Nothing I could do would alleviate the tension in my shoulders from my confrontation with Vogt—not a full belly, nothing. After I boarded the ferry and got the key to my cabin—really, it was more like a glorified closet—I climbed onto the hard cot, wishing I had a change of clothes. Everything I’d had was left in the saddlebags and gone with my camel for good.
I woke, groggy from sleep and as sore as I had been after Nasira’s first training session. That felt like a hundred years ago, even though it’d only been a few months.
A shadow in the dark room made my heart jump in surprise. “Good evening, lady,” Baket said sweetly.
Relief soothed my aching muscles. “What time is it?” I asked.
“Not long after midnight,” she replied. “How did you sleep?”
Midnight. That meant we’d departed from the docks and were floating somewhere down the Nile. I yawned and rubbed my stiff neck. “Not so well.”
The sphinx’s head tilted to the side. “Why is that?”
“Well,” I began, “this bed is less comfortable to sleep on than the ground, and I have a lot of things on my mind. I need to decide what I’m going to do.”
“What we will do,” she said. “I am your friend, lady. I’m with you.”
An invisible dagger plunged into my gut. Sayer had said the same thing. And he was gone. So was Nasira and both their parents. And both my parents. Murdered by someone I had trusted with my life.
Oddly enough, I trusted Baket. She was a creature with human intelligence and animal-like, pure-hearted, unconditional love. Animals always felt more honest to me than humans, who were capable of such cruelty. Animals never thought to hurt anyone, even when they killed for food. They only thought of their own survival, and that left no room in their hearts for betrayal.
I let myself succumb to the chasm in my heart, let the emptiness swarm all of my senses, but I found no relief. My body curled into a tight, trembling ball on the cot. I sank into despair with a keening wail muffled by my pillow, allowing the tragedy and brutality of what happened consume me. My sobs were ugly, shuddering gasps like I was a fish hooked and tossed onto a boat’s deck to suffocate. One moment I’d been weightless, fluid, in my element, and the next moment I’d been thrust into a world where gravity pinned me to something hard, a world that didn’t lift and propel me—a world I couldn’t survive in.
But I would survive. After allowing one minute of grief and hopelessness, I willed myself to live, something I’d done every day since before I could remember. I closed my eyes until I stopped trembling and could breathe again, remembering I was no fish. My world was one of gravity and air. Cyrene had planned so much for so long, but she’d never really planned for me. I grew up an outsider in a harsh city with the world against me. That carved me into a woman stronger than my enemies.
Baket’s emerald gaze filled with more glittering life than I had seen in them yet, as if the sphinx had grown a little more human or was at least beginning to understand us. “Is there some way I can help?”
I smiled at her. “Don’t ever stop being kind. Thank you for being my friend.”
The sphinx smiled with her human mouth. “I’m happy to.”
“What should I do?” I asked her. “Should I keep running from them? Shouldn’t I kill Cyrene for what she did?”
“You must ask yourself what you are willing to sacrifice for revenge,” she replied.
“I’ve already lost everyone I’ve loved,” I argued, though I felt more exhausted than angry at that moment.
“What you seek will take more from you,” Baket said sadly.
I shook my head. “I have nothing else to lose.”
The sphinx frowned. “Your goodness, lady.”
I turned from her, setting my teeth. My throat grew tight, trapping my air, unable to expel without unleashing my scream with it. After a moment, I forced the tension from my body and could breathe again, though I felt emptier than ever before. “Maybe it’s worth it,” I whispered at last.
“I can’t tell you the answer to that,” she said. “Only your heart can.”
When I looked back at her, I found her with a tilted head, watching me with sympathy. “The question I need to ask myself—my heart—is am I willing to sacrifice who I am for justice?”
“Are you?” the sphinx asked.
“I believe I am willing to sacrifice who I am to protect Egypt and the people who can’t protect themselves from evil,” I told her. “That is the only thing for which I can justify breaking my heart. I don’t want to, but my heart belongs to Egypt, not me, and protecting this world is the righter thing to do.”
The sphinx beamed. “A queen’s words from a queen’s heart.”
“But everyone who cared about me—everyone I cared about—is dead,” I said, my voice so weak.
“Forgive me, lady,” Baket said, her brow furrowing in thought, “but I don’t understand why mortals die. Why are they here and then . . . not?”
I tried to think of a way to explain death to something that would never die. “You have a heart that doesn’t beat. Eventually a mortal’s heart gives out. All the parts in our bodies grow tired after a long life. We die because we live.”
The sphinx closed the distance between us, her power prickling my skin, her huge, sleek body warm, and she pressed a round, furred ear against my chest. Baket fell silent and I fell with her, sucked in by the void and left breathless, until the only sound left was my pulse.
“I hear it,” the sphinx whispered. “Your heart beats like a ticking clock, counting down until it stops.”
Only when she drew away could I breathe.
“I hope your heart beats for a very long time,” Baket said.
It was such a strange thing to say, I almost laughed, but I didn’t have the energy for it. “So do I.”
She sat on her haunches and pulled away from my face. “You will. I know you will survive.”
“You’re a prophet then, huh?” I asked, though it was a half-hearted joke.
“No one can see the future. We can only learn from the past and design our own fate.” Baket offered me a lily-sweet smile. “You were born a princess of ancient blood, but the gods also gave you strength, lady. Those gifts haven’t gone wasted. You have earned who you are with your wit and teeth and claws. These are admirable virtues.”
Peace warmed my heart. “You must be the only sphinx in history who deals in reason rather than riddles.”
She beamed at me. “Thank you, lady. You flatter me.”
Someone knocked on my door and my body chilled. The sphinx pinned her ears, pulled back her lips to bare her neat, little fangs, and hissed. She withdrew, her powerful, slender tail lashing angrily.
“Should I attack, lady?” she whispered.
I shook my head, staring past her at the door. “No, we can’t afford to get kicked off the boat.”
There came another knock. “Zee.”
His voice filled my heart with light and broke it at the same time.
I tore open the door and flung myself into Sayer’s arms. He made a gruff, throaty noise of surprise and his back hit the wall. We sank to the floor, our arms entwined. Tears soaked my cheeks, dampening his wool jacket as I buried my face into his chest. I crawled into his lap, pinning my body against his, letting him pull me as close as we could physically be. I cried, gasping deeply for air. He had to be real. Had to be. I could feel him and smell him. He was real.
“Ziva, Ziva,” he breathed into my hair, whispering my name over and over.
The boat rocked, and its sway and his touch soothed me. A chanson lulled behind the wall of another cabin. My body ceased its shuddering, and I looked up into his face, into those dark eyes. His hand touched my face, lifted my chin, and he bent over to kiss me. His lips were warm and soft, gentle against mine, though his arms held onto me for dear life.
It seemed as though hours had passed when he put his forehead to mine.
“I watched you die,” was the first thing I said to him.
A low, mmm sound vibrated in his throat. “It would take more than the violence of a god to wrest me from you.”
“Why did this happen?”
“Because there are terrible people.”
“Is Nasi okay?”
“She’s okay.” He kissed the top of my head and exhaled, warming my skin. “Let’s go inside.”
Weakly, we climbed to our feet. I smoothed out my nightgown and led him into my room. He closed the door behind himself. Finally, I could look at him. There were deep circles around his eyes, his cheeks purple and green with bruises. His sleeves covered his arms, but I remembered the blood from when he tried to tear through Cyrene’s spell. I wondered if I looked as broken as he did.
“Where is Nasira?” I asked him.
“A safe place,” he replied, his voice hoarse. “I got to her injuries quickly, but she’ll need time. My magic doesn’t work as well on myself. I’ll need even more time.”
I swallowed hard, struggling to hold my heart together. “Your dad.”
He drew a deep breath and his exhale came with a shudder, then a sob. He bit down on his lip and the muscles of his jaw clenched. I raised my hands to wipe the tears from the bruises beneath his eyes and he turned his face into my palm and kissed my skin. His arms wrapped around me and I threw mine around the back of his neck.
“Lady,” the sphinx said delicately. I pulled away from Sayer and looked into her concerned, fearful face.
“Oh, Baket, we’re okay,” I told her and deflated. “It’ll be okay.” As if she was the one who needed convincing.
She nodded and curled up in a ball on the floor, though she didn’t relax.
“What do we do?” Sayer asked, looking at me, defeat in his eyes.
“Finish what they started,” I told him, finding a flicker of strength within myself. “We unearthed a monster. Cyrene will do everything in her power to stop us from righting this terrible wrong.”
He shook his head. “But how? I’d trained my entire life to be faster and stronger than anything so when the moment came, I would win. And I didn’t. I couldn’t.”
An ember of an idea began to glow in the back of my mind, one I know would burn him. “We’re only mortals.”
“We’re no match for the queen,” he said, fear and desperation raising his voice.
“Maybe that’s just it,” I whispered. “We need to find her match.”
He stared at me, puzzled. “Cyrene is the strongest of us and she sided with Nefertari.”
I braced myself for the pain I was about to cause him. “I don’t mean another Medjai. I mean Set.”
Sayer’s jaw clenched, and he shook his head again, the gesture and his gaze harsh and rough as a brick. “No. No. His creature killed my mother. I will not beg him for help. I have nothing left but my honor, and I won’t toss that in the dirt.”
“This is not the time to cling to our egos,” I told him delicately.
“This has nothing to do with my ego!” he spat, his voice curdled with rage. “Set is as much a monster as the thing we must destroy. That doesn’t mean we team up with him!”
It took everything in me to keep my voice even and calm. “I understand my decision is a betrayal against you—”
“So, it’s your decision? We won’t even discuss it?” he interjected.
“—but what we’re up against is greater than any of us,” I finished. “Only a god can kill a god!”
“You have Anubis!” he shouted, throwing up a hand in exasperation.
“Set is stronger,” I argued tightly, trying not to yell back at him. “He’s the strongest of them all and he wants the same thing we do. We’d be fools not to side with him. I’m doing this for our people, for the rest of the world. The Germans we saw in Cairo are led by a scientist who’s been researching the supernatural. She knows about us—the Medjai, magic, the gods. Yesterday she came to me in Asyut. She told me the research they’ve done is only the beginning. They want to create an artificial god.”
His brow crushed into a frown of disbelief. “She’s mad.”
“The threats we are up against are growing,” I told him. “We can’t do this alone.”
“Ziva . . .”
“What terrors will Nefertari unleash on this world if we don’t stop her with everything we have?” I pleaded with him. “How many more lives will she destroy? What devastation will the Nazis bring upon our own people if we don’t take every measure to stop them? I’m doing this.”
Sayer gaped at me for several moments before he closed his mouth, shaking his head, and turned away. He covered his face with his hands, then roughly ran them through his hair. His hands fell, rolled into fists, and tightened until his knuckles paled to white. When he looked back at me from over his shoulder, it was crystal clear how I had hurt him.
“I love you,” he said to me, his words muted with sadness. “But you’re making a mistake. He will bring your doom.”
“I don’t believe he will,” I said, sticking to my decision and knowing exactly what I was sacrificing for it. For us all. “This is the only way to win.”
A fresh tear perched on his cheekbone, but his expression was empty and unreadable aside from the sadness, denser and more drowning than anything I’d seen before. “When we first met, Cyrene said you would save humanity from itself because that was your fate. She was wrong, you know. The only thing she was right about was your ruthlessness. You’ll save us because only you have the grit. The gods tested you well your whole life. Those trials shaped you, despite all the suffering this world has caused you, into the one person who believes it should be saved and can get it done.”
My shuddering sob nearly sank me to my knees.
“But not this way,” he continued, and his shaking voice rose with anger. “Not with something so evil.”
“I’m sorry,” I told him, but I knew I was right.
He came toward me, leaned over, and kissed my cheek. Warmth, then cold as he backed up toward the door. He looked at me, dead-eyed, for a moment and said, “Good-bye, Ziva. Take care of yourself.”
Shock filled my veins with ice, freezing my feet to the floor. “Sayer!” I called to him.
And he left me.
A harrowing scream ripped free from my throat, unleashing my anguish from its cage in my heart. The walls tilted toward me from every side, and the floor beneath me felt as though it were rolling like a violent sea. I collapsed to my knees, spreading my palms on the floor for balance. My eyes shut, and I saw my mother’s tearstained face, the only memory I had of her.
My heart was breaking. This is what it felt like. Two hands, taloned fingertips embedded deep, ripping my heart in two. I felt like I was dying, drowning. I smothered my face in my hands and wailed as I rocked back and forth. Fear, pain, grief, and horror lashed at me like tempest-whipped, sea-salted winds. The sound of Sayer’s screams filled my memory.
I withdrew my hands from my face and watched them shake as I pressed them into the cold floor again. I pushed myself up by sheer will alone, as though my arms and legs had burned into charred stalks. He and I were over. Everything we had, every laugh and smile and touch—they were only memories from another life now. They would never be again. The connection we had, the closeness, the comfort, the hope—all gone. A void grew in my chest where my heart once was kept safe, the emptiness all-devouring, until all that remained in me was a numb, dull roar. Time slowed and my body sank, heavy, spent. My grief almost buried me alive and I could only sit here and let it.
Baket pushed her softly furred forehead into my hand, and I turned to meet her gentle gaze. I put my arms around her to bury my face in her braided mane. The gold and gemstone beads made a soft, comforting tinkling sound. She leaned into me and purred, her sweet voice a candle’s flicker in the darkness, “There, there, lady.”
I needed the reminder I wasn’t alone. I’d lived my life trying to survive, but I’d hoped the world could be a better place for myself and others who had suffered. Baket had been imprisoned in a tomb for thousands of years, utterly alone, and still she had hope.
I drew a deep breath and pulled away from the sphinx. I’d spent my life searching for the answers to my past and future, hoping someone would steer me in the right direction. Now I realized that no one else held sway over who I was. I had to carve that out for myself. My identity was my own. As were my decisions.
I had to do what I believed was right. This thought steeled my nerve. I felt like myself again.
From my belongings, I removed Anubis’s amulet. He appeared moments after I whispered his name into the air. The god of death took one look at the wretched sight of me and said nothing before scooping me into his arms, hugging me tight. His scent of sand and stone, once comforting to me, now reminded me of what I had endured in the unforgiving desert. I slipped from his grip, and he did not protest, only gazed down at me with quiet sorrow in those orphic topaz eyes.
“What do you need?” he asked gently.
“For you to do something for me, my friend, my brother,” I told him. “Something you won’t like. But you have to trust me.”
As Anubis searched my face, trepidation passed over his own, but he braced himself and said, “All right, Ziva. I trust you.”
I paced back and forth in my cabin, the sphinx watching in calm silence. She did not question me, and I was glad for it. Only a few minutes had passed since Anubis departed, and it took all of my will not to doubt my decision for an instant.
A disturbance in the air made me stop. Inky power spread across the floor, exploring every object like a sentient thing, and Set materialized in a plume of shadow in front of me. He smiled when I held my ground. Baket hissed from where she crouched, ready to spring to my defense.
“I feared for you after you fled,” he confessed. “Words cannot express my joy when I learned you sent the pup for me.”
“Your invitation still stands, yes?” I inquired. “I will help you end Nefertari if you help me.”
“I would not have offered if I didn’t think you had the will,” Set crooned. “To watch your courage . . . You are a rare jewel of this earth.”
“Let me be clear,” I said boldly. “I want vengeance, but above all, I want justice.”
“Glad we are agreed upon their destruction,” he remarked, studying me for a sharp moment. “On my immortality, I swear I will not let her have you. If she is fully regenerated, I will not be able to stop her. You were right about that all along. And I accept responsibility for unleashing this evil upon your world. I was arrogant enough to believe I could stop your people from resurrecting her.”
“You made a terrible gamble for what you wanted,” I told him.
His smile grew serpentine. “You would do the same.”
My teeth bit together. “I wouldn’t be so careless with the lives of others. That’s the difference between you and me.”
“No, you don’t gamble, do you,” he said, and it wasn’t a question. “But us side by side—that’s a sure thing. I want to save my people and return us to this world, where we will thrive. You can be my intermediary with humankind. Please, allow me to add but one condition of my own. A request, not a demand.”
I drew a deep, defiant breath, carefully controlling the magic at my fingertips. “Which is?”
“Allow me to make you a living god.” Set’s eyes of molten gold flickered with flames. “You are the only living descendant of a pharaoh. By all rights the throne of Egypt is yours, and I will help you claim it and more. Come with me to the Crocodile City and rule at my side. Be my crocodile queen.”
My blood quickened. Only a god could kill a god. To end this, I would embrace the darkest facets of my heart. I would reach for my darkest power and fear would not hold me back.
I did not want to claim this world for my own; I was no Nefertari or Adolf Hitler. All I desired was for my enemies to suffer beneath more than anything the mortal world could provide me. Set had proven himself to be dangerous, but he had shielded me from the tank explosion and taken the debris himself. He would honor his pledge to protect me from Nefertari. I didn’t owe him my life. I didn’t owe anyone a thing.
Taking a deep breath and pushing away the shame I felt when I pictured Sayer’s disappointed face in my mind, I said without regret, “Agreed.”
The air between us prickled with magic and the gold in the eyes of the god of chaos glowed with eagerness and satisfaction. “Together we will soak Egypt’s sands red with the blood of all those who betrayed us, and you will rule their ruin. None will foresee the storm rolling toward them from across the darkened sea, and that storm is you and me.”
I would not forgive, and I would not forget. I thought of all who had tried to hold me back, to stop me from rising to where I belonged. The bullies and the evil people. The monsters and their gods. Of all the hunger and the pain and the suffering I had survived. I had survived. They would not. No one had made me a victim.
They’d made me strong.