Or should be? Was I somewhere else just now, wearing lotus flowers and new attire?
“Mer?”
“Hm?” I returned my attention to him, instantly wracked with guilt that I could be distracted at all when my beloved was lying so ill and fragile before me. I took his hand and moved my chair closer to his bedside.
We weren’t in our room but a private alcove reserved for the sick and dying. It had its own small bathing area to make it easier to clean them. The steam in the room was also helpful for sweating out fevers. All the usual remedies had been attempted: herbs, honey, the mold of old bread that helped with infections. Still, Nakht’s fever refused to break, he wasn’t recovering, and if he didn’t show a turn for the better soon…
I squeezed his hand tighter, refusing to imagine such an outcome.
“I-I thought I… was the hazy one,” Nakht said, cracking a weak smile.
“You are.” His attempt at levity brought a smile to my face too, but it couldn’t last. “You shouldn’t be talking. You need to rest.”
“So do you. You haven’t been sleeping. Just watching over me.”
“I’ve slept plenty.” I moved my other hand to his forehead. He was so warm, skin clammy and wrong. “We should try a cold cloth again. Maybe the steam is spiking your fever too much instead of breaking it.”
“The priest said—”
“Oh what does that priest know!” I snapped, and though my outburst roused Nakht a little more vividly awake, I hated that I’d raised my voice when he needed me to be strong.
“He is the physician and religious head for Pharaoh. For all of us,” Nakht said. “He knows more than anyone.”
“But it’s not enough.” I shook my head, almost gripping Nakht’s hand too tight in my frustration. Instead, I brought my other hand down, cradling his in both of mine in prayer. “Praises be to Sekhmet—”
“Mer, please.” Nakht rested his other hand over mine. “Relax for a moment. You would tell me the same if our positions were reversed.”
“I know, but I need to care for you.”
“You are. Just rest a while and be here with me. That's all I need from you.”
I couldn’t look at him. How dare he be so confident and calm when he was fading right in front of me? I pulled my hands from his. “I’m just bending to grab that cold cloth.”
I had placed the damp cloth in a zeer pot, a layered smaller pot in a larger one with damp sand packed between the two. The cloth was as cold as I could make it, and seemed more so when placed upon Nakht’s burning skin.
He closed his eyes, sighing and smiling blissfully.
“That’s nice…”
Awake as he had been a moment ago, he was fading quickly again. He needed the rest, he did, but every time he slept with this fever persisting, I feared he would never wake up. I had to remind myself constantly that as long as his chest rose and fell with even, stable breaths, he would, hewould, and I could breathe easier too.
But if priests truly knew enough to save people, we would never lose anyone. It was only the will of the gods that decided who recovered and who perished. They gave us the tools to try to save ourselves, but they still decided when someone’s time was up.
Like they had with my mother.
“Please get better,” I whispered, kissing his cheek beneath the fall of the cool cloth. “Don't leave me, my love. Please. I can't lose you too.”
Nakht surprised me when his eyes fluttered open. “You won’t,” he said, and blindly lifted a hand, waiting for me to grab it once more. When I grasped it, he squeezed, and weak as he was, there was strength there, like a promise. “I will do everything in my power to always stay with you, Meryt… through these miserable days… to the next bright one.”
I dropped my forehead to his—or at least to the damp cloth. “You better.”
Motion out of the corner of my eye drew my attention to the nearby door.
Where another Nakht stood in a more incredible dancer’s attire than I had ever seen him in, sparkling as though the gods had woven it with stars.
“Nakht—”
But before I could get up to question this echo, light engulfed me.
