Queen of Ashes (6 page)

Boring? She has never thought of that before.

He draws nearer. She wishes she had put on something other than this thin sheath; she feels exposed, vulnerable. She crosses her arms over her chest. He puts his hands on her shoulders, and she can feel the strength pulsing through them. Goose bumps rise on her arms.

“Well? Doesn't it?”

She can't speak. He is so close to her she can feel his heat. Waves of prickly desire roll through her. Her cheeks burn. She should go. He tugs her toward him, then swivels her around until her back is against the wall. She lets out a brief gasp as he leans in, holding her arms to her sides, and kisses her seductively on the collarbone. She swallows, trembling, as his lips move up her neck, featherlight. She writhes but can't break free of his grip, and feels both alive with desire and burning with frustration.

She thinks briefly of Brehan—he jilted her, called her prideful and selfish. But he would never use force with her like this.

She manages to push Riel away.

He stares at her in shock, eyes wide, full lips parted. He tilts his head and states, “You mean it, don't you?”

“Yes, I mean it.” She is panting, and still tingling; part of her did not want him to stop. Clearly, no other woman has ever pushed him away and meant it.

“I don't know what I'm even doing here,” she continues. “I'm going to go.”

“No,” he says quickly, holding up a hand. “I
dare
you to stay.”

“Dare me?”

“Yes.” The exquisite mouth bends upward into a broad smile. “Let's play a game. Let's see if you really
do
mean it. You take the bed. I'll sleep on the mat over there. I promise not to touch you, unless you ask me to. But if you—no,
when
you ask me to—I will have to oblige a princess, ruler of all the land.”

She hesitates. She doesn't know if she likes the sound of this game.

“Don't trust yourself?” he asks, his voice mocking. “Frightened like a little girl? Where is that royal blood? Where is the courage of kings?”

“I trust myself completely. It's
you
I don't trust,” she replies.

He shrugs, walks over to the ebony chair and sits. “Prove it. Get in the bed.”

She looks at the bed carved from cedar of Lebanon, adorned with ivory panels. The plump pillows and embroidered linen coverlet don't look inviting so much as alarming. She looks back at him. His eyes gleam with a knowing look. She yanks the coverlet off and slips inside.

Chapter Seven

LAILA OPENS HER eyes and sees a room of dim silver-pink light. Time to get up. She closes her eyes and opens them again immediately, surprised that the window is in the wrong place. This isn't her bedroom. Where is... Then she remembers. Riel. She spent the night in Riel's room. She sits up quickly, enormously relieved to find he is not in bed with her. Scanning the room, she sees him in the corner, on a mat, his head resting on his hand. His green eyes—which remind her of a lizard's—are wide-open and unblinking, staring at her.

“Sleep well?” he drawls.

She nods. After tossing and turning for some time, afraid what he would do, she fell into an exhausted and fathomless sleep.

He rises—he is wearing only a loincloth—stretches and sits on the bed. Laila clutches the sheet and scoots away from him. “Afraid I'm going to bite you?” he asks. “Let me look at you. A man can only determine a woman's true beauty first thing in the morning, before she adorns herself.”

As he reaches toward her, Laila forces herself to stay still. A princess should show no fear. “Your skin is so beautiful,” Riel whispers, stroking her cheek. “I never thought to see a woman from Upper Egypt so pale. It's like alabaster.”

She looks at him, the handsome face, the perfect physique. What woman wouldn't want him? What woman wouldn't beg him to join her in bed?

Maybe Laila is the only one who wouldn't. She doesn't belong here, not with him. Yes, he's magnificently attractive and intelligent and radiates a strange power, but she doesn't love him. Could never love him. Doesn't even like him, come to think of it.

And if she's not in her room when the twins come to dress her, they will panic and call for Wazba. Wazba will send his men out to search for her, fearing she has been abducted. This silly mistake will turn into a very public catastrophe.

But she has to say something to Riel, who is waiting. She forces a smile. “I bathe in milk every day to keep my skin white,” she says. “And I try to stay out of the sun except for my morning ritual of worshiping Ra, which, incidentally, I need to perform soon. I must return to my rooms.”

“Really?” he says archly. “Most women are in no hurry to leave me. And we never even got started.”

Most women
. It strikes a very sour note with her, this bragging about all his women. She needs to go. She makes a move to slide off the bed, but he grabs her arm, painfully hard at first, but then it becomes a caress.

“Oh, you have goose bumps on your arms,” he says. “Are you cold?”

“The morning air is cool,” she replies. And her shift is thin, though she doesn't want to draw his attention to it.

“Wait,” he says. “I will give you a shift far more beautiful than the finest-woven cloak.”

He extends his palm to the open window, then pulls it back. To Laila's amazement, a cloud of white butterflies enters, hovers a moment, then settles on her arms and legs, their gossamer wings a whisper against her skin. She is afraid to move, afraid to hurt the delicate creatures. After a time, he gestures toward the window and, spreading their wings, they fly out.

“How did you...?”

He laughs. “Oh, this is one of my own conjurer's tricks, a little joke, you could say. On our endless travels, it was my way of letting Brehan know I had slept with a woman. As I'm sure you've noticed, Brehan has magical talents, too. They are but a fraction of the power we used to have when we were...” His voice trails off and his eyes cloud over.

“When you were what?” she asks, sitting up.

“You wouldn't believe me if I told you, sweet girl.”

“I would. Tell me,” she insists. It would be worth the palace going into an uproar if she can finally learn the secrets of these magical brothers.

He rubs the back of his neck thoughtfully. “Centuries ago, Brehan and I were...” He stares out the window at the rising dawn as if he is seeing another time, another place. “Gods,” he says quietly.

Laila hugs her knees. Can she believe such a story? She thinks of the brothers' power, their strangeness. They both seem something more than human, something ancient and compelling. She recalls Brehan's predictions of the storm and the drought, of his healing her injured foot.

“What happened?” she asks quietly. “How did you lose your divinity?”

He winces. “Long ago, there was a spring of water called the Fountain of Youth in the Eastern Mountains of the old Hittite Empire. Those who drank of it did indeed stay young and grow stronger. But over time they became monsters slavering for divine flesh, devouring alive our brothers and sisters. Those gods who were not killed fled this realm. Without divine flesh and blood, the monsters started feasting on humans, though they required many more mortals to satiate their hunger.”

His gaze slides past her but he's not staring at anything in the room. He's gone back to another place, another time. After a long pause, he adds, “Brehan was always inordinately fond of humans and convinced me that together we could dry up the fountain. We succeeded—at least, we thought we did—but found ourselves trapped here, neither mortal nor immortal, our divine powers greatly diminished. It was all his idea, his doing that this happened.”

Laila nods thoughtfully. Riel's story, though outlandish, makes sense. It explains the brothers' otherworldliness and their dislike of each other. “You were angry at him?” she asks. “You left him?”

Riel looks into space and shakes his head. “I knew he didn't mean for it to happen the way it did. And frankly, we were all we had. We stayed together a long time after that.”

His face darkens, and Laila wonders how and why they separated. He continues. “Quite recently, I discovered in the Chaldean archives of Babylon clay tablets written by Sumerian priest-sorcerers that foretold of two gods trapped on earth. The tablets said that all magic—like all of nature—is circular, and we must therefore return to the place where we lost our godhead to conduct the proper rituals to become gods again. So I sought my brother out and found him here.”

He looks at Laila as if he suddenly has an idea. “You could come with us,” he says.

“And leave Sharuna?” she asks. She can't leave now, not until after the harvest is brought in and the plague vanquished.

“Yes, but you could return—as a goddess.”

Laila laughs. “I could never be a goddess,” she says, shaking her head.

“Not...necessarily...true.” He looks at her with knowing eyes. “Over the course of time, some mortals have been made into gods and goddesses.”

Laila's eyes widen. “No,” she says. “That is not possible. There are no former mortals among the Egyptian gods.”

“But there are other gods besides Egypt's,” Riel says. “Your gods are powerful and they look out for this land, but each land has its own gods. In my country, many humans have become gods. Have you ever heard of Princess Ariadne of Crete?”

Laila shakes her head. The myths of the fallen Greek nations never interested her.

“The god Dionysus fell in love with her,” Riel explains, “and when she died, he rescued her from the Underworld and flew her to Mount Olympus, where she lived as a goddess. Princess Leukothea of Thebes became a sea goddess. And our god of love, Eros, fell in love with a princess called Psyche and made her a goddess so he wouldn't have to see her grow old and die. And there are countless others. So you see, it is possible.”

Laila's mind reels at the thought. If she were a goddess, she could stop the drought. Make the crops grow. Keep plague out of her kingdom. But that is small thinking. She could rule all of Egypt...

“Could you make me a goddess?” she asks. Her voice sounds so small asking such a huge question.

“I could,” he says, nodding, “if I regained my divinity. As it is, I don't have the powers of a god, just...” He makes a dismissive gesture out the window. “...these tricks. But the problem is I need Brehan to get back my powers. The ritual requires both of us together, just as we were when we lost them. And he won't listen to me. He says he doesn't want to be a god anymore.”

Laila frowns. “Why wouldn't he want—”

Riel waves a hand impatiently. “He loves to infuriate me. He's probably just playing a game. But I think that you, Princess,” he says, lowering his voice and stroking her cheek again, “can sway him. You fascinate him because you look like
her
, the girl he loved.”

“No,” Laila says, pulling away. She remembers the anger in Brehan's eyes when he looked at her last night, the profound disgust in every line of his face, as if he couldn't believe he had ever loved a woman so weak and proud. “I don't want to speak to him ever again. Plus, he said you were a liar.”

Riel looks at her pityingly. “A liar always calls others liars,” he says. “And you clearly don't know whom to trust. After all, before I got here, you trusted the word of a murderer.”

Laila's heart stutters. That can't be. Brehan, no matter how he may have toyed with her, is basically a good person. Saving the grain from the storm. Building the new irrigation system. Visiting the plague victims. Truly caring for her people. A man like that could never murder someone.

“What do you mean, murderer?” she asks because she has to, not because she wants to know the answer.

He snorts. “My dear brother killed the person he loved most in the world. Cassandra.”

“That can't be,” she says.

“It's true. Ask him, if you doubt me.”

Laila puts her head in her hands. Brehan has been lying to her the whole time about who he is, about the kind of person he is. Pretending to be so morally righteous. Not accepting any reward from her, telling her he just wanted to help her people.

Something in her gut twists with a cruel spasm and she wonders if she is going to be sick. Then she feels even sicker when realizes she must still care about Brehan or her body wouldn't react in this way. No, she isn't over him. She is in love with a murderer.

What should she do? She will harden her heart. She will learn to hate him. To hate both of them. This one is no better.

“What you just told me makes me even less inclined to talk to him,” she says, getting off the bed. “He won't listen to anything I say anyway.”

“Oh, but he will,” Riel answers smoothly. “Why don't you try? Tell him you want to go to the Fountain of Youth, that I said you should come with us. If you go, I think he might agree to come with me.”

She stands, smooths her wrinkled sheath and stares at him angrily. “No. I will not try. This discussion is over.”

His mask of friendly persuasion drops in a heartbeat, replaced by a look of cold anger. He snaps his fingers, and the cloud of butterflies swarms back through the window, landing on every part of her head. Before it seemed like a caress. Now it is nothing less than an attack. She can't breathe. She swats them away, suddenly panic-stricken by their beating wings and little sticky legs creeping all over her hair and skin. Some crawl up her nose, down her ears, between her lips. She inhales one in her mouth, gags and spits it out.

“Please,” she begs, her eyes tightly closed, as she pulls one out of her ear. “Stop!”

A moment later they are gone, except for the broken wings and scattered legs of those she crushed.

“By Osiris and Isis, Riel, why did you just do that?” she asks, eyes blazing.

“If you were a goddess,” he says, his voice dripping with derision, “you could have defended yourself. If you don't have the strength to speak to Brehan, how will you have the strength to control divine power?”

Riel squats down beside the dead butterflies and exhales loudly. The entire room seems full of his breath. The butterfly pieces knit together and they alight, fluttering around the room.

“You can raise the dead,” she whispers, shivering.

He laughs and inhales deeply, drawing all the air out of the room. Laila can't suck in any breath. There's simply no air. The butterflies fall to the floor again, a heap of crushed wings and legs, and she can finally force air back into her lungs.

“Only for a little while,” he says, “and only the bodies. The spirits have gone. Another magician's trick. But if I were fully a god again and found dead bodies in time, I could truly raise them with their spirits. And you could, too. Think of the power of it, Laila.”

Riel takes his kilt off a chair, ties it around his waist and slides into sandals. “Think on my words, Princess,” he says. “Think about what is truly important to you. Do you trust love? Or power? Do you want to enjoy one brief season of love and then rot in a tomb forever? Or enjoy eternal life, power and beauty?”

Without waiting for her answer, he turns on his heel and goes.

* * *

The litter bearers set Laila down on the path of the First Field. Brehan is always here between dawn and noon, when he and the field workers take a break for two or three hours during the hottest time of day. Now it is midmorning, and when she pushes open the curtains she sees him in the distance, in the Second Field, walking slowly, squatting down now and then to examine the young plants.

She takes a moment to compose herself, hoping she can hide her fluster. As soon as Riel left his room this morning, she snuck into the palace garden hoping to return to her chambers unnoticed except for the two soldiers who always guard her door. But the pool boy saw her, set down his net and raised a hue and cry that the princess had been found. Guards came running, followed by the priest of Ra, who chided her passionately for insulting the sun god by missing her dawn prayers. Courtiers and advisers made a circle around her and asked where she had been.

This had to be the most embarrassing moment of her life. She stood there barefoot and wigless in a wrinkled, transparent sheath, fresh from a man's bed. No one would ever believe her if she told them nothing happened.

Wide-eyed, the twins stepped forward and guided her wordlessly back to her room, where Wazba, pacing angrily up and down, proceeded to harangue her with words only a former brothel guard would know. She nodded dumbly, a mute promise never to disappear without letting someone know where she was going, and he stormed off.