Chapter Twenty-Six

Day 53.

"We have a lot of explaining to do?" I blink several times and shake my head. "You can't say that to us; that's what we were going to say to you!"

"Kiara!" Ahmose hisses.

Ma'at's eyes narrow into slits. "You watch your tongue, young princess. I have been stuck in a cave below the earth's surface for centuries; so far below the surface that your puny little human brains could not begin to comprehend what life is like down there. Not only was I trapped there like some common criminal by someone I have yet to identify, but I was trapped there alone. Alone, with only the information that it was you two that I should blame for my entrapment. So tell me, alsharir alsaghir, why I should not gut you where you stand, before my already feather-light patience wears out completely."

I flinch back from the finger Ma'at points in my face. "How... how long were you trapped?"

"That is not the answer I requested." Ma'at spits. She steps forward. "I will—"

"Over 2,000 years, right?" I ask. Ma'at falters just enough to confirm my suspicions. It's enough to give me just enough confidence to plow on. "Why are you covered in blood? I didn't think deities could... well, bleed."

"We cannot. The only way we are caused pain is when another deity decides to inflict it upon us." Ma'at spits to the side and smiles bitterly. "Luckily, one of my loving brothers or sisters decided to inflict centuries of pain on me."

"Why?"

Her eyes glint dangerously. "I was under the impression you two were the cause."

"Who told you that?"

"Does it matter?" Ma'at retorts scathingly. "Your incessant, needling questions are quickly becoming far too tiresome for me to deal with. Get to the point quickly, or I will dissolve you where you stand."

"Alright, alright!" I hastily hold my hands up. My gaze flickers to Ahmose. "Ahmose, we were wrong."

Ahmose frowns. "What do you mean?"

My gaze shifts to Ma'at, who's still glaring at us like we're poisoned fruit. "This whole time we've thought it was Ma'at who cursed us; who forced us to run this never-ending race. But we never thought to check whether that was actually true."

"We never needed to." Ahmose argues. "Your father admitted it was Ma'at. He said he convened with her, that she vowed to restore the balance. Even Anubis said it was her. How is that not proof enough?"

"Look at her." I say softly. "Does she look like a goddess who has been fueling a curse for the past 2,000 years?"

"I could have your tongue for that insolence, girl." Ma'at hisses. She doesn't move, though.

I watch as Ahmose visibly turns over my words in his mind. His eyes widen when he realises the implication behind my words.

"Kiara, you aren't..."

"That's exactly what I'm saying." I swallow hard and turn back to Ma'at. I raise my voice. "Ma'at, did you answer my father's prayer in the days before my death?"

"What? Of course not." Ma'at scoffs. "I was far too busy weighing hearts to deal with petty little prayers from petty little pharoahs. I heard him, and I ignored him."

Even though I was already 90% certain, my heart still seizes at her brusque confirmation of my suspicions. It takes every ounce of strength in my being not to collapse to my knees as the truth defeats me.

"I knew it." I whisper. "We were wrong. Ahmose, we've been wrong this whole time. Ma'at wasn't the one who cursed us. That's why we haven't broken the curse. We were wrong."

Something flickers through Ahmose's eyes, something I hadn't seen before: darkness. A darkness that is dressed awfully similar to defeat. He turns around, not saying a single word, and stares at the ground. A moment trickles past in deafening silence. Then he kicks the crumbling wall in front of him with such an unexpected yell that it startles Ma'at aswell.

"Careful, careful." Ma'at tuts. "That's good sandstone. Or was."

"Ahmose." I say his name softly and step closer. He tenses when my fingers touch his shoulder and clenches his jaw. A string of tersely spoken Arabic words are forced through gritted teeth, so forcefully that I can barely make out what he's saying.

That's how I know he's really mad.

I dig my fingertips into his shoulder-blades and squeeze tightly. "Ahmose. Breathe. You know nobody can understand you when you speak through your anger."

His jaw clenches again. He turns his head a fraction, just enough to look at me out of the corner of his eye.

"I am sick of the gods playing with our lives like they are made of clay. We have done nothing to deserve this! How can they expect us to have faith in them when all they do is mess with our lives every single day? What is the point of them putting us through all this? What. Is. The. Point?"

"Everything in life has a point, little merchant-boy." Ma'at surprises us both by speaking up, her tone a lot less hostile. "Every action, every reaction, every decision. Even things that you don't think are uncontrollable are being pulled by the strings of something. Someone."

"One of you, you mean." I interject. Ma'at's neutral expression wavers, ever-so-slightly.

"Everything in life has a purpose, little princess." She responds coolly. "It is the way the world stays truly in balance, on all planes of existence. Sometimes those purposes are clear to us right away, other times it takes time for the truth to reveal itself. Just because the truth is not clear to you right now does not mean it will be in time."

"Why must you all speak in riddles?" Ahmose lets out a low growl, his fists clenching. I resist the urge to sigh. Clearly he's taken my advice to calm down. "What does that mean?"

"Those whose minds are truly open to all planes of existence will understand what it 'means'. If you ever want to achieve that, perhaps you should heed your lover's advice and attempt to dispel your anger at the world." Ma'at responds coolly. Ahmose's expression darkens rapidly. Ma'at turns to me. "And you, princess. I hardly need my strength to tell that your mind is incredibly unbalanced. You are struggling to make a single decision right now, let alone allow yourself to be open to the true purposes within our universe. I suggest you figure out what your answer is to that single decision or you will struggle to do even remotely well in the last trial."

Ice water floods my spine as I stare at her.

How could she possibly know?

Ahmose has a completely different reaction. At the same time words evade me, his explode out of him.

"Last trial?! What do you mean last trial?! You cannot refuse to answer our questions and then just casually throw that at us! You—"

Ignoring the questions Ma'at's words had caused to start raging around in my mind, I reach out and grab Ahmose's wrist before he can storm up to the grumpy goddess.

"Ahmose. Stop." I chide. I glance over at Ma'at, asking for silent confirmation. She nods once, but still keeps a sullen eye on Ahmose. "You are letting your frustration cloud your judgment again. You need to listen. She's given us the answers to all the questions we've been asking."

"How?" He snaps. He keeps his gaze fixed on the ground in front of him, but I can see the torment clear as day on his face. "How has she given us any answers when I have never been more confused?"

I catch his hands in mine and physically pull him around so he's facing me. Ahmose doesn't resist, but he doesn't quite lift his gaze to meet mine.

"Ahmose. Look at me." I tap his forehead until his eyes flicker up. "No, Ma'at wasn't the person who cursed us; we know this now. But what we do know is that whoever cursed us also locked her away the moment they cursed us, which isn't exactly an easy feat in itself. So whoever locked Ma'at away..."

"Is the one who truly cursed us."

"Exactly. So if we find out who imprisoned Ma'at for centuries, we find out who tormented us with the curse. Ahmose," I squeeze his hands. "Don't you see? We're closer than we've ever been to breaking this curse. We're so close to getting everything we've wanted for the last two thousand years."

Ahmose sighs, but doesn't respond. His hands slip from mine as he turns away. The corner of his jaw twitches as he clenches it. Almost a full minute pases before he finally says something.

"Very well."

"Very well?" I repeat. My forehead furrows. "Very well what? What does that mean?"

Ahmose turns around, his expression painfully neutral. "We should go. We must determine what our next step is."

Frustration washes through me, like a tidal wave spilling through a crack in a poorly constructed dam.

Angry, upset, mad, emotionless — his emotions are as easy to predict as the weather!

"Shouldn't we at least say thank you to—" I turn to gesture at the pedestal and stop. I blink several times. "Where did Ma'at go?"

"Does it matter?" He retorts. "We should just be grateful she tolerated us without smearing us all over the walls."

I sigh and shoot a look at his retreating back. "Ahmose..."

He ignores me, his shoulders pinching together even tighter. "Come. We should make camp for the night."

I chew on my lip for a second before shaking my head and trudging unhappily after him.

What is going on with him?

— — —

"Kiara. Can I ask you a question?"

I jump, startled, and stare at him. "What?"

Ahmose continues poking the fire with a stick, apparently deigning to ignore the fact this is the first time he's spoken to me since we left Ma'at's temple over three hours ago. Not for lack of trying on my part, though.

"There is something Ma'at said earlier that I do not quite understand."

"There are many things Ma'at said earlier that neither of us understood." I retort wryly. "But go on."

He flicks a glowing coal deeper into the heart of the fire and watches as it bursts into flame. "Ma'at said your mind was incredibly imbalanced, that you were struggling to make a single decision. What did she mean by that?"

I freeze. My heart drops down into my stomach. I hastily throw on an air of perplexity.

"I don't know."

"I don't believe you."

"Why not?"

"Because I can tell when you are lying to me, Kiara. I have always been able to tell, right from the moment I first laid eyes on you."

I frown. "What do you mean? I never lied to you when we first met. Not once, and we've met over two hundred times."

Ahmose sighs softly and throws his stick into the fire. "When I first presented myself to you and your father, he asked me what village I was from. When I told you, you asked me whether..."

"Your village was beautiful." I say slowly, the memory coming back to me like a faint cloud floating down from the sky.

Ahmose nods. "You said you had never been there. But I knew that to be a lie. You were just being polite."

I smile a little to myself. Well, I couldn't argue with that; he's right, I had lied.

"How did you know it was a lie?"

"Because I had seen you there." He replies simply. I still, my gaze flickering up to look at him. His face is shrouded by the dark veil of the night, but I am able to see through the dancing flames the small reminiscent smile painting his face. "You used to don what you thought was a simple garment and explore the market. I often saw you when I was running my father's stall. You were always as obvious as a fish out of the Nile; you did not know how to not act noble if your life depended on it."

"If you saw me that often, why did you act like we had never met that day at the palace?"

"Are you kidding?" He lets out a small, short laugh. "Kiara, we both would have been in trouble had I revealed what you were doing when your father's back was turned. I think we have had it made painfully clear to us what he wanted to happen when he discovered our... relationship."

I don't miss the way he hesitates before he says 'relationship'. I glance back down at my fingers, my nose crinkling slightly at the shabbiness of my fingernails. I sigh and curl my fingernails into my palms.

"Did I ever tell you that before she died, my mother used to tell my brother and I the most wonderful stories?"

Ahmose shakes his head. "No."

I smile as the memory unfurls in my mind. "She had this way of telling the stories of the gods that always brought them to life right before our awestruck eyes. Before he died, my brother and I always used to beg her every night to tell us another story, like the adventures of the gods were somehow her own. If we were lucky, she'd give in to our begging and bring to life our favourite myths. His was always the story of Ra the Younger, and mine was..."

"The myth of Osiris and Isis." Ahmose finishes for me. When I look over the fire at him, he shrugs. His lips turn up slightly. "You are nothing but predictable, Kiara."

"Predictable for loving the greatest myth of love and devotion there is?" I exclaim. He shrugs again. I scoff. "You are such a boy."

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"It means that it wasn't just the myth that I loved. " I tell him, rolling my eyes a little. My voice softens as my gaze drifts back to the crackling embers before me. "I used to treasure those moments, curled up in my mother's embrace listening to the warmth of her voice. She was always so passionate about the myths, like she was telling the stories of people she knew and cherished. It almost took away from the cold cruelty that my father's temperament kept our family trapped under. Almost."

"You never told me that." His voice is just as quiet as mine.

This time I'm the one to shrug loosely. "You never asked."

"Yes, well, the subject of you father was never an easy one to broach. He was almost as terrifying to talk about as he was to see in person."

I smile minutely. "Imagine what it was like living in the same palace as him, then."

"Why didn't you ever stand up to him?"

"Are you kidding?" I laugh humourlessly. "Even in this day and age, where I wouldn't have been sacrificed to the gods for the sinful transgressing of speaking my mind, my father was still just a scary, scary man. He was quiet, and unpredictable, and you never knew what he was thinking. What made him an effective leader also made him a terrible person and an even worse father. That's why I truly believed that he was the one who cursed us; ruining my life and cursing me for eternity because I fell for the wrong man? It's exactly the kind of thing he would have done."

Ahmose's expression falls. He sighs and throws the stone he'd been turning around in his hands into the darkness behind him. "Kiara—"

A low growl interrupts him.

We both freeze.

"What was that?"

Ahmose stays perfectly still. His hand creeps to his side. Another growl ripples through the night air, a lot louder this time. My head whips from side to side. Icy fingers run their way down my spine when I spot a pair of bright, glowing red eyes slinking through the darkness.

"Ahmose." I say slowly, my hands curling around a stick poking out of the fire. His eyes flicker over to me and he opens his mouth.

"Kiara—"

They attack.