Return Once More

Shock dimmed the pleasure in his eyes. “Apologies, Kaia.”

The bio-tat admonished me with facts about proper courting behavior for ladies of class during this time and heat rose to my cheeks. “Don’t, please. I’m not upset.”

“We’re not … I’m not …”

He looked so helpless and flustered that I couldn’t help but laugh, standing on my tiptoes and pressing my hands to his cheeks, then planting another kiss on his mouth. “Caesarion. This is not a normal situation. We’re breaking so many rules, you kissing me in a barn is hardly worth getting upset over.”

“I’ve never felt this way before, it’s … different.”

I felt my eyebrows shoot up, a self-conscious tug clenching my gut. “Different bad?”

“No, definitely not. It is good, but only … After the way we began in the gardens, I worry. I don’t wish to have you because I am Pharaoh and you must submit to my wishes.” He closed his eyes and blew out a breath. “I’m saying this wrong.”

I bit my lip to suppress the laugh this time, giving him as serious a look as I could muster. “You’re doing fine. That was a misunderstanding.”

“Not to you. I made you feel less than the lady you are, and I ca

The edge of sorrow in his words sliced through my heart. “We come from different times and places and cultures. But I promise that I kissed you just now because I have never wanted anything more, and I sincerely hope to do it again.”

He bent forward at my words, passion burning in his eyes, and our mouths co

Caesarion eased back too soon, breathing hard. “Please say you’ll return.”

“I’ll try.”

I had kissed boys before—Oz had been my first kiss, strangely enough, during a game of Seven Minutes in the Air Lock our third year at the Academy—but nothing like this. Nothing that had come close to making me feel completely lost, transported, confused at what present and past and future meant anymore. What my entire life meant.

“I do not need to remind you that my time is ru

“I promise. This isn’t good-bye.”

He pulled me against his chest, crushing me in a tight hug that was probably almost as inappropriate as a kiss, then set me away. “Very well. Then go,” he said gruffly.

Neither of us moved. I tipped my head, unsure of the new rules. Maybe there weren’t any. “Um. Are you going to watch?”

“I want to know everything about you.”

“Caesarion, I’m trusting you with a great secret. History—this planet, these people—they’re much more fragile than they might seem to you. If anything significant is upset, we may never see each other again. I might disappear altogether.”

“And that is reason enough for me to keep silent, though I would not have thought to betray your confidence. Your trust is evident, and it means a great deal that you’ve given it to me after such a short time. At any rate, this lonely, discarded Pharaoh has not a soul to tell.”

Loneliness spilled out of his every pore, tingeing the air with regret. It squeezed my heart into a pancake. The truth of his words pounded in the base of my skull harder than the stupid bio-tat had when he’d kissed me. He had no one. His family was gone, his city abandoned to Octavian and Rome, with only a few loyal guards willing to risk their lives to save his.

In a few short weeks, he would die alone.

“See you,” I whispered.

The cuff fell down to my wrist with a sturdy shake. A couple of quick punches and one whispered word marked my return trip, and the blue field spread around me. It usually comforted me, the knowledge that the strange and often horrific events of my day had concluded, but now, it put impossible miles between me and this boy I could have loved, leaving me cold.

Lost.

The last thing I saw before the final light switched to green was Caesarion’s wide, sad eyes watching me go.

Chapter Fourteen

Sanchi, Amalgam of Genesis–50 NE (New Era)

“Kaia, what in the System are you still doing in the Archives? You’ve been in here all day! And why aren’t you answering my wrist comms?”

Analeigh’s voice made me jump three feet into the air, and I hadn’t even been doing anything wrong. At least not at the moment. Mostly I’d been trying to deal with my guilt over betraying the Historians, even if it was to my True.

“You scared the space trash out of me.”

“That usually happens when you’re doing something wrong, but this just looks like a reflection on …” She peered over my shoulder at the archive I had pulled to the front of the screen. “The destruction of the Temple? Why are you bothering with that?”

Analeigh swiped her finger a few times, enlarging the recording data, but that it marked the begi

I rolled my eyes at her and elbowed her away. “I guess I’m feeling nostalgic. Family and love. Broken hearts.” Analeigh wrinkled her pixie nose. “What for?”

“I don’t know. Just curious, I guess.” I paused, wishing she could understand. Knowing she couldn’t. “I think they were Trues. Her and Titus.”

She got it then, and flopped onto the waist-high stool next to mine with a sigh. “Are you being sappy again? Is this because of your Companion card? I knew you shouldn’t have looked. You’ve always had too many romantic illusions, and now you’re all moony because Caesarion died a long time ago.”

“Maybe it’s not that he died so long ago, A.L., but that he didn’t have to die so young. It’s not that I had any expectations that I would get an Oz of my own—”

“Thank the stars. Who would wish for that?” she interrupted with a frown. “I mean, I know it’s cool that they’re, like, instantly in love or whatever, but how is that even possible? That they’ve known each other for five years, then she gets a card and suddenly, boom, feelings?”

Boom, feelings pretty much described my past couple of days, but she had a point. I had felt the undeniable draw to Caesarion from the moment I’d laid eyes on him. Sarah had always been kinder to Oz than the rest of us, more understanding of his awkward silences. Quick to defend him, protesting that he was shy, not weird. It had made a strange kind of sense when her card had come out with his name on it, but still … now that I had experienced it, I had a hard time believing they hadn’t felt it.

Then again, people were different. It stood to reason that love would be, too.

“Maybe they did have feelings for each other but never acted on them. I mean, it’s not like Oz has ever been super into girls or dating or anything.” I shrugged.

“Right? I think you’re the only girl he ever kissed before Sarah.”

“Don’t remind me.” I needed to change the subject before she remembered I hadn’t answered about where I’d been all day. “So, you know Jonah confirmed he saved that girl. Rosie.”

Analeigh’s expression grew wary. “Right, but he didn’t say much else.”

“Well, he must have warned her ahead of time since she never left the building that day. I still can’t believe he was so irresponsible. He could have killed us all.”

“You’re being dramatic. It was just one girl.”

“Nobody’s just one girl, Kaia. What if it had somehow affected the invention of the atmosphere that supports human life in Genesis? Would the terraforming just have dissolved?”

She gave an extreme example, but those kinds of unknowns existed. The Historians had mapped most of Earth Before’s major events over the past fifty years and had flagged specific people and happenings that were essential to our ability to survive, but there were simply too many outside influences to draw every single event backward and forward through history—to know for sure what could make them disappear or change their course.