One of the priests tested the door. As she suspected, it was sealed. Alena couldn’t even see the outline of the opening in the stone. Another priest pounded on the walls and cried for help. Still another tried to scale the wall to put out one of the torches, but the brace was set too high and caged in iron. Worse, Alena noticed more smoke coming through the stone up above.
“They’re doing this on purpose!” she cried, gathering a loose bit of fabric from the neck of her cloak and pressing it around her mouth and nose. Did Cleopatra mean to kill them all?
The smoke thickened by the minute. The walls were too close, the air too tight. True fear pulverized her resolve to stay calm, and the shaking in her knees spread to the rest of her body. Orpheus tugged on her hand, gesturing for her to sit. Considering her knees were about to give out anyway, she dropped to the rough, mercifully cool floor. The air was cleaner there, and she drew in a panicked breath.
“Alena, it’s a test,” Orpheus said with utmost certainty.
She stared at him with stinging eyes, willing her addled brain to understand what he was talking about. To her surprise, he didn’t seem to be struggling to breathe at all. Nor was he panicked as she was.
“What kind of test?” she rasped. “One to see who can hold their breath the longest? I fear we will all fail. Cleopatra may be the reincarnation of Isis, but the rest of us are only human.”
“Are you?” Orpheus’s eyes crinkled at the corners.
“Aren’tyou?” Alena’s gaze connected with his through the smoky air.
One of the priests banged on the wall in earnest now, his pleas for release growing as he struggled for air, while still others slumped or crawled on their bellies, anything for a small measure of comfort. She lowered her chest to the floor. Orpheus followed, although the smoke didn’t seem to be bothering him anyway.
“Haven’t you noticed that everyone in this room has a reputation for magic?” he asked.
“Not everyone. I do not advertise myself as such.” She coughed into her cloak.
“Ah, but it is known, Alena. You are the healer they say can make a tonic to cure any ill. Some call you a hedge witch.”
She coughed violently. “Those who wish to be healed should stop making up names for me.”
“But they aren’t wrong, are they?”
A priest who’d balanced on the shoulders of another to try to extinguish one of the torches fell unconscious to the stone floor. His head cracked near her hand. Blood ran from his fractured skull, scoring a deep crimson river in the stone. Alena shuffled away from it. Her instinct was to dig in her basket and find something to try to heal him, but she could hardly breathe herself. They were all doomed. All but Orpheus, who hadn’t coughed once.
“You believe this is a test of our abilities? Someone is trying to prove we have… magic?”
His lips pursed and he gave a curt nod. “It would be a particularly gruesome horror to watch a woman as beautiful as you die. I’d much prefer your company under sweeter circumstances. I enjoyed our time together up until those crones ruined everything with their lies. More than I can say.” He grabbed her arm and gave her a hard shake. “Come on, Alena. Think. Tell me you have something in that bag you can use. How hard can it be? All you have to do is survive.”
Her throat and eyes burned and her lungs spasmed with their need for air. She cursed. Why wasn’t he as affected as she? He still wasn’t coughing, and his eyes glowed an arresting shade of lapis in the dingy room. She shook her head and concentrated. He was right. She was a powerful healer. There must be something she could use to protect herself from the smoke if she could calm herself long enough to remember how to use it. Digging in her basket, she drew a length of aeras lily root and wove a braid of Nile grasses around it. Muttering a spell, she formed the resulting mask into a shallow bowl and cupped it over her mouth and nose. Instantly, she could breathe again.
“Aeras root. I hadn’t thought of that.”
“I developed this spell for a boy in the village who has trouble breathing during the dry season. I wouldn’t have thought to use it if you hadn’t…” She stopped. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. “What did you use?”
“Containment spell. I’m inside a sophisticated barrier. Although, to be honest, I didn’t think it through. The air is getting thin in here. If this test goes on much longer, I may be joining our friends.” He gestured to the priests who were now writhing on the floor, either coughing or limp and unconscious. “I can’t renew the spell without any fresh air to seal around myself.”
Alena could see it now, how the smoke never seemed to actually touch Orpheus. It curled away from his flesh. Genius, she thought. She’d love to ask him about that particular spell if they ever got out of this room.
“How long have you known about me?” she asked.
“Since the feast. When I kissed you, I knew you were magic. Couldn’t you sense it in me?”
She searched his face. The kiss had sent tingles through her body, but it wasn’t as though she’d had anything to compare it to. Weren’t all kisses like that? She shook her head.
Orpheus shrugged and started to cough. “Hades, it seems my spell is wearing off. And no closer to finding out what Cleopatra wants from us, other than to die.”
No one could claim to know the mind of Cleopatra. Far above the commoners of Egypt, her will was a maze of secrets known only to her. Alena had always thought it would be lonely to be a pharaoh; perhaps that was why it wasn’t hard to believe the rumors that Cleopatra’s obsessive quest for power had made her a killer. Some said she’d murdered her own brother for the throne.
Orpheus pressed his face into his hands, body stretched out on the floor. She had to make a difficult decision. Did she assume this trial must have one winner and allow the smoke to overcome him? Or did she help him and risk inviting the wrath of Cleopatra?
In the end, there was no decision to make. It was bad enough to live with the knowledge that she could do nothing to help the other men who’d collapsed in the room. Refusing aid to Orpheus when he was the reason she’d thought to build the mask in the first place would be a black mark on her soul she could not abide.
Alena took a deep breath and then moved her mask to cover Orpheus’s nose and mouth. His body eased beside her, his breathing evening out. He took three long breaths, then moved the mask back to her face. They survived together, sharing the mask, until the smoke was so thick she could no longer see the walls of the room, only his deep-blue eyes.
