by Nina Bruhns
Honestly she didn’t.
As she and Gillian took hold of Seth’s hands, Josslyn felt a rush of energy surge through the room. Rhys was the source, it was his power she felt. It swirled and twirled in a tingling whirlpool; it went through her body like electricity, gathering in an invisible vortex that focused and centered over her lover’s body. Seth’s hand jerked in hers, and she had to grab it with all her might to hang on to it. She could see Gillian do the same.
To her amazement, the longest arrow shaft slowly began to move, easing itself agonizingly slowly from the depths of Seth’s muscular thigh, causing wet runnels of blood to spill over his flesh and stain his skin crimson.
She tried not to think about how she had kissed and touched that very spot just a few short hours ago. How the inside of her own thigh had slid intimately against it as he’d filled her with his long, thick manhood and moved within her so erotically she hadn’t been able to think straight.
With a painful groan, his fingers now clamped on to hers, and she bit her lip, tasting her own blood. Somehow Rhys was keeping the leg still as he concentrated. And the magic was working. Joss was impressed, and so thankful she nearly wept.
It seemed like hours before both arrows were out, though in reality it must have been minutes. To Joss’s horror, Seth woke up halfway through the second procedure. He didn’t open his eyes at first; he just clenched his teeth and asked through them, “Sekhmet’s blood, Englishman! Am I dead, then? Is this your Christian hell I’ve landed in, to be endlessly tortured?”
How he knew Rhys was the person working on his leg, Joss had no clue. But her heart leapt with joy at his bad temper—a sure sign of life and vitality. He had seemed so far gone, she’d been terrified he’d never wake up again.
For a brief moment Rhys’s eyelids fluttered up. He, too, appeared immensely relieved. “Actually, my lord, I think it may be the Muslim version of heaven. Although there are only two beautiful virgins attending you, stroking your hair and holding your hands…and come to think of it, I rather suspect they are not virgins, either. But they are beautiful, my lord.”
Still without opening his eyes, Seth squeezed Joss’s hand. “That they are, Englishman.”
Her heart melted and soared, and she squeezed back.
He was going to be all right.
At least for now…
Chapter 17
The second arrow parted from Seth’s leg with a sickening sound of bloody flesh, and he let out a long string of vivid curses. After it was over and the pain subsided, he looked up at Josslyn. He felt a tired smile curve his lips. It was good to see her.
“Drink this, my lord,” the soft voice of a priestess said from behind Joss. He reluctantly pulled his gaze from her.
“What is it?”
“The elixir will chase the poison from your blood and lessen the pain in your limbs and stomach.” The priestess respectfully offered a golden chalice to him. He wondered why she was being so deferential.
“And yet, is not this evil potion that’s turning my insides to fire of your doing?” he asked her with narrowed eyes.
She responded with her gaze cast to the floor. “I simply do what my high priest commands,” she said quietly.
He had the oddest feeling that she didn’t approve of her ruler using her skills to hurt others. Interesting that someone with scruples had made it to such a high position at Petru.
He grunted and labored to sit up, waving off Rhys’s help. He needed to do this himself. He held out his hand for the chalice and drank the brew down with a grimace.
“In that case, I’m surprised I’m still alive.” He handed her back the goblet. “Or perhaps that has just been remedied…” Haru-Re had tried to kill him with those arrows. Why would his enemy now try to lessen his discomfort?
He was gratified when Josslyn gasped and shot a horrified look at the other woman. She looked ready to pounce on her.
His fierce, beautiful protectress.
“The elixir is as I said,” the priestess assured him. “As for the other…I prepared two quivers of arrows for my lord Haru-Re: one with lethal poison, one not.” Her eyes slid to Josslyn, whose expression was still a scowl. “I understand it was at your lady’s urging that my lord made the choice he did.”
As the priestess bowed her head and took her leave with the empty chalice, Seth turned to Josslyn, the memory of her impassioned plea for his life out in the desert when they were surrounded filling him with pride and no small wonder. “Yes, I remember.”
Her cheeks blushed. “Well, I wasn’t about to let him kill you without putting up a fight.”
Her bravery put him to shame. How different she was from his preconceived notions of her! “You never cease to surprise me, Josslyn,” he murmured. He was nearly as sorry to lose his budding relationship with her as he was to lose Khepesh. “I owe you my life.”
She squirmed under his praise. “Don’t be ridiculous. Anyone would have done the same.”
“I doubt that,” he said.
Nephtys’s prediction about Josslyn had been uncannily accurate. At least the part about her wisdom and perfection as a candidate for consort of the leader of Khepesh. It ripped his heart out that he had lost his per netjer, and along with it the chance to fulfill that prophecy.
Shame swept through him. He still couldn’t believe the war was lost! He had been conquered. And without even setting foot on the battlefield, without shedding a drop of enemy blood. He was the prisoner of his nemesis and had lost everything. He alone was the cause of Khepesh’s downfall.
His disgrace was deep.
He didn’t deserve to be the high priest of Set-Sutekh. He didn’t deserve to be the leader of Khepesh. And he certainly didn’t deserve to have a woman as worthy and courageous as Josslyn Haliday to sit at his side for eternity.
His heart grew bleak as the emptiness of his future hit him hard. Even more so than when he’d written that poem four thousand years ago.
“You should have left me to my fate,” he ground out in despair. “I would be better off dead. And you would be better off without me.”
“Don’t say that,” she protested. “It’s not true, and you can’t mean it.”
He let out a long, unsteady breath. “I’ve never been more serious in my life.”
“I know this is difficult for you, my lord,” Rhys stepped in. “More so than anything you’ve ever had to endure. But the shemsu of Khepesh need you to be strong, for their sakes, even if you refuse to do it for your own. You can’t give up. Haru-Re may have you in his possession for now, but he has yet to seize the palace or engage our warriors in battle. There is still hope for victory.”
Seth let out a humorless laugh. “Perhaps in a parallel universe, as your woman is so fond of saying.” It was one of Gillian’s favorite expressions, and he’d always found it ironic. Until today.
With a raised hand, he beckoned Josslyn to return to his side. She looked so worried. He felt guilty for his uncharacteristic bout of self-pity, but he felt even more guilty for dragging her into the dangerous mess that had become his life. That, at least, he could remedy.
He summoned his most autocratic mask. “Either way, Lady Josslyn, you will be generously rewarded for your intervention, if it’s in my power to do so.”
She shook her head. “Seeing you regain your strength is reward enough,” she assured him, but she appeared the slightest bit wounded at his cool formality, though she tried to hide it.
It was best this way. She wasn’t a follower of Set-Sutekh. She wasn’t immortal, hadn’t even known about the existence of the shemsu three days ago. She wouldn’t see the impossibility of his situation. Nor the precariousness of her own, because of the prophecy. If Haru-Re believed she was special to him, she would pay a steep price. Thoth alone knew what would become of her here at Petru. He couldn’t bear to be the reason for her unhappiness.
He must distance himself from her, convince Haru-Re she meant nothing to him.
For her own good.
/> But she made it very difficult. She helped him to lie back on the bed again. Adjusting his pillow, she tenderly pushed a fallen lock of hair off his forehead. “Rest now,” she told him softly.
Gillian and Rhys stood watching him with their arms around each other and exchanged quiet smiles.
“Nephtys was right,” Gillian said with a clueless sigh. “You two are so right for each other. You belong together.”
His heart ached as never before. He pressed a final kiss to Josslyn’s palm and reluctantly let it drop.
She stepped away from him. Because of the blood connection, he could feel her discomfort at her sister’s observation. But he sensed it wasn’t because the idea was so distasteful to her. Far from it—the thought seemed to fill her body with a strange kind of…rightness.
Which was even worse.
Because he felt it, too, in his own.
He arranged his face in a frown, searching for a diplomatic way of crushing those sweet feelings for him that he could feel blossoming within her. “No. Nephtys was wrong,” he said. “And so was the prophecy.”
After an infinitesimal hesitation, she plastered a false smile upon her full, lovely lips and covered the hurt in her eyes. “Yes, the idea is absurd,” she told Gillian with shoulders squared. “I don’t believe in psychic visions, you know that. And Nephtys definitely got her wires crossed on this one. I’m going back to the States as soon as I can. Seth and I have already discussed it.”
Her sister’s mouth dropped open and Rhys’s brows shot up.
“Is this true?” Gillian asked Seth incredulously. “You’re just letting her go?”
Josslyn was certainly stretching the truth, and she was also referring to a conversation they’d had when he’d been of a vastly different mind about her. Nonetheless, he went along with her. As much as the whole idea of her leaving Egypt made him see red, he would far rather she was safely away from Haru-Re.
“Is that a problem?” he asked Gillian, reinforcing Josslyn’s statement with a wisp of a spell of acceptance. “Will she be a danger to the shemsu who remain here? Will she expose us—you—to the outside world?”
“No! Of course not,” Gillian said, affronted. “Joss would never betray Khepesh, or even Petru. Not in a million years. I just thought…” She shook her head, acquiescence already seeping in to let her sister go. She frowned.
Seth kept his face stoically impassive to prevent himself from betraying how difficult this rejection was for him.
“Unfortunately, my permission doesn’t matter,” he said. “Whether Josslyn stays or leaves is no longer my decision to make.” His voice felt brittle and the taste of the words was as bitter as bile. “I am Haru-Re’s prisoner. And knowing him, Khepesh will soon be razed to dust. Would she be better off here, a captive of Haru-Re, living the life of his defeated enemy and possibly robbed of her mind and her will, as your mother? Or would she be safer and happier back in her home, living the life she had planned and forgetting all about what she has seen here? Indeed, would you not all be better off if you did the same?”
With that, he eased himself gingerly from his smarting side onto his back, sighed deeply and closed his eyes. “My heart is heavy, my head is pounding, my leg is on fire, and my whole body feels trampled by a herd of water buffalo. I will sleep now.”
He could feel them all staring at him, and his mind swam with their almost palpable disbelief that he had given up the fight with Haru-Re so easily.
He was so damn tired of always having to be strong! To be the leader. Always having to think of everyone’s happiness but his own. Always at war. Always waiting, waiting, waiting for Set-Sutekh to return to this world and take over the rule of his own per netjer, as was meant to be. Always so accursedly lonely.
“Stay with him,” he heard Rhys quietly urge Josslyn, his voice filled with concern.
“No,” Seth said from behind his closed lids. He dipped a spill of anger from the well of frustration within him. “Since Josslyn seems to be more influential with Haru-Re than any of us, I want her to go to him. Find out what he intends for Khepesh.”
“Me?” Josslyn exclaimed in consternation. “But I—”
“Tell Lord Rhys when you have Haru-Re’s answer,” Seth cut her protest off with the curt order. “He and I will decide what’s to be done with the shemsu. Everyone else is to leave me in peace. From now on I’ll see no one but him.”
There was absolute silence for several seconds.
“Very well,” Josslyn said, hurt tingeing her voice. “If that’s what you wish.”
“It is,” Seth said, without looking at her.
And when they were gone, with an incoherent sound of misery, he released his iron-willed control and let the feelings of anguish rush over him, filling his body with more pain and desolation than he’d ever felt in his life.
For his god.
For his people.
For himself.
But most of all, for the love that could have blessed his life with happiness.
A love that now would never be.
Chapter 18
“He didn’t mean it,” Gillian said as the three of them sat in the salon of the rooms that she and Rhys shared, to which they’d been brought after being dismissed by Seth. Haru-Re had refused to speak with any of them, and had also denied them permission to seek out Nephtys. Exhausted, Josslyn had then given in to her sister’s urging and taken a long nap. Or tried to, anyway. Mostly she’d just stared at the ceiling in a vain attempt at blocking out Seth’s rejection. Having finished a light meal, Gillian and Rhys were now attempting to cheer her up.
It wasn’t working.
“Like hell he didn’t,” Joss responded. “You heard him. I obviously mean nothing to him.” So much for that bogus proposal. Good thing she’d had no intention of accepting it.
Her sister sent her a sympathetic look, then understanding dawned, widening her eyes. “My God. You’re in love with him!”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Joss refuted, but her sister knew her too well to be fooled. She might not have fallen as far as love, but she was definitely falling.
“Oh, sis.”
“He’s ill,” Rhys said sympathetically. “He’s humiliated and feeling defeated. Give him time to come to terms with what’s happening. He’ll come around.”
Him? What about her? What was she supposed to do? She’d been thrown into this world against her will! Her few belongings were back at Khepesh—including her money and her passport—and here at Petru she was clearly expected to live in the quarters of a man who never wanted to see her again. Her position was untenable, and her heart was aching as it never had before.
“He can have all the time in the world,” Joss said stiffly, battling the hurt and humiliation. She’d sleep on a cot in the kitchen before crawling back to him!
Damn it all! She’d given that man more of herself in a day than she’d ever given anyone else in her entire life. And what did he do? Send her straight into the dangerous grasp of another man. She’d thought they’d turned a corner. She’d thought he’d started to like her as much as she liked him. He’d recited poetry for her, for crying out loud!
“What does he want from me?” she gritted out. “To offer myself to Haru-Re, this time in exchange for his freedom instead of my sisters? Because look how well that turned out for all of us.”
“I’m sure he didn’t intend his orders to be taken that way,” Gillian said.
“Good, because it’s not gonna happen,” Joss said heatedly. “I don’t want anything to do with Haru-Re. Don’t want to talk to him. Don’t even want to be in the same room with him. The guy gives me the serious creeps.”
“Join the club,” Gillian said with a shiver, rubbing her arms. “Aside from the fact that Nephtys would have a fit.”
“Trust me, she’s got nothing to worry about. Ray doesn’t want me, and I sure as hell don’t want him.”
Not in this lifetime.
“That’s not what Seth wants, either,” Rhys sa
id confidently.
“He likes you, Joss,” Gillian assured her. “A lot. Before he met you he was convinced he wouldn’t want you as a consort. But I’ve watched his face when he looks at you. He’s falling for you, sis. Big time.”
“Give me a break.”
“I agree with Gillian,” Rhys said. “I’ve known Seth for a long time. He’s just plain not himself right now.” He shook his head. “He is not one to lie down in defeat like a knocked-out boxer. Not while he has a single breath of fight left in his body. Believe me, all of this is the poison talking. Hell, that poison may even have been bespelled to deliberately cause these negative feelings.”
Josslyn jetted out an unwilling sigh, wanting so much to believe them. She didn’t want to feel this bad about his hurtful rejection. About him. Didn’t want it to matter so much. So why did it?
“If you say so.”
“I know it’s not easy,” Rhys said, “but we should do as he asks for now. Nephtys had just sent word that we can come to her now. You must ask her to go with you to Haru-Re. Try and learn what he intends for us. I don’t dare speak to him yet. After showing my concern for Seth-Aziz, I’m sure he considers me a traitor to Petru.”
Joss looked at her sister in appeal. “You know the situation far better than I do, Jelly Bean. Tell me what you think I should do.”
Sitting next to her, Gillian slipped her arms around her and gave her a long hug. “Trust Rhys’s judgment, sis. If anyone can steer through these treacherous waters, it’s him.”
Joss drew in a steadying breath and nodded. “Okay. I’ll do it, then. For you and Rhys, and the other immortals who were so kind to me at Khepesh.”
“What do you think will happen to us?” Gillian asked Rhys anxiously. “To the shemsu of Khepesh?”
“God only knows,” he said.
The thought terrified Joss. What would she do if Ray told her Khepesh and everything in it was to be destroyed, as Seth feared, with the shemsu of Set-Sutekh—including Rhys—scattered to the winds and the rituals that renewed their immortality to be halted forever? What would become of them?
