She awoke on the couch. The fire was still crackling, but she was cold. Rubbing her eyes with her knuckles she cracked them open, peering around the extravagant room and finding no sign of Bear. She bolted from the couch in a panic--a sense of betrayal that he'd left her made her throat bob.

She gathered her clothes from the floor and shoved them on, checking the time on the grand clock above the fire. It was nearing one. He wouldn't have left yet. His mansion wasn't an hour away from his building. She slipped her shoes on and opened the door to the bright afternoon sun peeking out from behind slate gray clouds.

"Ah, Miss Carrow," a man's voice called to her from the side. 

"Jesus Christ!" She jumped at the presence of a man in a black and white suit stationed outside the front door. 

"Apologies for my startling you," he said, bowing. "My name is, Rupert, and I'll be your chauffer. Is there somewhere you'd like to go?" He was elderly, but not ancient. Snow white hair was combed neatly atop his tan head. 

"Where is Bear?" she asked, still breathless from the scare he'd given her.

"Mr. Cruor is up at the main house. Shall I take you there?"

"Yes, please," she agreed with relief. He hadn't left.

Rupert gestured for her to follow him down the stone steps to the black car that awaited her at the bottom. "Here you are," he said, opening the back door for her to slide in. 

He didn't bother making small talk with her as he circled the guest house loop and made his way to the main driveway. It was barely two minutes before he pulled in front of that warrior statue and went around to let her out. Another man stood outside the front doors and let her in without question. 

"Bear?" she called, but only her echo called back to her. She moved through the home, unsure of where anything was other than the few rooms he'd allowed her to see. She went to the room of artifacts first and found no sign of him. "Bear?" she tried again.

Her feet carried her up the stairs, twisting and turning down corridors until she came to that familiar hall with the painted doors. "Bear?" she called weakly to the expanse.

"Pick a room," he answered from behind. 

"Fuck, you scared me!" She leapt back with a hand on her chest, her heart drumming.

"Only one room," he reminded her with a smirk.

She caught her breath and frowned, glancing at the row of doors. She stepped tentatively forward, gauging his reaction when she lifted her hand to one of the doors. His mouth quirked to the side and she stopped, moving to the next door on the left and hovering her hand above the knob. He grinned wide and sinful. "This one."

He cocked a brow and stepped in front of her, chest brushing her hair as he turned the knob and pushed it open. Golden light glittered from within, and she saw why immediately. The room was filled with gold. "What is all this?" she asked in awe, moving in to get a better view.

Bear shut the door behind them and let her wander up and down the rows of golden masks and crowns, of jewelry and half-deteriorated relics. "Egyptian," she mused, wanting desperately to touch the enormous statue of Sekhmet. 

"You did say that you had a passion for ancient Egyptian history, right?"

"Yes," she breathed, taking it all in. "Where did you get all this?"

He took her hand and lifted it to the cat head of the goddess and pressed her fingers down into the dips and plains of Sekhmet's face. "I told you. Acquired through the ages."

"This is--I--I don't understand how you got all this." It belonged in a museum somewhere. Or at the very least in a gallery.

"My lineage goes way back."

"You have Egyptian ancestors?" she checked, looking over his pale skin. It was like moonlight in comparison to her golden complexion. 

"Not exactly." He didn't drop her hand, bringing it up to his mouth to press a warm kiss. "My ancestors were slaves to them." When she furrowed her brows he clarified, "Stories are an important part of history. Ours were passed down orally at first, and then written eventually. Keeping the stories passed from generation to generation was the only way to ensure that history would be remembered."

Skylar glanced about the golden room and let her mouth fall open, unable to form words at the myriad pieces of ancient history within her reach.

"There is a story that my parents told me, and their parents before them, about our ancestors in Egypt."

"Tell me," she blurted. "I mean," she settled herself, "please. I'd like to hear it." Bear tilted her chin up and pressed his lips to hers sweetly.

"Before the pyramids were built, there was the first pharaoh--"

"Menes," she interrupted and blushed when he smirked at her.

"You'd be right if we were discussing the first recorded pharaoh. This predates written history. Before the scribes recorded anything of importance. Before scribes were even considered vital to the future of men." She watched as his eyes clouded over, misty and distant, as he continued his tale. "Pharaoh Ka. He would be considered the great-great-great grandfather to Pharaoh Menes, I supposed."

"That's incredible," she breathed, sucking up the knowledge like air.

"He was greedy and vile. He'd built temples in the middle of desert, forcing slaves to work in the heat to erect them. They were built underground, buried by sandstorms, and housed his treasures and wealth. He was so paranoid about his gold and jewels that he'd have his slaves poisoned and buried within the temples."

She didn't balk at his words. It sounded no different than the history she was used to researching about the ancient cultures of the world. Violent and savage with a sprinkling of civility here and there to balance it all out. "He purchased his slaves at the Mediterranean slave market, rather than from conquered lands. He wanted strong workers that he could pick and choose from, not weak and conquered survivors from raids and travels. So he purchased my ancestors. Two brothers, Sar and Dagan, and their father, Alam."

"Those are," she scrunched her nose in thought, "Babylonian names?"

Bear blinked and let out a breathy laugh. "Yes," he said in shock, "they are."

"Go on," Skylar urged him, engulfed in his tale.

Bear smiled. "Sar and Dagan were sent to work in his house as servants to his wife and daughter, while Alam was tasked with designing his newest treasure store. But, Alam was smart, and he made copies of his work to give to his sons so that they may take the gold and lead better lives. He designed a secret blueprint that he left to the two brothers that outlined exactly where he'd built a secret entrance that went straight into the treasure room, bypassing all traps he'd been ordered to build around it."

"Was he killed? Alam?" she asked softly.

"Yes. He was poisoned by Ka the day after the temple was completed. But," he added with a grin, "he had already given Sar and Dagan the blueprints to the temple. They visited the temple every night for a week, taking what they could carry and vowing to come back for the rest. They stored it in the heart of the Sahara, twelve feet below the sand surface, to be collected in full when they had emptied the entirety of the pharaoh's treasure trove." 

Skylar looked back to the statue of Sekhmet and all her gold and black glory. Bits of blue and red were painted along her headdress. "But they weren't careful enough, and eventually caught. The pharaoh's daughter had seen Sar leaving the palace one night and mentioned it to her mother. She hadn't liked him, and for good reason."

"Why was that?"

"Because he was cruel to her and everyone else. He hated her and her family for enslaving his own, so he built up a wall in himself and treated everyone on the outside like crocodile shit." She giggled at his description. "Everyone except his little brother, Dagan. So when they entered the temple one night, a trap fell from the ceiling--a cage, that pierced Sar's leg and pinned him to the ground. The trap alerted the guards and there wasn't enough time to get him loose without the two of them being caught."

"Were they killed?" Her brows knit together. That couldn't be so, or Bear wouldn't be standing in front of her.

"Sar commanded his brother to cut off his head, so he wouldn't be identified and connected back to Dagan." Skylar gasped. "It was clean and Dagan escaped with his life, and his brother's head."

"Is this where all the gold came from? The treasure they managed to hide?"

Bear shook his dark blond head. "No, that's still lost in Egypt. Never been found." He took a deep breath, looking long at his collection. "Dagan buried his brother's head near the Nile and went back to the palace to work."

"Didn't the pharaoh find out about the brothers though? Wasn't it obvious when one of his slaves went missing the night his temple was robbed?"

Bear snorted. "Not when he had tens of thousands to weed through. It was just as likely one died in the fields or labor yards. Dagan went days without hearing anything, until everyone was rounded up into the market and soldiers announced a reward for anyone with information on the identity of his brother's body. To give them something to go off, Sar's body was displayed in the center where the plays often took place. Strung up and bleeding." Skylar didn't dare interrupt again. Her nails bit into her bandaged palms as she listened to his story.

"Dagan planned to leave that night with the gold they had taken, but he couldn't leave his brother like that. It wasn't a proper burial and he wouldn't reach the afterlife if he wasn't put back in the earth." His green eyes shined with something akin to regret--sorrow even. "He went to retrieve the body the night he planned to leave, and came across the princess, Amaunet, in the courtyard." Something in her stilled at his words, a rush of cool water in her veins as the image came forth to her mind's eye.

"She knew it was the two of them that had been stealing from her father, but she said nothing. She confessed to him that she'd told her mother of Sar leaving the palace at night, and her mother had forbid her to tell a soul. They didn't tell Ka. I don't think either of them like him. He wasn't just vile to his slaves--he was a monster to his subjects, and that included his wife and daughter."

"Did he ever get what was coming to him?"

Bear smiled. "He died eventually. Not for some years after though." He brought her over to a row of necklaces and rings fashioned from yellow gold. He stopped in front of one ring and picked it up, holding it out to her. "This was Amaunet's ring." He dropped it into her hand. The metal was cool in her palm, even through the gauze.

She turned it over, admiring it from all angles. "Obsidian?" she guessed. The band of gold was long to hold the rough cut stone within. It's glassy black gem seemed to glitter and fracture into celestial silvers and purples when she turned it in the light. 

"It's a star chip," he told her quietly. "Amaunet was known as the Star of Egypt, and was given a piece of the Mizar, their most beloved star."

"Is it real?" she asked, handing it back to him.

Bear shrugged. "It was real to them."

"What happened to Dagan? Did the princess turn him in?"

"No," he placed the ring back, "she didn't. She sent him on his way, knowing what he was about to do, and gave him the key to the wine stores. He took the wine and loaded it onto a cart to take to the market." He moved to another artifact, this time of crudely crafted steel--a dagger. "He sold the guards wine for a third of the price the taverns offered, and got them shitfaced drunk. Once they passed out, he took Sar's body on the wagon, and left Egypt."

"Where did he go?" 

"Everywhere and nowhere. He just wandered around until he was in his twenties, a good age to reach back then," he assured her with a gleam in his eye. "He went back once he was grown and made an honest living working in a temple for the goddess Sekhmet." She glanced back at the statue and back to him. "One day, he caught wind of the pharaoh offering up rewards still, after all those years, for the return of his gold and the identity of the thief. He hadn't forgotten the crimes against him. He was humiliated that he'd been bested."

"How old were the brothers when it happened?" If Dagan had waited until he reached his twenties, she couldn't imagine how young they had been when they were sold into such a barbaric trade.

"Sar was thirteen, and Dagan was twelve."

"And they went through all of that?" Her chest tightened.

"It was another time." He looked away from her and back to the artifacts lining the walls. "Dagan heard he was sending his daughter out to inquire in the villages and markets about a task he had need of a thief for. He went to a tavern and boasted to the barkeep about his triumph over the pharaoh's treasure, and let the gossip lead the princess to him."

Bear paused, running a hand through his hair. "She found him in a hut and recognized him. She didn't want to turn him in to her father, knowing that he would be killed or worse, so they formed a plan. She stole the hand from a corpse and presented it to her father claiming that it belonged to Dagan, the slave that had ran away. Then, she met him in the courtyard and left with him."

"That's so romantic," Skylar whispered. "So the two of them started your family tree?"

"No. Ka found out about his daughter and sent soldiers after them both. She was given a slave's death when they caught up." Icy horror shot through her temples, down to her quivering chin. "All of this," he waved a hand to the gold, "was stolen by Dagan when he went back to claim Amaunet's body. He wanted Sekhment to ressurect her. My ancestors held onto all this for centuries."

She swallowed hard, forcing her emotions to go back down. "Does every room in this house hold a story like that?"

He gave her a long look and said at length, "Yes."