Passion

Luce.”

Luce swiveled back and took her past self’s warm hand, knocking the canister of oil to the ground. Layla gasped and tried to jerk away, but then it happened.

The feeling of the sinkhole opening in Luce’s stomach was almost familiar. The room swirled, and the only thing in focus was the girl standing before her. Her inky-black hair and gold-flecked eyes, the flush of love fresh on her cheeks. Foggily, Luce blinked, and Layla blinked, and on the other side of the blink—

The ground settled. Luce looked down at her hands. Layla’s hands. They were trembling.

Bill was gone. But he’d been right: There were footsteps in the hallway.

She dipped to pick up the canister and turned away from the door to start pouring oil into the lamp. Best not to be seen by anyone who passed doing anything but her job.

The footsteps behind her stopped. A warm brush of fingertips traveled up her arms as a firm chest pressed against her back. Daniel. She could sense his glow without even turning. She closed her eyes. His arms wrapped around her waist and his soft lips swept across her neck, stopping just below her ear.

“I found you,” he whispered.

She turned slowly in his arms. The sight of him took her breath away. He was still her Daniel, of course, but his skin was the color of rich hot chocolate, and his wavy black hair was cropped very short. He wore only a short linen loincloth, leather sandals, and a silver choker around his neck. His deep-set violet eyes swept over her, happy.

He and Layla were deeply in love.

She rested her cheek on his chest and counted the beats of his heart. Would this be the last time she did this, the last time he held her against his heart? She was about to do the right thing—the good thing for Daniel. But still it pained her to think about it. She loved him! If this journey had taught her anything, it was how much she truly loved Daniel Grigori. It hardly seemed fair that she was forced to make this decision.

Yet here she was.

In ancient Egypt.

With Daniel. For the very last time. She was about to set him free.

Her eyes blurred with tears as he kissed the part in the center of her hair.

“I wasn’t sure we’d have a chance to say goodbye,” he said. “I leave this afternoon for the war in Nubia.”

When Luce lifted her head, Daniel cupped her damp cheeks in his hands. “Layla, I’ll return before the harvest. Please don’t cry. In no time you’ll be sneaking back into my bedchamber in the dark of night with platters of pomegranates just like always. I promise.”

Luce took a deep, shuddering breath. “Goodbye.”

“Goodbye for now.” His face grew serious. “Say it: Goodbye for now.”

She shook her head. “Goodbye, my love. Goodbye.”

The reed curtain parted. Layla and Don broke from their embrace as a cluster of guards with their spears drawn barreled into the room. Kafele led them, his face dark with rage. “Get the girl,” he said, pointing at Luce.

“What’s going on?” Daniel shouted as the guards surrounded Luce and reshackled her hands. “I order you to stop. Unhand her.”

“Sorry, Commander,” Kafele said. “Pharaoh’s orders. You should know by now—when Pharaoh’s daughter is not happy, Pharaoh is not happy.”

They marched Luce away as Daniel shouted, “I’ll come for you, Layla! I’ll find you!”

Luce knew he would. Wasn’t that how it always played out? They met, she got into trouble, and he showed up and saved the day—year in and year out across eternity, the angel swooping in at the last minute to rescue her. It was tiring to think about.

But this time when he got there, she would have the starshot waiting. The thought sent a raw pain through her gut. A well of tears rose up inside her again, but she swallowed them. At least she had gotten to say goodbye.

The guards ushered her down an endless series of hallways and outside into the blistering sun. They marched her down streets made of uneven slabs of rock, through a monumental arched gate, and past small sandstone houses and shimmering silty farmland on the way out of the city. They were dragging her toward an enormous golden hill.

Only as they drew near did Luce realize it was a man-made structure. The necropolis, she realized at the same time that Layla’s mind became jumbled with fear. Every Egyptian knew this was the tomb of the last pharaoh, Meni. No one except a few of the holiest priests—and the dead—dared approach the place where the royal bodies were interred. It was locked with spells and incantations, some to guide the dead in their journey toward the next life, and some to ward off any living being who dared approach. Even the guards dragging her there seemed to grow nervous as they approached.

Soon they were entering a pyramid-shaped tomb made of baked mud bricks. All but two of the burliest guards remained outside the entrance. Kafele shoved Luce through a darkened doorway and down a darker flight of stairs. The other guard followed them, carrying a flaming torch to light their path.

The torchlight flickered on the stone walls. They were painted with hieroglyphics, and now and then Layla’s eyes caught bits of prayers to Tait, the goddess of weaving, asking for help to keep the pharaoh’s soul in one piece during his journey to the afterlife.

Every few steps they passed false doors—deep stone recesses in the walls. Some of them, Luce realized, had once been entryways leading to the final resting places of members of the royal family. They were now sealed off with stone and gravel so that no mortal could pass.

Their way grew cooler; it grew darker. The air became heavy with the faded must of death. When they neared the one open doorway at the end of the hallway, the guard with the torch would go no farther—“I will not be cursed by the gods for this girl’s insolence”—so Kafele did it himself. He wrestled aside the stone bolt that pinned the door, and a harsh, vinegary smell flooded out, poisoning the air.

“Think you have any hope of escape now?” he asked, releasing her wrists from the shackles and shoving her inside.

“Yes,” Luce whispered to herself as the heavy stone door shut behind her and the bolt thudded back into place. “Only one.”

She was alone in utter darkness, and the cold clawed at her skin.

Then something snapped—stone on stone, so recognizable—and a small golden light bloomed in the center of the room. It was cupped between the two stone hands of Bill.

“Hello, hello.” He floated to the side of the room and poured the ball of fire out of his hands and into an opulently painted purple-and-green stone lamp. “We meet again.”

As Luce’s eyes adjusted, the first thing she saw was the writing on the walls: They were painted with the same hieroglyphics as in the hallway, only this time they were prayers to the pharaoh—“Do not decay. Do not rot. Stride into the Imperishable Stars.” There were chests that wouldn’t close because they overflowed with gold coins and sparkling orange gems. An enormous collection of obelisks spread out before her. At least ten embalmed dogs and cats seemed to eye her.

The chamber was huge. She circled a set of bedroom furniture, complete with a vanity stacked with cosmetics. There was a votive palette with a two-headed serpent chiseled on its face. The interlocking necks formed a recess in the black stone, which held a circle of bright blue eye shadow.

Bill watched Luce pick it up. “Gotta look one’s best in the afterlife.”

He was sitting atop the head of a startlingly lifelike sculpture of the former pharaoh. Layla’s mind told Luce that this sculpture represented the pharaoh’s ka, his soul, and it would watch over the tomb—the real pharaoh lay mummified behind it. Inside the limestone sarcophagus would be nested wooden coffins; inside the smallest one of them: the embalmed pharaoh.

“Watch out,” Bill said. Luce hadn’t even realized she was resting her hands on a small wooden chest. “That contains the pharaoh’s entrails.”

Luce jerked away and slid the starshot out from her dress. When she picked it up, its shaft warmed her