Sita bent down and placed a kiss on top of the beast’s head, right above the white handprint on his face. “It is.” Her gaze met Karim’s as they fawned over Behkai, and Sita felt a sharp sting in her heart.
I am going to miss this, she thought.I am going to miss this very much.
***
Sita and Karim hardly spoke for the rest of the evening, busy as they were helping build a fire and ration out the water the tribehad managed to bring with them during their flight from the city. They only had enough water to last a day or so, and it would take more than that to reach the river on foot, especially with the wounded in tow.
“We will make it,” Elyas said to Sita as she worried over the meager water jars. “I have faith.”
Elyas wasn’t the only one who felt that way. Karim and Sita’s presence seemed to inspire the Hudjefa. None were smiling that night as they ate the roasted rabbit Behkai had caught along with some other wild game, but Sita noticed there was a calm among the survivors. A feeling that despite their terrible plight, they were in the hands of a power greater than their own.
Sita wished she felt the same. On one hand, she couldn’t wait to set her eyes on Thonis, to smell the jasmine on the breeze, to walk through the yawning, vivid halls of the palace, and to see those she loved, especially Nebet. On the other, she knew full well the danger she was walking into. If Mery didn’t believe her story about Setnakht—for it was a fantastic story indeed—all of Khetara might be doomed. And that’s if Mery didn’t kill her first.
He wouldn’t, would he? He loves me—tainted though that love might be.
She thought back on what Setnakht had said when he’d mistaken her for his wife, Queen Anet, a woman whom he’d obviously loved deeply. When Sita rejected his advances, he’d told his soldiers to kill her and throw her body into the mortuary temple. The experience taught her an important lesson: Mery’s enduring love for her was not a shield. If anything, it was a poison.
I must be prepared for him, she thought.For his cunning. For his games. I must see the board in front of me and all the players upon it.
It was hard to imagine confronting her brother, but it was easier than thinking of Karim.
When had she fallen for him? There hadn’t been a singleinstance she could pinpoint, but a constellation of tiny moments that amounted to love: sharing his meal with her that first day on the riverbank; the way he looked while washing in the river, his lean body glistening under the sun; how he’d gently tucked the blanket around her when he thought she was sleeping; the way it felt living as husband and wife in Perset, far away from their troubles and their true identities.
Could she ever feel that way again? Or was their fantasy doomed to end with their parting?
***
Late that night, after Sita finished changing her last bandage on one of the wounded, she was sitting by the fire, gazing into the flames. Behkai had bedded down with the children, treating them like his pups and making sure they were all fully licked before going to sleep. She sensed Karim come up beside her to sit on the blanket Miri had provided.
The fire hissed and crackled, illuminating their faces with a golden glow. It was a long time before either of them spoke.
“Will I ever see you again?” Sita asked.
Karim turned to her and chuckled without humor. “Given my penchant for eternal life, sena, I expect you will.”
“Perhaps you can’t die, but I can,” Sita murmured.
She felt Karim’s body tense. “I wish I could come with you,” he said softly. “But I know this is a battle you must fight alone.”
Sita’s focus hadn’t left the fire. She was so afraid to look at him, so afraid the emotion on his face would be her undoing. Except he was like the river’s current—irresistible, inevitable. She turned to him.
How could she have ever thought he had a common face? One like any other in a crowd? How had she neglected to see the rugged beauty of his stubbled jaw, his roguish smile, his earthenskin, and the waving, windblown glory of his curls? Perhaps they’d started out as ordinary features, but now they were inexorably attached to the memories she had of him.
Each extraordinary moment they’d shared had transformed a stranger into her beloved.
With terrified desperation, she wondered if he felt the same. What if he didn’t? What if all his affection had been him playing the part to fool the Hudjefa? He hated Khetarans, after all, and he cared nothing for her status or her royal blood.
Perhaps it would be better if he didn’t love me, she thought, a lump rising in her throat.It would be easier to leave him.
“Sitamun, youwillsee me again,” Karim said, mistaking the source of her consternation.
Sita shook her head, not trusting herself to speak.
Tentatively, he lifted a hand to her face, cupping her cheek with his calloused palm. She leaned against it, despite herself.
“Do you remember what you said, when you called me back from the dead?” he asked.
Sita recalled kneeling beside Karim’s mutilated body with the scarab amulet in her hand.You can’t die, tomb robber, she’d said.I can’t bear another death on my conscience.The memory gave her a jolt. The amulet hadn’t given him immortality, she realized.It was me.
