“You should have!” I hissed.
“And if I had, you wouldn’t have made a bargain?”
I groaned. “I didn’t know! She knew what she was doing and I wasn’t going to risk not succeeding. Nor wasting any more time. Not when it comes to Rhyan.”
“Realms!”
“Have you two quite finished?” Queen Ma’Nia asked, sitting back in her throne. The seat was so wide she was able to sweep her knees up beneath her. Delicate feet peeked out from her pearl skirts, and a large pearl, one the size of my big toe, was fitted around hers, attached to a silver ring. “If not, by all means, continue this lover’s quarrel.”
“We’re not—” I closed my mouth. We weren’t lovers. But we weren’t … not … exactly either.
“Not lovers?” The Queen shrugged. “Maybe not in these bodies. Not yet. But these iterations of your minds? You’re close. I’ve never seen two souls so intertwined. So deeply connected.” Her violet eyes flashed, and I felt naked. “Nor have I ever seen two souls who are so in love.”
My throat dried, and I stared ahead, afraid to look at Auriel. Afraid to meet his gaze.
“Perhaps, had you cursed yourselves, you’d still be Asherah, and this fight could be over.”
My chest squeezed. I hated that thought. I knew there was pain in our past. Rhyan had felt it so keenly in his dreams. He’d felt Auriel’s memories like they were his own. Losing me. Losing Asherah. And I knew that the part of my soul in the Celestial Realms, that part of me that was still Asherah was up there, alone, missing Auriel. Pained. But if we’d never reincarnated—Rhyan never would have existed. Would have never been born. And that was a world I didn’t want to be a part of—no matter what it cost.
Auriel’s eyes softened as if he read my mind, then he faced the Moon Queen and cleared his throat. “I know it’s been a while since we last spoke, Your Majesty.”
The Moon Queen nodded. “It has been some time,” she agreed. Then she laughed. “For you. Not so much for us. You see, time moves differently here.” Her voice had slowed, becoming something hypnotizing and melodic. She ran a finger down the length of her thigh. “Very differently than what you know.” She wiggled her big toe and the pearl shone. “When I married my husband, RaKanan, King of the Sun Court, something quite strange happened. We mixed together the elements and energies of the moon and sun, not just with our bodies, or in our beds.” She held Auriel’s gaze. “But together we joined the spirit of those entities, threaded together their timelines, and cycles.”
“Timelines?” I asked. “Your Majesty?”
She laughed again. “Yes. One cycle of the sun within El Zandria and Khemet is the equivalent of the full turn of a moon beyond our lands.”
I froze, parsing out her words. “One cycle of the sun?” I shook my head. “But it’s night here. Night fell long before it was supposed to.” We were at sea for hours. But we still had plenty of time before sunset. “There is no sun.”
The Queen clicked her tongue. “Night did not fall. It cannot do such a thing here. It just was, as it always is. In Khemet, the night is eternal. Just as the sun never rises in El Zandria.” She gestured to the east. “The day simply remains. But time moves. Hours pass and they mark the cycles which appear stagnant to us.”
So a constant moon, and a constant sun, but still there were twenty-four hours. One cycle, one day. Sunrise to sunrise again. Was she saying—Gods, was she saying that a day’s cycle was the equivalent of a moon’s?
“I’m sorry,” I said, sweat beading at my brow. “But … you’re telling me that if we spend a day here in Khemet, a month will have passed in Lumeria?”
The Queen nodded. “Even just traveling through our waters, crossing through the coast of Bamaria to El Zandria, you entered our timeline. Nearly half a day has passed for you here. Yet weeks have passed out there by my count.”
Weeks? Weeks! No, no, no. That couldn’t be! It couldn’t. Fuck. That meant I’d missed weeks of finding my family, of being able to tell them where I was, what had happened to me. Weeks I’d lost that I needed to find Rhyan. Sean could be with him by now and I had no idea if Branwyn had gotten through to him, or if he believed her.
“That’s nature,” the Queen sing-songed. “Ask your soulmate, yourmekarim.”
Endless levels of floors between the columns, rising up and up, began to fill with faces. Afeya leaned over the banisters, some were hanging from them, their feet dangling in the air. And all of them were laughing and giggling. Their auras were flung out, away from their bodies, leaving shadows and clouds and stars exploding everywhere I looked.
I took a deep breath, my pulse pounding through me. Two Afeyan contracts beating in my heart against the light of the Red Ray.
“Now,” she said, flicking her nails. The color changed from silver to a shiny maroon, and then back. Swinging her feet to the ground she stood, the pearls of her dress shifting and jingling. “I am bound to fulfill my end of the bargain and hand Auriel back the red shard I’ve protected.” Her violet eyes flashed. “For you. But before I do, you must understand why this has happened. What role you played, and what role you still might.”
I eyed Auriel nervously. I didn’t want a fucking history lesson. Not when every second here counted like a Godsdamned hour. But if it was what it took to get the shard, then so be it.
I lowered my chin to the queen. “I’m ready to listen.”
“Very well.” Queen Ma’Nia nodded. “Akadim were fallen Gods and Goddesses,” she said. “They’d found a way to defy the Council. To have more power. More will. Their intention was innocent at first. But the power twisted them, turning them into monsters full of violence, and lust. Their souls could not withstand the evil in their bodies. And so they left, retreating to a kind of resting place.”
“A resting place?” I asked. “Is that where Rhyan is? The part of his soul that’s still him?”
“It is,” the Queen said. “His soul is with the others who’ve been eaten, taken, lost. Akadim hunger for more than flesh, and blood, and sex. What they desire above all else, is what they once were. They miss their souls. They seek them out. They’re starving for them. Desperate for the feel, for the memory. For the life force within. It drives them mad. The only relief they can receive is the devouring of someone else’s soul—even if the feeling of life and wholeness is only temporary. And there the souls remain, trapped for years, decades. Sometimes longer—only passing when the akadim that took their body dies, or … when their life course, had there been no interference, comes to an end.”
I shuddered. So Rhyan could be trapped for decades. Alone and cut off, unable to pass over—not until his human body would have naturally aged out of life.
