He grunted and doubled over. The spear slipped from his hands.
“Can you get these shackles off?” Luce hissed at Bill.
The gargoyle wagged his eyebrows. A short black bolt shot into the shackles, and they fizzled into nothingness. Luce’s skin felt hot where they had been, but she was free.
“Huh,” she said, glancing briefly down at her bare wrists. She grabbed the spear from the ground. She spun around to draw the blade to Kafele’s neck.
“One step ahead of you, Luce,” Bill called. When she turned, Kafele was sprawled flat on his back with his wrists shackled around the stone ankle of Auset’s likeness.
Bill dusted off his hands. “Teamwork.” He glanced down at the white-faced guard. “We’d better hurry. He’ll find his vocal cords again soon enough. Come with me.”
Bill led Luce quickly down the dark hallway, up a short flight of sandstone stairs, and across another hall lit by small tin lamps and lined with clay figures of hawks and hippopotamuses. A pair of guards turned into the hallway, but before they could see Luce, Bill pushed her through a doorway covered by a reed curtain.
She found herself in a bedroom. Stone columns carved to look like bundled papyrus stems rose to a low ceiling. A wooden sedan chair inlaid with ebony sat by an open window opposite a narrow bed, which was carved of wood and painted with so much gold leaf that it gleamed.
“What do I do now?” Luce pressed against the wall in case anyone walking by peered in. “Where are we?”
“This is the commander’s chamber.”
Before Luce could piece together that Bill meant Daniel, a woman parted the reed curtain and stepped into the room.
Luce shivered.
Layla wore a white dress with the same narrow cut as the one Luce had on. Her hair was thick and straight and glossy. She had a white peony tucked behind one ear.
With a heavy feeling of sadness, Luce watched Layla glide to the wooden vanity and pour fresh oil into the lamp from a canister she carried on a black resin tray. This was the last life Luce would visit, the body where she would part ways with her soul so that all of this could end.
When Layla turned to refill the lamps beside the bed, she noticed Luce.
“Hello,” she said in a soft, husky voice. “Are you looking for someone?” The kohl rimming her eyes looked much more natural than Auset’s makeup.
“Yes, I am.” Luce wasted no time. Just as she reached forward to grab the girl’s wrist, Layla looked past her toward the doorway, and her face stiffened with alarm. “Who is that?”
Luce turned and saw only Bill. His eyes were wide.
“You can”—she gaped at Layla—“you can see him?”
“No!” Bill said. “She’s talking about the footsteps she hears running down the corridor outside. Better hurry, 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.