to dawn on her what he was truly asking her to do.
And there it was. The widening of clear blue eyes and the sharp intake of breath.
“You mean you want me to die?” she asked him incredulously. “That is what you mean, right? In order for this queen or whatever to come and share space with me, I have to die first! You are out of your mind if you think any sane person is going to volunteer for something like that! And what in hell do you need me for? I’m sure there are dozens of gutsy, curvy little redheads running around dying all over the world! No!” She held up a hand and cut him off when he opened his mouth to speak. “Absolutely no! No talking. No touching.” She pushed his hand away sharply. “No anything! I’m not letting you run roughshod over me and my life just because you need a vessel for some dead Egyptian queen. Sorry, mister, but you have got the wrong woman.”
She shut him down completely by dodging out of his reach and marching off in fairly high temper. He ought to have been concerned for her, he supposed, but the truth was he was just too tickled to death by her. Everything she did gave him pleasure in one form or another. Be it intellectual, emotional, or physical, she lit him up on every single bumper.
But she did have a point. Jackson had become aware, at last, of Menes’s plans for her almost at the same time she had. But it would be wrong to say they were all Menes’s plans or all Jackson’s plans. It was all boiling down together, a reduction of motives all pointing in the same direction. It was about wanting a woman and being willing to get her by any means necessary.
Of course he didn’t like the dying part any more than she did. The thought of her going through that kind of trauma was not well received in his mind. Menes concurred on that, but he was more practical. One way or another she was going to die, be it now or many years from now. At least this way she would be saved and she would be hisaid when that, for as long as the fates allowed for them. And by the gods he prayed it would be longer than the last time. That was perhaps what had been the sharpest of the pain of losing Hatshepsut last time. She had only been reborn for a week before Odjit had taken her life. One week. It had been as heated and fervent as it always was, their spirits close in the Ether but lacking the physicality to touch. So when they were reborn they wanted nothing more than to feel each other in any way possible.
But one week had not been enough. Not by half. And he had not dealt with it well at all. He had failed her then, failed to protect her and keep her safe in life as well as in his heart. But this time he would not fail. This time Odjit had been dead for three weeks and this would be the safest incarnation they would enjoy in perhaps five or six hundred years.
But none of that would matter if he couldn’t convince her to be a part of this future he found himself captain to. He was home now he thought, as he looked around the grand kitchen and the casual dining nook within it. Beyond was a large formal dining room and other rooms equally made for a big household. And the royal household was always quite large. Now that he was there, the house would fill with friends and staff, and the machinery of a government would begin to take place.
Not that Ramses did not do well in his stead. As far as he was concerned either of them could have been designated to rule over their people in perpetuity. But long ago the people of the Politic had chosen him. The Templars …
He despised this war, he thought with vehemence. He was sick to death of it. Why could they not see reason? Why did they fear the right to live their lives for themselves so much that they wished fervently for the god Amun to rise up and destroy them if they were not well behaved? It sickened him that half his people were wrapped up in this blind faith, this dark age of