by Lauren Kate
When Layla turned to refill the lamps beside the bed, she noticed Luce.
“Hello,” she said in a soft, husky voice. “Are you looking for someone?” The kohl rimming her eyes looked much more natural than Auset’s makeup.
“Yes, I am.” Luce wasted no time. Just as she reached forward to grab the girl’s wrist, Layla looked past her toward the doorway, and her face stiffened with alarm. “Who is that?”
Luce turned and saw only Bill. His eyes were wide.
“You can”—she gaped at Layla—“you can see him?”
“No!” Bill said. “She’s talking about the footsteps she hears running down the corridor outside. Better hurry, Luce.”
Luce swiveled back and took her past self’s warm hand, knocking the canister of oil to the ground. Layla gasped and tried to jerk away, but then it happened.
The feeling of the sinkhole opening in Luce’s stomach was almost familiar. The room swirled, and the only thing in focus was the girl standing before her. Her inky-black hair and gold-flecked eyes, the flush of love fresh on her cheeks. Foggily, Luce blinked, and Layla blinked, and on the other side of the blink—
The ground settled. Luce looked down at her hands. Layla’s hands. They were trembling.
Bill was gone. But he’d been right: There were footsteps in the hallway.
She dipped to pick up the canister and turned away from the door to start pouring oil into the lamp. Best not to be seen by anyone who passed doing anything but her job.
The footsteps behind her stopped. A warm brush of fingertips traveled up her arms as a firm chest pressed against her back. Daniel. She could sense his glow without even turning. She closed her eyes. His arms wrapped around her waist and his soft lips swept across her neck, stopping just below her ear.
“I found you,” he whispered.
She turned slowly in his arms. The sight of him took her breath away. He was still her Daniel, of course, but his skin was the color of rich hot chocolate, and his wavy black hair was cropped very short. He wore only a short linen loincloth, leather sandals, and a silver choker around his neck. His deep-set violet eyes swept over her, happy.
He and Layla were deeply in love.
She rested her cheek on his chest and counted the beats of his heart. Would this be the last time she did this, the last time he held her against his heart? She was about to do the right thing—the good thing for Daniel. But still it pained her to think about it. She loved him! If this journey had taught her anything, it was how much she truly loved Daniel Grigori. It hardly seemed fair that she was forced to make this decision.
Yet here she was.
In ancient Egypt.
With Daniel. For the very last time. She was about to set him free.
Her eyes blurred with tears as he kissed the part in the center of her hair.
“I wasn’t sure we’d have a chance to say goodbye,” he said. “I leave this afternoon for the war in Nubia.”
When Luce lifted her head, Daniel cupped her damp cheeks in his hands. “Layla, I’ll return before the harvest. Please don’t cry. In no time you’ll be sneaking back into my bedchamber in the dark of night with platters of pomegranates just like always. I promise.”
Luce took a deep, shuddering breath. “Goodbye.”
“Goodbye for now.” His face grew serious. “Say it: Goodbye for now.”
She shook her head. “Goodbye, my love. Goodbye.”
The reed curtain parted. Layla and Don broke from their embrace as a cluster of guards with their spears drawn barreled into the room. Kafele led them, his face dark with rage. “Get the girl,” he said, pointing at Luce.
“What’s going on?” Daniel shouted as the guards surrounded Luce and reshackled her hands. “I order you to stop. Unhand her.”
“Sorry, Commander,” Kafele said. “Pharaoh’s orders. You should know by now—when Pharaoh’s daughter is not happy, Pharaoh is not happy.”
They marched Luce away as Daniel shouted, “I’ll come for you, Layla! I’ll find you!”
Luce knew he would. Wasn’t that how it always played out? They met, she got into trouble, and he showed up and saved the day—year in and year out across eternity, the angel swooping in at the last minute to rescue her. It was tiring to think about.
But this time when he got there, she would have the starshot waiting. The thought sent a raw pain through her gut. A well of tears rose up inside her again, but she swallowed them. At least she had gotten to say goodbye.
The guards ushered her down an endless series of hallways and outside into the blistering sun. They marched her down streets made of uneven slabs of rock, through a monumental arched gate, and past small sandstone houses and shimmering silty farmland on the way out of the city. They were dragging her toward an enormous golden hill.
Only as they drew near did Luce realize it was a man-made structure. The necropolis, she realized at the same time that Layla’s mind became jumbled with fear. Every Egyptian knew this was the tomb of the last pharaoh, Meni. No one except a few of the holiest priests—and the dead—dared approach the place where the royal bodies were interred. It was locked with spells and incantations, some to guide the dead in their journey toward the next life, and some to ward off any living being who dared approach. Even the guards dragging her there seemed to grow nervous as they approached.
Soon they were entering a pyramid-shaped tomb made of baked mud bricks. All but two of the burliest guards remained outside the entrance. Kafele shoved Luce through a darkened doorway and down a darker flight of stairs. The other guard followed them, carrying a flaming torch to light their path.
The torchlight flickered on the stone walls. They were painted with hieroglyphics, and now and then Layla’s eyes caught bits of prayers to Tait, the goddess of weaving, asking for help to keep the pharaoh’s soul in one piece during his journey to the afterlife.
Every few steps they passed false doors—deep stone recesses in the walls. Some of them, Luce realized, had once been entryways leading to the final resting places of members of the royal family. They were now sealed off with stone and gravel so that no mortal could pass.
Their way grew cooler; it grew darker. The air became heavy with the faded must of death. When they neared the one open doorway at the end of the hallway, the guard with the torch would go no farther—“I will not be cursed by the gods for this girl’s insolence”—so Kafele did it himself. He wrestled aside the stone bolt that pinned the door, and a harsh, vinegary smell flooded out, poisoning the air.
“Think you have any hope of escape now?” he asked, releasing her wrists from the shackles and shoving her inside.
“Yes,” Luce whispered to herself as the heavy stone door shut behind her and the bolt thudded back into place. “Only one.”
She was alone in utter darkness, and the cold clawed at her skin.
Then something snapped—stone on stone, so recognizable—and a small golden light bloomed in the center of the room. It was cupped between the two stone hands of Bill.
“Hello, hello.” He floated to the side of the room and poured the ball of fire out of his hands and into an opulently painted purple-and-green stone lamp. “We meet again.”
As Luce’s eyes adjusted, the first thing she saw was the writing on the walls: They were painted with the same hieroglyphics as in the hallway, only this time they were prayers to the pharaoh—“Do not decay. Do not rot. Stride into the Imperishable Stars.” There were chests that wouldn’t close because they overflowed with gold coins and sparkling orange gems. An enormous collection of obelisks spread out before her. At least ten embalmed dogs and cats seemed to eye her.
The chamber was huge. She circled a set of bedroom furniture, complete with a vanity stacked with cosmetics. There was a votive palette with a two-headed serpent chiseled on its face. The interlocking necks formed a recess in the black stone, which held a circle of bright blue eye shadow.
Bill watched Luce pick it up. “Gotta look one’s best in the afterlife.”
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He was sitting atop the head of a startlingly lifelike sculpture of the former pharaoh. Layla’s mind told Luce that this sculpture represented the pharaoh’s ka, his soul, and it would watch over the tomb—the real pharaoh lay mummified behind it. Inside the limestone sarcophagus would be nested wooden coffins; inside the smallest one of them: the embalmed pharaoh.
“Watch out,” Bill said. Luce hadn’t even realized she was resting her hands on a small wooden chest. “That contains the pharaoh’s entrails.”
Luce jerked away and slid the starshot out from her dress. When she picked it up, its shaft warmed her fingers. “Is this really going to work?”
“If you pay attention and do as I say,” Bill said. “Now, the soul resides directly in the center of your being. To reach it, you must draw the blade precisely down the middle of your chest, right at the critical moment, right when Daniel kisses you and you feel yourself start to cook. Then you, Lucinda Price, will be flung out of your past self, as usual, but your cursed soul will be trapped in Layla’s body, where it will burn up and be gone.”
“I’m—I’m afraid.”
“Don’t be. It’s like having your appendix out. You’re better off without it.” Bill looked at his empty gray wrist. “By my watch, Don will be here any moment.”
Luce held the silver arrow so that its blade pointed at her breast. The swirling etched designs tingled under her fingers. Her hands quaked with nerves.
“Steady now.” Bill’s earnest call sounded far away.
Luce was trying to pay attention, but her heart was pounding in her ears. She had to do this. She had to. For Daniel. To free him from a punishment he’d taken on only because of her.
“You’ll have to do it a lot faster than that during the real thing or Daniel will surely stop you. One quick slit on your soul. You will feel something loosen, a breath of coldness, and then—bam!”
“Layla!” Don bounded into her sight. The door behind her was still bolted. Where had he come from?
The starshot tumbled from her hands and clattered to the floor. She snatched it up and slipped it back inside her dress. Bill was gone. But Don was—Daniel was right where she wanted him to be.
“What are you doing here?” Her voice broke with the force of having to act surprised to see him.
He didn’t seem to hear it. He rushed toward her and wrapped her in his arms. “Saving your life.”
“How did you get in?”
“Don’t worry about that. No mortal man, no slab of stone can obstruct a love as true as ours. I will always find you.”
In his bare, bronzed arms, it was Luce’s instinct to feel comforted. But she couldn’t right then. Her heart felt ragged and cold. This easy happiness, these feelings of complete trust, every one of the lovely emotions Daniel had shown her how to feel in every life—they were torture to her now.
“Fear not,” he whispered. “Let me tell you, love, what happens after this life. You come back, you rise again. Your rebirth is beautiful and real. You come back to me, again and again—”
The light from the lamp flickered and made his violet eyes sparkle. His body was so warm against hers.
“But I die again and again.”
“What?” He tilted his head. Even when his physique looked exotic to her, she knew his expressions so well—that bemused adoration when she expressed something he hadn’t expected her to understand. “How do you—Never mind. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that we will again be together. We will always find each other, always love each other, no matter what. I will never leave you.”
Luce fell to her knees on the stone steps. She hid her face in her hands. “I don’t know how you can stand it. Over and over again, the same sadness—”
He lifted her up. “The same ecstasy—”
“The same fire that kills everything—”
“The same passion that ignites it all again. You don’t know. You can’t remember how wonderful—”
“I’ve seen it. I do know.”
Now she had his attention. He didn’t seem sure whether or not to believe her, but at least he was listening.
“What if there’s no hope of anything ever changing?” she asked.
“There is only hope. One day, you will live through it. That absolute truth is the only thing that keeps me going. I will never give up on you. Even if it takes forever.” He wiped away her tears with his thumb. “I’ll love you with all my heart, in every life, through every death. I will not be bound by anything but my love for you.”
“But it’s so hard. Isn’t it hard for you? Haven’t you ever thought, what if …”
“One day, our love will conquer this dark cycle. That’s worth everything to me.”
Luce looked up and saw the love glowing in his eyes. He believed what he was saying. He didn’t care if he suffered again and again; he’d forge on, losing her over and over, buoyed by the hope that one day this wouldn’t be their end. He knew it was doomed, but he tried over and over again anyway, and he always would.
His commitment to her, to them, touched a part of her that she’d thought she’d given up on.
She still wanted to argue: This Daniel didn’t know the challenges coming their way, the tears they would shed over the ages. He didn’t know that she’d seen him in his moments of deepest desperation. What the pain of her deaths would do to him.
But then—
Luce knew. And that made all the difference in the world.
Daniel’s lowest moments had terrified her, but things had changed. All along, she’d felt bound to their love, but now she knew how to protect it. Now she had seen their love from so many different angles. She understood it in a way she’d never thought she would. If Daniel ever faltered, she could raise him up.
She had learned how to do it from the best: from Daniel. Here she was, about to kill her soul, about to take away their love permanently, and five minutes alone with him brought her back to life.
Some people spent their entire lives looking for love like this.
Luce had had it all along.
The future held no starshot for her. Only Daniel. Her Daniel, the one she’d left in her parents’ backyard in Thunderbolt. She had to go.
“Kiss me,” she whispered.
He was seated on the steps with his knees parted just enough to let her body slide between them. She sank to her knees and faced him. Their foreheads were touching. The tips of their noses.
Daniel took her hands. He seemed to want to tell her something, but he could not find the words.
“Please,” she begged, her lips edging toward his. “Kiss me and set me free.”
Daniel lunged for her, swooping her up and laying her sideways across his lap to cradle her in his arms. His lips found hers. They were as sweet as nectar. She moaned as a deep current of joy flowed through her, every inch of her. Layla’s death was near, she knew that, but she never felt safer or more alive than she did when Daniel held her.
Her hands locked around the back of his neck, feeling the firm sinews of his shoulders, feeling the tiny raised scars protecting his wings. His hands roved up her back, through her long, thick hair. Every touch was rapture, every kiss so wonderful and pure it left her dizzy.
“Stay with me,” he pleaded. The muscles in his face had grown tense, and his kisses had become hungrier, more desperate.
He must have sensed Luce’s body warming. The heat rising in her core, spreading through her chest and flushing her cheeks. Tears filled her eyes. She kissed him harder. She’d been through this so many times before, but for some reason this felt different.
With a loud whoosh he stretched his wings out, and then deftly wrapped them tight around her, a cradle of soft white holding the two of them fast.
“You really believe it?” she whispered. “That someday I’ll live through this?”
“With all my heart and soul,” he said, cupping her face in his hands, pulling his wings tighter around them both. “I will wait for you as long as it takes. I will love
you every moment across time.”
By then, Luce was broiling hot. She cried out from the pain, thrashing in Daniel’s arms as the heat overwhelmed her. She was burning his skin, but he never let her go.
The moment had come. The starshot was tucked inside her dress, and this—right now—was when she would have used it. But she was never going to give up. Not on Daniel. Not when she knew, no matter how hard it got, that he would never give up on her.
Her skin began to blister. The heat was so brutal, she could do nothing but shiver.
And then she could only scream.
Layla combusted, and as the flames engulfed her body, Luce felt her own body and the soul they were sharing untwine, seeking the fastest escape from the unforgiving heat. The column of fire grew taller and wider until it filled the room and the world, until it was everything, and Layla was nothing at all.
Luce expected darkness and found light.
Where was the Announcer? Could she still be inside Layla?
The fire blazed on. It did not extinguish. It spread. The flames consumed more and more of the darkness, reaching into the sky as if the great night itself were flammable, until the hot blaze of red and gold was all that Luce could see.
Every other time one of her past selves had died, Luce’s release from the flames and into the Announcer had been simultaneous. Something was different, something that was making her see things that couldn’t possibly be real.
Wings on fire.
“Daniel!” she cried out. What looked like Daniel’s wings soared through waves of flames, catching fire but not smoldering, as if they were made of fire. All she could make out were white wings and violet eyes. “Daniel?”
The fire rolled across the darkness like a giant wave across an ocean. It crashed onto an invisible shore and washed furiously over Luce, rushing up her body, over her head, and far behind her.
Then, as if someone had pinched out a candle, there was a quick hiss and everything went black.
A cold wind crept up behind her. Goose bumps spread across her skin. She hugged her body closer, drawing up her knees and realizing with a jolt of surprise that no ground held up her feet. She wasn’t flying exactly, just hovering, directionless. This darkness was not an Announcer. She had not used the starshot, but had she somehow … died?
