Chapter Eighteen

Day 42.

"Talk? About what?" He asks, eying me carefully.

"About the fact that you're still lying to me." I say. Ahmose abruptly becomes a statue. "And don't you dare try to deny it, because I know you are."

His expression smooths out into complete impassivity so quickly that it startles me. "What causes you to be so sure?"

I look him dead in the eye. "I have Hapi and Horus as my witnesses."

All the blood drains from Ahmose's face. He licks his lips several times. When he finally speaks, his voice is hoarse, like he's gone without water for weeks. "Where did you hear that?"

I tell him. I tell him every single detail from the dream I had, from the moment it started with the life-sized Nafretiri, to the moonlit rendezvous, to the argument with the guard before he woke me up. I tell him everything, and I don't leave a single candid detail out. The entire time I talk, Ahmose's expression doesn't change; there's not a flicker of emotion, not a waver of a reaction to my words. But the moment I mention the ring and the argument with the guard, his expression flickers through such an incredible range of emotions that it almost gives me whiplash. When I finally finish, his expression finally settles on the last emotion I expected: pure and unadulterated guilt.

"So?" I fold my arms over my chest and stare him down. "What is going on Ahmose? I'm not stupid, I know that my dream wasn't just a dream. So what is going on?"

Ahmose doesn't say anything for a very long time. When he finally does, his voice is barely louder than the whispering breeze. "You are right. I have been lying to you."

"Why?"

"To protect you."

The frustration slowly saps from my muscles. I stare at him in confusion. "What?"

Ahmose sighs, his gaze lowering to the ground. "When I first told you about the curse, I was not entirely honest with you."

"In what way?"

"It is not just my curse, Kiara. It is yours."

My heart shudders to a stop. "Wait, what?"

"It is your curse too."

"Yes, I heard you the first time, Ahmose. It wasn't a question for clarification." I retort sharply. I soften my tone when he starts, his eyes widening at me. "What exactly do you mean by that? How is it my curse too?"

"What I told you about the origin of the curse, that was accurate." He explains, running a hand through his hair. "Kasiya's father, the pharoah, did pray to Ma'at to stop us from being together because he did not think I was worthy of being her betrothed or the pharoah. Ma'at did listen to his prayers and answer him by creating this curse, and it did result in the death of both Kasiya and I. But what I did not tell you was that it affected Kasiya a great deal more than it affected me. While I was cursed to endure immortality, she was cursed to endure cycle after cycle of reincarnation."

My breath catches as his words suddenly light up the path of a terrifying possibility. "Cycle after cycle? You mean she was reincarnated more than once?"

"Yes." He replies softly, catching my gaze with his. All of a sudden I feel incredibly exposed, like someone's trapped me stark-naked under a spotlight with a massive bell-jar. "Once every one hundred years, Kasiya would be reincarnated, and it would be my mission to find her in one hundred days and break the curse before she died. If she did, I was re-mummified and the whole cycle would start again."

"Has she..." I swallow, my heart in my throat. "Has she been reincarnated in this lifetime?"

"Yes."

"Have we met her?"

"Yes."

"Who is she?"

He smiles a little. His eyes are the saddest I've ever seen them. "I think you already know the answer to that."

My heart stops.

No.

"I need you to say it." I whisper. "I need you to say it Ahmose — not imply it, not say I already know it, but say it, right here, right now. Because if you're about to say what I think you're about to say, then everything changes. Everything. And I don't want my entire world changing because of an implication."

Ahmose shifts his seated position so he's kneeling completely in front of me. He grasps my hands in his, looking me directly in the eyes as he delivers the one sentence that shatters any remaining sense of reality I had. "She is you, Kiara. You are Kasiya."

You are Kasiya.

A splutter of incredulous disbelief tears through my lips. I leap to my feet, ripping my hands out of his grip and holding my head. "Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god."

"Kiara..." Ahmose starts forward, reaching out for me. I dart out of his reach and point a shaking finger at him.

"No. Just... no." I shake my head. My mind feels like it's overflowing with stifling cotton wool. I try to sift through it all in an attempt to make sense of the situation, but it's about as useful as searching through a stack of needles for one very particular needle. "I don't... I can't... I just..."

"Kiara, please." He catches my shoulder as I pace past him, whirling me around to face him. "Let me explain."

"Explain? Explain?" I shriek. My eyes bug out as I stare at him wildly. "Explain what exactly? How I'm supposedly the reincarnated 2017 edition of an Egyptian princess? How I've apparently died every single time you've tried to break the curse in the past? How you somehow neglected to tell me all of this before now?! How—how—"

I let out a high-pitched squeal of disbelief, holding my fisted hands up in the air next to my head as I continue to gawk at him. "How does that even make sense, Ahmose?! What would cause you to think keeping that from me was a good idea? That is huge Ahmose! I can't even begin to— I can't—"

"Kiara." Ahmose grips my shoulders as my my break-down reaches high-pitched levels only discernible to dogs, looking me deep in my eyes. "You need to take a breath."

"I can't— I can't—" My hands start to shake uncontrollably as I begin to hyperventilate. Black dots start to litter his face, popping up like balloons in the corners of my vision. I stumble back, my head filling up with helium and robbing all the energy from my muscles. "I can't..."

Ahmose's voice cuts through my hysteria, as calming as a melodious birdsong in the breadths of the morning. "Najmay. Breathe."

I nod and grudgingly comply, letting out a shuddering breath. The ringing in my ears soon fades into the background until it has abated completely, my vision simultaneously clearing enough for me to be able to see the strong line of Ahmose's jaw under the soft morning light. I swallow, nodding again.

"Okay." I let another long breath flow through my lips and fold my arms tightly over my chest. "Okay. Mini freak out over. You can explain now."

"Mini freakout?" He raises an eyebrow at me. I give him a look.

"Ahmose. Explain."

"Explain what?"

"Everything!" I exclaim. "Anything! Wait no, not anything. Everything."

"Everything is not any less vague, Kiara."

I let out a growl of frustration, throwing my hands up in the air. "How about the beginning, Ahmose? Why was Kasiya — me—" I let out a sharp laugh, shaking my head in disbelief. "Affected? How am I her?"

"I do not know why she was affected. Why you were affected." Ahmose sighs, pain flashing through his expression. "I still don't, even now. That is the disadvantage of making deals with the gods — they never interpret things the way you want them to."

"Okay." I take a deep breath as the information soaks into my brain. "How am I her? Kasiya. How am I her? Why was she — me — reincarnated?"

"I don't know that either, Kiara. Truly, I don't." He assures when I raise my eyebrows at him disbelievingly. "When the gods curse you, they don't sit you down and explain how or why they cursed you. They just throw you in the midst of it all and enjoy watching you suffer. Most of them, anyway." He adds on, casting a surreptitious look up to the sky.

"If that's the case, then how did you end up immortal, and I end up..." I hesitate, the last word in the sentence as easy to mull over as a cactus. "Reincarnated?"

"It was my punishment. I had to endure watching you suffer, and suffer the knowledge that if you were ever harmed or died, it was because of me."

My resolve softens slightly. "Really?"

"Yes. My curse, my punishment." Ahmose smiles bitterly. "Your father may have been frustrated with you for disobeying his order, but I was the one his anger was directed at. I was the one he believed to have destroyed his family and rule. I was the one he asked Ma'at to stop."

"My father. The pharoah. My father, the pharoah." I roll the word over my tongue, unable to get used to its foreign feeling. I shake my head, letting out a low laugh. "This is weird. Really, really weird. How do I not remember that? How do I not remember any of that?"

"You remember more than you think."

"I do?" I suck in a sharp breath as it hits me. "The dreams. They were real?"

"Dreams?" Ahmose echoes, frowning at me. "As in plural? You have had more than one?"

"Two." I reply slowly. "Last night and one the night we defeated the Sphinx."

His forehead furrows even more. "You never told me about that."

"Can you blame me?" I ask. "I dreamed that I was being hunted in Renaissance England for being a witch, Ahmose. With you."

Ahmose chuckles, running a hand through his hair. "Ah, yes. That was one of the more... intense cycles."

"Okay. As much as I want to join in on your apparent amusement, Ahmose, this isn't funny." I clasp my hands before me, imploring him with my gaze. "Any other day I wouldn't be bothered by you finding mirth in the situation, but none of this is funny. At all."

"Right. Sorry." The corners of his lips twist up into a humourless smile. He steps forward, his expression lighting up a little when I don't move away this time. "I wish I had more answers for you Kiara, but the gods did not exactly brief me on the logistics of the curse when it happened. I only know what I have discovered over the years."

"I want to believe you. I honestly do." I sigh, chewing on my lip. I suddenly find I'm unable to meet his gaze. "I just find it extremely hard to believe that you have the answers to everything except the one thing I really need you to have answers for."

"I don't know what to say, Kiara." Ahmose replies. "All I know is that every time you have died, you have been reincarnated with no recollection of any of your past lives. Sometimes you have remembered parts of it and put it together like you have now, others you haven't. The only reason I have ever been able to come up with for that is that a memory returns every time we defeat one of the trials. That's why I think you have never completely regained all your memories — we've never completely broken the curse."

I try to find words to formulate a reply, but for the first time in my life, they completely desert me. Thoughts buzz around my head like hawks, each one dive-bombing me and attempting to rip away any sense of rational thought I have left floating around my mind. As hard as I try to believe what Ahmose is saying, to believe his earnestly spoken words, I can't help the small voice in the back of my head playing devil's advocate. He's not telling you the whole truth. He's keeping something from you. Look at the way his gaze keeps darting to the side. He's not telling you every single thing he knows. He's still hiding things from you. So why should you trust anything he has to say?

So I don't say anything.

From Ahmose's reaction, he seems to take my silence as simple shock at his revelation. Sighing quietly, he reaches forward and brushes the hair out of my face so I have no choice but to look up at him. "Kiara, you have to believe that all those past lives don't matter to me. What happened during them is irrelevant. They were nothing compared to what is real."

Realisation strikes me like a bolt of lightning. My breath catches in my throat.

"That's why you said Hazel was irrelevant, isn't it?" I whisper, horror creeping into my veins. "You don't think she matters because she wasn't a part of our original story. She's all but a ghost to you, isn't she?"

Ahmose's silence is damning.

"Oh my god, Ahmose! How can you even think that?" I ask, staring at him in disbelief. "Just because she wasn't alive back when we were doesn't mean that she's important! She is — was — the most important person to me in the entire world, and just because she wasn't alive in ancient Egypt three thousand years ago doesn't mean that she is any less important."

Ahmose opens his mouth, remorse wavering through him. I hold my finger up and silence him with a look, his contrition only fueling my anger.

"No, Ahmose. Don't even attempt to apologise, because it's not going to make anything better." I snap. "You need to get it into your head right now that you don't have the authority to decide who is relevant and who is irrelevant in my life just because you know more about it than I do. That is not how this works. I am the only person who has authority over my own life, and you don't get to take that way from me just because I don't remember all of it."

"I'm sorry, Kiara." Ahmose speaks as tentatively as one would when they're faced with a growling lioness. "I never meant for you to think that I was trying to control you or your life."

"Well then what did you mean by that Ahmose? What were you trying to say?"

Ahmose hesitates.

"Tell me, Ahmose!" I demand. "Now."

Ahmose growls under his breath, flicking his nose angrily. "What I was trying to say Kiara, is that the only thing that matters is you. The only thing that ever has matters has always, always been you."

My heart stops. The roaring flame of fury fizzles out like a candle under a shower. "What?"

Ahmose sighs. His expression softens. "Everything else pales in comparison to you, Kiara. It always has been, even when we were just Kasiya and Ahmose. Even now."

I swallow several times, my mouth suddenly as dry as the desert we've been trekking through. "What are you... what are you saying, Ahmose?"

Ahmose opens his mouth to reply. My heart just about leaps out of my chest.

But then he pauses.

Something flashes through his eyes.

And then he's gone, his expression smoothing out into one that's frighteningly devoid of emotion. I can practically see him rebuilding his walls with his very hands right in front of me. My heart plummets through the ground.

"Nothing. I... I am saying nothing."

Liar! You're lying again! I want to scream. I settle for something a little more cordial. "I don't believe that."

"Alright. I am not saying nothing." He clears his throat, setting back his shoulders into a stoic stance. He speaks monotonously. "This curse, I'm not breaking it for me. I'm breaking it for you."

The change in the conversation's course is so abrupt that Ahmose succeeds in distracting me. "For me? Why for me?"

"Because it is my fault that you are in this mess." Ahmose says unemotionally, with an impassive shrug that's so uncharacteristically unlike him that my jaw just about hits the ground. It's like he's suddenly donned the mask of a complete stranger and transformed into a person I've never met before. "If you hadn't met me, you would not have been caught up in this curse, you would not have lost your best friend yesterday, and you would not be in this position right now. So I am breaking this curse so you can finally have the freedom to live your own life."

My resolve crumbles under the weight of his words. "Ahmose, you can't—"

"Well I do." His tone is short. Clipped. "You just said yourself, I've been in control of your life for hundreds of years now, and that is not fair. So I will remedy that once and for all. Once the curse has been broken, you will be completely free of me."

I blink back the tears that unwittingly spring to my eyes. Harsh insinuations lurk behind his words like coyotes, their eyes glittering menacingly in the light as his words ground me to the spot. "What?"

Ahmose continues on, almost like he hasn't heard me. Or maybe he has, and he just chooses to ignore me. I'm not sure which option I like better. "I apologise for lying to you Kiara, but I felt it was a necessary evil to protect you in case you did not remember in time. However, it is all out in the open now — you are fully aware of the situation. Given your reaction to it all, I must ask: are you still wiling to help me?"

"What? Of course I am, Ahmose! Nothing has changed." I reply, shaking my head vehemently. "Well, except you in the last minute, apparently. What's going on? Why do you suddenly have the personality of a robot?"

"I have told you everything."

"That doesn't answer my question."

"It is the only answer you need to know."

"That's a lie and you know it. You are acting weird all of a sudden, and I don't understand why."

"I didn't realise that I was suddenly required to tell you every single detail about me."

His testily spoken words hit me like a rain of bullets. It takes all my strength not to flinch under their barrage. "I never said that you had to. But when you practically transform into another person at the drop of a penny because of something I obviously said, I want to know why. Do you really think I care that little for you?"

He crosses his arms tightly over his chest. His expression is as hard as a rock. "Considering the way you just yelled at me, I would hardly venture to say no."

"Don't pull that crap, Ahmose. That is the most basic deflection technique out there — you can't pin it back on me!" I exclaim. "What, were you expecting me to accept the fact that I'm supposedly a three hundred year old cursed Egyptian princess without having any shock or horror at all? Any person who accepts that without having a reaction would be crazy! That doesn't mean I don't care about you! It just means that I'm human!"

His eyes flash, and he flicks his nose angrily. "It is none of your business Kiara. Drop it."

"It most clearly is my business Ahmose!" I retort. "Something is obviously bothering you. I don't know whether its something I said, or whether its something else, but either way, it doesn't matter! If I am really who you say I am, then you know that our lives are a whole lot more tangled than I initially thought, or probably will think, at least until I get all my memories back. So until that happens, I think its safe to say that we need to share these things with each other so we actually have a shot at breaking this curse! We can't keep secrets, not now."

"It is for that exact reason that we got into this situation in the first place."

My anger boils up in my veins again. I speak in a dangerously low voice, barely able to stop my frustration from exploding all over us both. "Ahmose, the reason Hazel no longer exists is because you kept something from me. Are you honestly suggesting that continuing that line of thinking is a good plan? Do you really think lying to me and attacking me when I ask you why you're lying is going to help us?"

"I am not lying to you, Kiara. But there are some things that you do not need to know." Ahmose says stoutly, his eyes flashing. "You need to trust me when I say I would tell you if I thought it were important enough for you to know. Can you do that? Can you trust me?"

I stare at him in silence, refusing to waver under his heated gaze. His words hover in the air between us like ticking time bombs, flashing in neon-red before our eyes.

Can you do that?

I press my lips together into a thin line. "On one condition."

"What?" He arches an eyebrow at me, almost condescendingly.

"No more secrets. No more keeping this reincarnation mumbo-jumbo from me." I say. "You aren't the only one cursed anymore Ahmose. I am in the thick of it just as much as you are, and I deserve to know every thing about this curse that you do. Whatever it is that you won't tell me, I can let that go, but only if you promise it has nothing to do with the curse and how it affects me. If I find out that you're keeping anything else about the curse from me, I can't promise that I will be able to trust you. I have had people try to control me all of my life, and I won't let you do that to me too. Can you do that? Can you promise this has nothing to do with the curse?"

Ahmose hesitates. It's only for a fraction of a second, so minute a moment that anyone else would miss it. But he hesitates. My heart shatters so loudly in my chest that I almost don't hear his quietly spoken words of agreement.

"I promise."

Liar.

"Okay then." I mask my despair with a soft smile, and against my better reason nod. Ahmose's shoulders visibly relax at the jerked motion, believing my agreement almost instantaneously, like he couldn't even consider the other option. I lower my gaze down to the ground, hiding behind my curtain of hair as I mumble, "Then I trust you."

Liar.