by N J Adel
He embraced my hand between his and smiled. “Why don’t you leave the doubting and skepticism to me then, my Queen, and tell me why you’re so agitated?”
I pointed at the book I’d thrown away. “This was the hundredth book I’ve read that mentions the obnoxious myth but fails to say anything about me, Queen Meha, or the usurper Bessen Ra.”
“History is almost always falsified, Majesty. Who cares what’s written in books when we are here, witnesses of the truth?”
“You don’t understand. It’s been ten days since I woke, yet I haven’t set foot outside this villa. Instead, I’m basking in a sun that would tan my skin never again, learning foreign tongues, a foreign time system, reading about the farces of history to understand the new world in which I’m supposed to learn to belong,” I shook my head, “when every piece of evidence, every bit of my body screams at me, telling me it is impossible.”
“I fear my intelligence has failed to follow yours, Majesty. May you explain further? Why is it impossible to belong in the new world? We are practicing day and night to control our powers. I thought that was the only obstacle standing between us capturing and defeating Bessen Ra and then reclaiming the kingdom.”
A troubled sigh seeped out of my chest. “But how can the Gods walk among the humans, Redamun?”
He stared at me, Tia, too, her hands slowing around my toes. She was about to say something but retreated when Drusus’s steps resonated back to us.
He presented a silver tray with a wine flask, four silver goblets, a platter of strawberries, grapes of all colors and strong cheeses.
I could hear my companions salivate at the delicious sight.
Drusus filled the goblets and took the first sip. “To give you some peace, Guard Redamun.”
A smile with no teeth stretched Redamun’s lips, and I rolled my eyes.
Drusus served me my goblet. I couldn’t ignore the shake of his fingers and the distraught he felt.
“I shall continue to fast. You can have it.” I lifted my gaze to him. “Are you well?”
“Yes.” He grinned from ear to ear, his emotions in utter contrast to his face.
“If there’s something you wish to tell me in private, feel free to ask.”
“Thank you, Majesty for your concern. I can assure you I’m fine.”
“Very well. Enjoy this little feast then.” I rose. “I’m joining Nur in the experiment hall.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“Nur?” I pushed the vault door open. Only the scattered papyri, vessels, copper blades, needles and pins on the examination table greeted me.
I spun around, looking for new burn marks on the basalt and wool covering the old mosaics on the walls and the floor.
There were none.
If he hadn’t been experimenting with his fire or analyzing blood, where did he go?
Bracing my palms against the table edge, I eyed one of the pins and the alcohol bottle next to it. Testing my own blood sounded more productive than wasting time listening for his heartbeat or locating his energy; he’d come back here sooner or later.
My thumb pointed up, and I grabbed the pin and alcohol. Looking around, I couldn’t find any cotton to pour the alcohol on for sterilization. “We had a huge pile here somewhere. Where did it—
“Majesty?”
The pin dropped on the insulated floor with a faint thud as I flinched. I barely salvaged the alcohol bottle from spilling all over everything, twisting toward Nur’s voice.
He strode and took the bottle of my hand. “Apologies for startling you, my Queen.”
“How did you get back in here? I didn’t hear you come in.”
“Uh…” He scratched behind his ear. “I… I’d better show Your Majesty.”
I was not in the mood for stammering or games. I needed answers to the questions banging my skull. “Show me what?”
“A new power I only discovered this morning. It’s amazing.”
“Invisibility?” I mocked.
His eyes narrowed for a moment. “No, but I wonder if we might be able to do that, too.”
“Nur, I don’t have time for jokes.”
“I swear I am not.”
I knew that. Many abilities were more possible with our new energy including but not limited to the ability to not be seen. In fact, there were no limits my mind could imagine.
Yet I didn’t want to discuss more of what we could do. I was only interested in discussing what we could not do.
“Please, you have to see this,” he urged.
Although his excitement reached me, it failed to alter my temper. “Go ahead but be swift.”
A grin painted his face as his hands turned into fists. He closed his eyes and crossed his arms diagonally on his chest.
Then he vanished.
Completely.
No body. No breathing sounds. No heartbeat.
Wherever he’d gone, it was far from my hearing range.
A few moments later, he reappeared across the vault. Laughing, he marched in my direction, a little off-balance. “I have just been to my chamber and back. With a little more focus, I can train myself to land on the same spot in and out. Have you witnessed that, my Queen?”
“Yes,” I uttered.
His laughter lowered. “Isn’t it amazing? How we could go anywhere only by thinking about it?”
I took in a deep breath, my hand reaching for another pin. “Where’s the cotton?”
“There’s a whole bale in the back.”
“Go fetch some.”
“I don’t understand. Majesty is not surprised or a little bit curious about the catechism of such marvelous ability?”
“The same way we defy the Holding Force and fly or walk on water. Visualize the path, summon your energy to manipulate the particles of time and matter, will it, and you get anywhere you wish whenever you wish. I already know the catechism of such marvelous ability. The cotton, Nur.”
Disappointment and frustration replaced his earlier excitement. He didn’t say anything as he stalked to a tied bale lying next to the storage shelves in the back. Yet I could almost hear his roiling thoughts and inquiries.
He gave me a handful of the white fluff when he returned. “Suffice to say Majesty can—”
“Jump.” I pressed a piece of cotton on top of the alcohol bottle and tilted them until I felt the cold liquid on my fingertips. “That’s what I call it.”
He took the pin from my hand and sterilized it, while I did my thumb. Then he closed the bottle. “If I may ask, why hasn’t Majesty shared this valuable information with any of us?”
I hit the cold wood with my fist, holing it, tools clinking on it. “Because my only wish is to smother that energy not to expand it!”
His eyes widened at my sudden outburst. “Calm down, Majesty, if you please. There’s no reason to be that upset.”
“No reason?” I turned, one hand on my hip, the other running into my hair, my chest burning painfully. “Do you realize that every ability we have Bessen Ra will have, too?”
“I do.” He came and stood in front of me. “For that alone, Majesty should allow us and herself to unleash all our potential before trying to control it. Otherwise, we’re only limiting ourselves, giving our enemy an advantage he doesn’t deserve. Just like the first war.”
My wild energy thundered inside me. “What are you saying?”
“Forgive my candor, my Queen. We could have easily won that war, but Majesty was too occupied with disproving the rumors. It meant a lot more to you than winning.”
“Well, forgive me if I have a conscience, Master Nur.”
“Majesty, please, I mean no disrespect. I only—”
“Do you even remember what started that war?”
He folded his arms across his chest. “That khara High Priest Sekhemre and Sharmi, Bessen Ra’s serpent mother, convinced the people Majesty was an evil goddess, which turned them on you and led them to fight with the half-brother against you.”
“But why?”
“Because Bessen Ra wanted to be King instead of you, and Majesty had already refused to marry him. He had no other option but to tarnish your reputation so that the people would overthrow Your Majesty themselves.”
“That’s only part of the truth. Have you ever asked yourself why High Priest had teamed with a harlot and a bastard against a pure-blooded queen?”
His lips twisted, and his gaze fell to the floor.
I placed one fist on my chest. “Because of that conscience, Nur. My belief in the right to know. My intention to tell the whole kingdom there were no gods, only humans. No magic, only knowledge. One anyone could gain and use, not just the priests. That’s what started the war, my brilliant pupil.”
“True teaching is not an accumulation of knowledge; it is an awakening of consciousness.” He glanced back up at me.
“Glad you still remember what I’ve been trying to teach you all those years.”
“But back in our time, such knowledge was exclusive to royalty and priests. Majesty’s plan to expose the lies of the Temple and generalize learning for the commoners would have stripped the priests out of their only power over the masses.”
“Obviously, my biggest mistake. It cost me the kingdom.”
“That and not utilizing Majesty’s only power that could have made us win.” He glanced up back at me. “High Priest was scared of Your Majesty. Not because of the planned exposure, but mainly because he knew what you could do.”
A now familiar black hole of wrath and anxiety set in my stomach.
“Majesty could have put the whole world under her command, but no. You chose to smother one of the most valuable powers any human could possess, pretend it never existed, just like you’re doing now,” he said, his voice high with suppressed rage.
Flames gathered in my grip, and my whole body shook with them. “I’ve heard enough.”
“How to beat a person who can control your mind, compel you to do anything she wants? Easy, compel her first. Make her afraid of using her powers in the first place,” he continued, defying me. “High Priest played you so well, my Queen, knowing beyond doubt how much you cared about what people thought of you. How you would stop being Seratis the second people didn’t accept her, erase her even from your own head.”
“I said enough!” I wanted to throw my fireball at him, but I didn’t. Instead, I focused on his mass and the air between him and the next wall, manipulating every part of it until I could lift Nur off the ground. Then I pushed him against the wall.
He bellowed as his back crashed with it, and he plopped down on his rear.
“You want me to use my powers, Nur. Here they are.” I switched my gaze to one of the blades on the table, willed it up in the air, and hurled it a digit away from his left eye.
He ducked, his hands protecting his face. “Majesty!”
I stopped the blade before it pierced the wool on the wall and commanded it back in my grip. “What are you afraid of, my dear friend? Even if I stab your eye, it will heal back. Let’s throw caution out of the window and unleash our powers. Isn’t that what you aspire to?”
Panting, he uncovered his face and stared at me. “Yes, Majesty, but not like that. This is—”
“Dangerous? Wrong? Yes, Nur. It’s wrong. And when you’re a ruler, wrong is an indulgence of which you can’t meet the expense.” I dropped the blade on the floor and went to him, the fire in my hand gone. It seemed that using some of that wild energy subdued it.
Stretching my hand, I helped him up. “So yes, I’d rather risk my life to live in a new time, when no one knows who Seratis is or what she can do, than to win a war in a way that has my entire kingdom believe beyond doubt I am her.”
He dusted off his clothes. “Perhaps Majesty had made the right choice. But what if after defeating the usurper Majesty have compelled the people to see the truth about Seratis and not the rumor? You were never that evil goddess who made men do awful things for her and then threw them as blood sacrifices in the Nile.”
“Or I could have compelled them to love me as that sadistic demon my brother had brilliantly drawn. Or better yet, I could have compelled the other kings and queens of the world to submit to my will. I could have made them believe they were cats and donkeys if I had wished.” A sarcastic laugh flew out of my throat. “To what avail? To live a lie after lie? An eternal life of deceit?”
He pursed his lips, and then he bowed, bending a knee. “Forgive me, Majesty. All this time under your service, and I’ve failed to learn from your wisdom. I was blind by my vision of what’s right. Now that I see it from Majesty’s eyes, I know how ridiculous I’ve been.”
“And now that I see the truth from your eyes, I say you have a point.”
His dark gaze, reluctantly, sought clarification, twitching up at me.
“I was too absurd, too conceited to think I could have won a war fighting fairly with someone who knew nothing about fairness,” I confessed.
“It was the right thing to do.”
“Since I’m no longer a ruler, I now can afford to do the wrong thing.”
He rose, his brows hooked, his heartbeat racing. “What do you mean, my Queen?”
“Every day I spend on this earth I grow assured the world doesn’t need or care for Meha. No one ever has. Only Seratis.”
His gaze tightened, scrutinizing my expression. “I do.”
I chortled. “You have just shown me how desperately you are in need of the goddess not the human.”
“Seratis might win wars and rule the world, but Meha…”
“Yes, Nur, what can Meha do?”
His glistening eyes, so deep, so full of emotions gazed at me. “She rules our hearts.”
The warmness I felt through him failed to deflate my anger or shake my fresh resolution. “Your two assumptions about the missing need to recharge turned out to be invalid.”
He swallowed. “I’m sorry to have failed you, my Queen.”
“I don’t need apologies. I need answers,” I said. “Draw my blood, and then take a break. Have a glass of wine and some strawberries with the rest. Have a swim in the pond or play a game of chess with Redamun, I don’t care. But after that, you don’t stop analyzing that blood until you present me with a proper hypothesis that explains how on earth we have become like this.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“I wish I could feel you the same way you feel me, Majesty.” Redamun pulled me closer to his body as we lay, my back to his front, in my bed.
As much as I wanted to demolish my own wall and let my companions in, I could not. It was my duty to keep that wall up. To carry burdens so heavy on my own. To spare my loyal friends the pain, the trouble of questions and the bitterness of the truth.
Perhaps one day I could choose which brick to take down to let them sense only the deep, beautiful emotions I had for them.
For I loved them.
All three of them.
So much.
Gracefully and sinfully.
Equally.
My gaze drifted to the blue and orange streaks of dawn, a secret wish in my chest with the beginning of a new day. “I’m in your arms. Isn’t that enough?”
It was a moment before he spoke. “No.”
I rolled on my side, facing him. “No?”
He shook his head, and then slid my hair off of my bare shoulder and kissed me on the shoulder blade.
Even his simplest of kisses had never failed to send a jolt of desire down my spine. “Is this the wine talking?”
He chuckled against my neck, his breaths tickling. “It might be.”
I pressed into his bare chest, savoring his heat through my skin. “You should drink everyday then.”
His fingers caressed the back of my head as his lips found mine. His other hand unlaced my dress, exposing my bosoms. “As you wish, my Queen.”
Fondling my plump flesh, he moaned. “I love your body.”
I pushed his linen undergarment out of the way to see him in full, freeing his hardne
ss. “Not as much as I love yours.”
Swiftly, he undressed me and rolled me on my back, leaving me completely naked under him. His erection snaked between my thighs, and his hazel eyes glinted with primal need.
I tensed, wrapping my head at the fact Redamun was finally surrendering to his desires over caution. For days, he wouldn’t even try, and now, over the course of a few moments, our legs were tangled together, his hard and heavy erection about to enter me.
No time for preparation or overthinking.
Only hunger that needed to be filled.
I grabbed the rippling muscles on his bottom and parted my legs, my wild energy swirling.
The tip of his erection sank into my wetness with a hot hiss out of his mouth. “Ya lahwey-y.”
I laughed under my breath. His eyes rolled back, and my whole body tingled with arousal.
He pushed forward, blowing out a long, fiery breath. “Majesty’s… It’s so…”
The slow way he was penetrating me made me feel every part of his hardness, every friction with my folds. And it felt utterly amazing. “Yours is so very good, too,” I said, my voice all breath.
Wincing, he tilted his head back, shaking it. “All this training and I still can’t control myself around you. One look, one touch, and I’m burning.”
“No, Redamun. You can’t stop now,” I urged him. “I need you as much as you need me.”
“My Queen, you’re killing me.” His eyes squeezed as he retracted and then thrust into me again. And again. Each time with a louder groan from the both of us.
And a more searing threat.
His hands glowed bright red, and I could tell he was about to set the sheets on fire.
“Fine. Stop,” I grumbled.
Slowly, he slid out of me and buried his face in my hair. His devastation burned me more than his heat.
“I hate this,” he said, his voice muffled, but I could hear him well. “I hate that he can please you more than I can. I want to be able to be a man to you like he is.”
