Exactly the kind of woman I’d once expected a Khetaran princess to be.
“She’s under a spell!” Nefermaat cried out. “The king’s priests cursed her, and I don’t know how to break it!”
“Shut your mouth!” Sita said.
“What are we supposed to do?” Raetawy muttered. “If Neff can’t undo the spell, we don’t have a chance!”
I know only one person powerful enough to break such a curse, Karim thought. He stepped forward, his hands held empty before him to show he meant no harm. “Sitamun. Please, listen to me. I know you’re in there. I need you to fight, sena.”
“She can’t break the heka herself!” Neff exclaimed.
“Yes, she can,” Karim said, and took another step.
“Don’t come any closer!”Sita screamed, her dark eyes fierce.
“Do you remember when we met, sena?” Karim asked, his voice calm and even. “You taught me how to eat a pomegranate. We sat with Behkai on the riverbank, and you were so hungry that you had seconds.”
“Stop talking!”
“Do you remember all those days in Perset? Sharing that little house and playing at being husband and wife?”
Sita’s hand holding the dagger began to tremble.
“Do you remember lying together beside the fire, the night I gave you my heart?”
A ragged, tortured wail escaped Sita’s lips, and Karim saw her grip on the knife falter. Without warning, he darted forward and pulled Nefermaat free of the princess’s grasp.
Sita roared with fury.
Pushing the girl behind him, safe into Raetawy’s arms, Karim turned to catch the princess’s wrist as she slashed at him with the dagger.
“You are nothing to me!” she snarled. “Nothing but a dirty, stinkingthief!”
He grappled with her, holding back the blade. He could overpower her, but that would do nothing to break the spell. The curse had weakened, but his words weren’t enough. He needed something drastic to bring Sita back to herself.
The answer broke over him like the dawn.
“If that is so, then do as you wish,” Karim said and released her wrist. His resistance gone, Sita plunged the dagger straight into his chest.
Nefermaat screamed.
Sita stared at the knife in astonishment. Her pupils dilated and constricted, as if a war was waging within her.
“Perhaps I am nothing to you, sena,” Karim said, his voice husky with pain, “But you are everything to me.”
And with those words, he pulled her into a kiss, the press of her body pushing the blade into him to the hilt.
33Sita
Sita drifted within a deep, blue-green pool. The world was out there, somewhere beyond the surface, but she could not reach it. Lights and shapes flickered in her vision, fractured by the ever-moving current of her mind.
She didn’t know how long she’d been down there. It might have been an eternity.
She reached out, tried to speak. Every time, the waters filled her mouth with silence.
She was drowning in herself.
Even the serpent staff, which nipped at the edges of her consciousness, could not free her from Mery’s cage.
