded in unison.
I never thought I would be a girl turned on by power, but the ease with which Caesarion wielded his filled me with pride and lust in equal measure. With thousands of years of known history and a thousand more still to come, this confident, beautiful, thoughtful man was meant to be mine. And for a few more days, I could have him.
The guards dropped their weapons to their sides, and I heaved a sigh of relief.
Caesarion turned to face me, his hands running from my shoulders to wrists, checking for wounds. “Are you hurt, my love?”
Breath caught in my chest at his subtle return of my sentiment. We’d spent two days together and I felt love, real and consuming, which in any other situation would seem ludicrous. Jonah had been the one to connect with Romeo and Juliet, to find it romantic, not me—I found it unbelievable and silly.
Before this. Before him.
There were scads of books, plays, and movies from Earth Before where the boy and the girl claimed to love each other from first glance, but it was rarely real love. It was simply an intense physical compatibility, which certainly still existed in Genesis and began many a Chosen pairing.
Caesarion and I were an exception. There was instant recognition between every cell, every molecule in our bodies that we had found our one perfect fit, and from the moment I had laid eyes on him, I’d loved him. I may have chosen not to act on it, had we not resolved the initial misunderstanding, but since then he’d proven a handsome, well-spoken, intelligent man underneath the pampered, entitled exterior. A man worthy of love, and so much more than he would receive from the world.
I felt lighter at his side, the troubles at the Academy eased by his smile, if not forgotten.
His eyes shone bright with emotion, telling me he hadn’t called me his “love” without meaning it. I felt as though I’d toppled into a pool of cool water, and let it wash over me as we stared.
I smiled as he brushed his palms down my face, then trailed them down my arms. “I’m fine. Not hurt. Thank you for saving my life.”
The words tumbled free before I could think, but it didn’t stop them from bruising my heart. I didn’t know if Caesarion heard the unspoken addition, but it rang clear in my ears.
Thank you for saving my life even though I’m not going to save yours.
Sadness tinged his smile, as it so often did. “It was my pleasure. Now, are you hungry?”
I shook my head, wishing the melancholy that tried to supplant my happiness could be shaken loose, too. “No. Have you eaten?”
“Yes, we just finished.”
The guards were still staring at us, and Thoth looked as though he was plotting ways to make my death look like an accident. The weight of their gazes made me uncomfortable, and the fact that I wanted Caesarion to keep touching me and saying beautiful things made me wish for at least a modicum of privacy.
More than anyone on this planet would consider appropriate, but we were past caring.
I ignored the germ of worry gnawing a hole in my stomach. Now that the guards had witnessed my appearance, Caesarion’s wasn’t the only history that had been changed by my unauthorized travel. Thoth and Ammon, along with the manservant and unnamed guard, would be affected by these encounters in ways I couldn’t begin to guess. What if I traveled back to Sanchi only to find everyone and everything gone, erased by my stupid impulsiveness?
Caesarion squeezed my arms, concern pushing aside the pleasure in his eyes. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” I forced a smile and banished my anxiety. What was done was done. “Can we take a walk, perhaps?”
“Of course.”
He turned to his guards and spoke softly in a local dialect, raising his voice a few times but winning the argument about going off with me alone. We wouldn’t wander far, and if we did not return within the hour, he gave them permission to verify their Pharaoh had not been murdered.
It didn’t seem like the time to mention that an hour still left me plenty of time to kill him and abscond.
That settled, Caesarion took my hand and led me away from the men and the fire. They had reached Berenice, a beautiful ancient city that rested on the southwestern coast of the Red Sea. The salty breeze twisted refreshing, cool air through my hair, a welcome change from the day we had spent in the baking hot desert, and the sky turned the water a deep blue under its winking stars.
We navigated the beach in silence until we left their earshot. Once nothing except the moon and stars interrupted the darkness, Caesarion dropped my hand and drew me into his arms. They were strong around my waist, and he lifted me to his chest, holding me tight. The musky scent of sweat and man went straight to my head and I closed my eyes, attempting to memorize everything about this moment. He breathed in deep against my neck, as though trying to accomplish the same thing, and the sensation of his breath moving my hair washed my skin with hot tingles.
“I thought you wouldn’t come back. That I’d dreamed you,” he whispered against my throbbing pulse.
I shifted, unwilling to remove my arms from his neck but wanting to see his face. “You didn’t dream me. But I’m not exactly real, either.”
“You feel real to me, Kaia.”
The husky tone of his voice betrayed his own response to our nearness and flushed me with heat all over again. His lips sought mine, hesitant at first, but with more abandon every passing second. An unintentional sigh slipped out of me when his tongue slid against mine. The two of us pressed together from head to toe, and if becoming one physical being were actually possible, maybe we could have stayed that way forever.
He pulled away too soon and set me back on my toes in the deep sand. My knees weren’t working properly, dumping the rest of me into the golden grains too, and I pulled Caesarion down beside me. “I confess I might have returned just to kiss you again.”
His chuckle warmed my heart, and the slight flush of his cheeks in the moonlight made me smile. “Then I am even happier you are here.”
Things couldn’t get out of control. A baby from a three-thousand-year-old daddy might not even be possible, but if it was, it had to rank high among hard things to explain away to the Elders. I wanted to kiss him all night, though, so I lay on my back, dragging him down until he braced himself above me, hands sinking into the sand on either side of my shoulders.
Moonlight lit the desperate sorrow in his eyes, and a crease deepened between his eyebrows. “For the first time in my life, I wish it didn’t have to end.”
“What?” I asked, reaching up to rub my hand against the tunic covering his heart.
“Everything.”
Pain spilled out of him, coating me with a raw ache. I wanted to say I could save him, that we would steal more hours, more days, but it might be a lie. Oz had changed James Puckle’s destiny. Jonah had found a way to alter Rosie’s. But I still didn’t know how. Or if I could.
“Everything ends, Caesarion. Like you said. But we’re together now.”
I pulled him toward me until his elbows bent and propped him against my chest, until our lips met in the quiet, seaside night. The sound of waves licking the shore blended with the roaring between my ears as he kissed me, slowly at first, then with increasing ardor as his hands left the sand and found my hair, and the weight of his body fell onto mine.
My own fingers roamed, finding the corded muscles in his back. My body responded to his, my heart thrilling with every response I elicited from him. I didn’t know how long we lay there, exploring one another fully for the first time without haste, but it was not long enough.
He eased away, panting a little while he rested his forehead on mine, our sweat mingling. “I have been with many women, Kaia, but never felt as I do in your arms. I have never loved another.”
The phrase many women lodged in my brain, dampening even his first confession of love, and the brain stem tat tried to spill unwanted facts about the Egyptian royals and their free and loose sexuality into the forefront of my mind. I shoved them away and smiled up at him, loving the way he looked framed by the night, secure in the knowledge that no matter how many women he had been with, this was special to him, too.
“I’ve never been in love before, either.”
I left out the part where I’d never had sex. In the ancient world, a woman’s purity was of the utmost importance so that proper and valid heirs could be ensured, even more so when it came to ruling families.
“And have there been other men in your life, my Kaia?” A wrinkle appeared between his eyes, as though he couldn’t decide whether he wanted to know or why he had asked the question.
“No. My world is vastly different from yours, Caesarion. We do not grow up so quickly.”
“Explain.”
He lowered his lips to my neck and worked his way to my collarbone, driving all rational thought from my head for the next several moments. I reveled in the feel of his mouth and his tongue, the weight of him, and tried not to pout when he stopped.
“You are used to being given what you demand, I imagine. Including girls—or boys, if the mood strikes you. Why are you not demanding more of me?”
Part of me wished he would go further, ask more—I didn’t know if now, in this moment, I could deny him. It might be my only chance to know what it felt like to be with my perfect match, and to give that up in the interest of propriety didn’t exactly feel right. The other part of me quaked in terror at the thought of that kind of intimacy at all, and a teeny, tiny voice worried about the man I would one day love enough to marry—that I would remember this one perfect night, and nothing could ever compare. That I’d know I’d settled for less.
“I do not want to hurt you, Kaia. It surprised me, your confession of love back at our camp, but it stunned me more to feel love in return.” A gentle smile softened Caesarion’s face. “This is all unknown, to me. I have known familial love, and the love of a people, but never this pull to a woman. I find that I want to protect you, even if it means denying myself what I want very badly, to ensure you remain intact.”
Intact was not how I felt. I felt exploded into a million pieces, scattered over the sand and naked in front of the winking heavens. It was vast and impossible to describe, the feeling of being with him, of hearing him attempt to express the same emotions that rolled through me like waves.
But no matter what decision would be made regarding the two of us and how far we would take these stolen days, tonight I was not ready, and his sweet understanding pricked my eyes with tears. “It doesn’t make sense, to love a man I’ve spent only hours with, and yet I do. Love you.”
He didn’t reply, trailing a single finger down my throat until his palm settled over my heart. The Egyptians had been the one to latch onto the idea of the heart as the center of feelings in the body, and even when later sciences confirmed they originated in the brain, the colloquial importance of the heart remained even now, in Genesis.
