King of Me (9 page)

Her eyes lit up. “Kitane.” She pointed to her chest.

“Kitane,” I repeated. “I need to find a phone.” I made a phone shape with my hand and held it up to my face. “Phone?”

She shook her head.

Crap
. No phones. Well, there had to be one somewhere, maybe in the nearest town.

I tried to stand but staggered on my wobbly legs.

She protested and made me sit, quickly plucking a small twig from the dirt floor and drawing a picture of a snake.

Great. A snake bit me.
I unbandaged my foot and leg, relieved to find them red and swollen but nothing more. I didn’t know a lot about bites, but I knew that people generally got worse, not better.

She disappeared into the adjoining room and returned with a white tunic, very similar to the one she wore, only without the stains and dirt.

“Thank you.” The fact that she didn’t have much but was generous enough to clothe me meant a lot. She then handed me a scarf made of roughly woven burlap and placed it over my head.

“My hair. It worries you.” I wondered why, of course.

She helped me to my feet, slid the tunic over my body, and then tied the cloth around my head, tucking in any loose strands.

She called out, and within seconds, the man—her father, I assumed—appeared and walked me outside. Their little home was surrounded by a stone wall with a few weird-looking chickens and three white goats running around the yard. I didn’t see the ocean, but I smelled the salt air wafting through the trees that surrounded the clearing.

Just outside a small gate stood an old, scraggly-looking gray ox attached to a little cart. The man pointed for me to sit.

I hoped to God he was taking me to a town with a phone.

“She coming?” I asked and glanced at Kitane.

He pointed to the cart and then sort of pushed me into it. If I were in any better shape, I would have pushed him back, but as it was, I could barely walk.

I mentally said my goodbyes to Kitane and watched the little house fade through the trees—an orchard, I realized.

Olive trees. Where the hell am I?

Over the next hour, we passed several more primitive homes and rustic-looking farms along the narrow dirt road, where I still saw no signs of civilization. Seriously, no signs, no electricity, no telephone poles. Just lots of trees, animals, and curious people who stared as we passed, me facing backwards, sitting in the rickety little cart.

Jet helicopters to this.
Well, I would take this, any day, over where I’d been.

When we approached a bustling market filled with merchants selling animals, grapes, and piles of olives, I was convinced that we were on some remote Greek island. Had King dumped me into the ocean, and I’d miraculously drifted to this place? Maybe. There were many islands in Greece, one of which was King’s horrible house of pain. This place, however, had people. Lots of people, and I’d never been anywhere like it.

The man tied up his ox and pulled me up from the cart, mumbling at me.

“You know I don’t understand you, right? I mean, you can keep talking, but I won’t understand a single, frigging, goddamned word.”

He gestured for me to follow him toward a high wall on the other side of the market.

“Phone?” I asked, again making the shape with my hand.

He shook his head and brought me to a thick wooden door, where two shirtless men, wearing blue and red skirts—yeah, skirts—stood with long frigging knives strapped around their waists.

Okay. This keeps getting stranger.

The man said something to them, but they didn’t seem to want to let us in. That’s when he snapped the scarf from my head, and the two guards gasped.

What the hell?
What was the problem with my hair? Yes, I knew it looked like a curly blonde pile of turds, but this situation had crossed all lines in the sand where pretty hair seemed like a priority.

The guard slipped the man a coin, took hold of my arm, and thumped on the door.

“Wait. Did you just…
sell
me?” I said to the man who’d brought me.

The guard pushed me through the doorway, following closely behind, and quickly slammed it shut.

“You can’t sell me! I’m a person! An Ameri—”
Wait, that might not win points.
“I want to go to the police. A phone!” Once again I held my hand to my ear, but the man just stood there looking at me as if I were some crazy animal from another planet. Then he shoved me and pointed for me to walk.

“Fuck you!” I spat, not that he could understand, which was why I probably didn’t hold back with the swear words one little bit. At least they made me feel better.

Sorta.

The guard grabbed hold of my arm and dragged me up a set of stone steps toward a temple with large pillars and bright red and blue paint on the walls.

Once inside, the smell of incense and sage hit me. He threw me down, pushed my face into the floor, and began screaming at me.

“Get the fuck off!” I fought and dug my nails into his hand, but he held tight to a ball of my hair.

I imagined he was telling me to shut the hell up, but I was not about to let him or anyone treat me like this.

“I’ll kill you!” I belted. “I swear I’ll fucking—”

When I heard that voice—deep, commanding, and uniquely masculine—my flesh tightened around my quaking bones. I stilled.

Again the voice spoke, and I slowly lifted my gaze to the menacing man standing before me and glaring down.

“King?” I gasped.

His eyes narrowed as he took me in, scowling as if I were some despicable bug he might squash for entertainment.

“I take that back,” I said to the guard. “I’ll fucking kill
him
!” I broke free from my captor, leaving behind a clump of hair in his fist, and lunged for King. He fell back, and we both slammed into the floor. The crack of his skull hitting the ground was like music to my ears.

“You piece of shit!” I managed to get my hands around his neck as he stared at me, apparently shocked as hell. The moment lasted for only that—a moment—before two large men pulled me off.

King sat up, broodingly taking stock as he watched them drag me off.

“I’ll kill you! Do you hear me? Do you fucking…” My voice trailed off as my brain began to register the bizarreness before me.
Green? His light…was that…?

What my eyes saw couldn’t have been real, which meant that I had cracked and King had successfully broken me. Because the man wasn’t King. I mean, he was, but he wasn’t
my
King. This one didn’t glow red, blue or even purple, but green. Bright, vivid green.

Life.

This King was alive.

So the question quickly shifted from wondering where I was to when…

Holy shit.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Like an animal on exhibit at a zoo, a nearly endless stream of people visited my wooden cage over the next day. Most of them had the same deep dark skin, hair, and eyes, and wore toga-style dresses—the women, obviously—pleated or gathered at the waist with a leather or cloth belt. The men walked around shirtless with blue fabric, trimmed in gold or red, wrapped around their waists.

Without a doubt, as impossible as it was, I had to accept what I saw right in front of me: I was in King’s time. This was goddamned crazy.

I’m in ancient frigging Minoa.
Aka Crete, before it was Crete.

From the little I’d read, there wasn’t much known about the Minoans, either. They were mainly peaceful, traded broadly with other cultures, and were fascinated by nature. Then one day—poof—they disappeared.

Just like I might any second now.

An entire day had passed, and no one had offered me food or water. The cage they’d placed me in was underneath a tree, and I supposed I should’ve felt lucky for that; however, because of the heat of the day, coupled with my recent snake bite, I could no longer stand.

On the second day, as the late morning sun began to warm the air, I lay there, sticky and dirty, eyes half-mast, dreading the sweltering heat to come, and wondering how much longer I’d last. The only thing for me to do was sleep and hope I wouldn’t wake up.

But, of course, that’s not what happened.

I awoke to being poked with a sharp stick.

“Go the fuck away,” I grumbled.

The guard who stood at the mouth of the opened cage offered a small clay jar and gestured for me to drink. I toyed with the idea of lifting my head, but it just wasn’t going to happen, so I opted for groaning instead.

He grumbled angrily—I imagined he was saying, “Get up, you lazy ass!”—but gave up on the verbal encouragements quickly and decided instead to get his hands dirty. He pulled me toward him, propping me against the rough branches that formed the sides of the cage before forcing the jar to my lips. The liquid tasted of water mixed with juice and olive brine, or some weird crap like that.

I took several sips and pushed it away. “It’s missing the vodka.”

He forcefully urged me to take another sip, but my stomach wasn’t having it. I threw up right on his chest.

“Oops.” I flashed a little smile.
Assholes.

He called out, and two more men appeared to drag me from my “box of misery.” They hurriedly hauled me by the arms through a garden filled with flowers and lush potted pomegranate trees, only to dump me in a small room. The little stone platform they laid me over felt like heaven compared to the hard, roughly-cut branches of my cage, but my horrible thirst and cramping stomach were torture.

King appeared almost immediately, looking down with a judgmental frown. He wore only a deep blue sarong that stopped just above the knees and some odd-looking sandals. His shoulder-length black hair was pulled back, giving him more of an untamed, fierce look compared to the elegant, clean-cut billionaire version I knew so well.

“Let me guess, this is why you’re so into commando,” I muttered deliriously, staring at his skirt.

He studied me with curiosity for a few moments until a woman, petite with wide black eyes and curly flowing hair, appeared and bowed. He instructed her to do something, and she pulled a sharp quill from a small leather bag, along with a few tiny seeds. She popped the seeds into her mouth, chewed, and then spat the mixture into her palm.

When she dipped the sharp quill into the spit concoction and then reached for my wrist, I began to understand that she intended to poke me with it.

“Uh-uh. No,” I mumbled in protest.

King held down my left arm while the woman chanted and jabbed my skin. With each poke my brain heard a weird sort of static, like a radio station trying to break through the noise. She jabbed away for several moments, forming a figure-eight pattern on my wrist just above my “K.” Then, suddenly, a sharp shrilling noise hissed in my ears. I yanked my hand from her and cupped my ears.

“Make it stop!” I screamed.

“There,” said the woman. “Now she may speak our tongue and understand ours.”

I blinked and looked at each of them. “How the fuck did you do that?”

King bent over me, snarling. It was then that I noticed the color of his eyes. Not gray, but a pristine sky blue. “You watch your tongue, or I will have it cut out.”

I snapped my mouth shut, but struggled to accept that any of this was really happening. However, fact was, I’d seen stranger things: living heads in jars; a ghost manifest himself, run an empire, and drive around in expensive cars; and the color of people’s souls, including their emotional imprints when they died. This situation really wasn’t so far out there, given all that.

“King?” I whispered. “It’s really you, isn’t it?”

“Yes, I am the king. Who, by gods, are you? And why are you—a foreigner—roaming about our island without my permission?” he asked.

“I’m Mia. And…I have no clue.”

His head whipped to the side toward the woman, who wore a pale blue, floor-length dress with elaborate gold embroidery on the hem. “Hagne, make her speak the truth.”

Hagne? Oh shit.

The woman nodded and whipped out her quill again.

“Wait,” I protested with as much strength as I could muster. “Please, no more spit tats. That’s so unhygienic, it’s not even funny.” I tried to clear my scratchy throat, but I seemed to have run out of saliva. “Water. I need water.”

King jerked his head at Hagne, who disappeared out the door. Meanwhile, he studied me with his intense electric blue gaze, the muscles of his bare arms and chest bursting with menacing, flexing strength.

I wanted to tell him to stop looking at me, but I felt too fascinated by what stood before me: King. Masculine. Powerful. Intimidating as hell. But not evil. The green aura around him was almost blinding, and I had to admit, seeing him like this—so alive and untainted—made me want to reach out and touch him.

Hagne reappeared with a ceramic jar and held it to my lips. This time, it was watered- down wine. I didn’t think it would help my dehydration, but I felt too thirsty to argue. I took several small sips and then lay back down, unable to hold myself upright.

“Speak, woman,” King said, “or I will take you outside and beat you.”

What the hell?

“Touch me,” I shot him a look, “and you’ll never see your precious penis again.” I snapped my teeth at him, and he burst out laughing. It was that same laugh I knew—deep, silky, deliciously male, and arrogant.

“Glad I amuse you,” I grumbled. “To answer your question, I’m a Seer. From…” Oh hell, this was going to sound so corny, like some bad version of
Terminator
. “I’m from the future. I work for you.”
And I’m running from you, you evil bastard-rapist-asshole.

Yes, I was running from him, but still somehow ended up here with him? Goddamned weird.

My eyes flashed to the cuff still on my wrist. If it was, in fact, the reason for my being here, I had to wonder what would happen if it were removed.

“Is this true, Hagne?” King asked.

Shocking. King actually entertained the idea that I was not from their time.

“Yes, my king.” Hagne kept her eyes to the ground like a submissive pet when she spoke. “I mean to say, she is a Seer; I sense it. However, I cannot say if the rest of her story has merit. I can only tell you that I have never seen a Seer with golden hair. Or anyone, for that matter.”