I Shall Rewrite the Stars

Chapter 3

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“Tonight, we shall meet our end.”

Even as the words slip past my trembling lips, I can hardly believe it. Tonight was supposed to be the most wonderful of my entire life, one I’ve looked forward to for as long as I can remember. A ball for Helios and I to celebrate our coming of age, a holiday that declares to both our beloved kingdom of Kemet and the whole world that we twins have survived eighteen long years.

Tonight should be a reminder to all that our parents are blessed, chosen and beloved by the great spirits who govern the world and the stars that write our fates.

Who would ever imagine that come tomorrow morning, everything I see, everything I love, will be nothing but blood, rubble, and ash?

The trembling of my lips seeps down into my arms, unstoppable even when I cross them beneath my chest, and bring my knees up to rest my forehead against.

Hidden beneath the long branches of an ancient sycamore fig, in the shadow of the palace’s western-most walls, I try to find comfort in the peace of this forgotten garden. But when I think of how it will go up in smoke in just a few short hours...

“Maybe it was all just a nightmare,” I whisper, wiping pathetically at my tear-stained cheeks. “Maybe I didn’t actually live before, and these memories are just some horrible test of Isis’ cruel design.”

My chest heaves, the cooling twilight air too thick to breathe. Every gasp is like drowning. My head bobs, but the waves of reality, of our cursed and unavoidable fate, force me back under.

It’s too much to bear—too much to endure—

“This can’t be real!” I gasp, slamming my fists into the sand.

But it is.

I knew when I accepted Isis’ offer that my first task would be to convince my own parents of a threat they didn’t believe could exist. Kemet has never been close to Roma, but under Mother’s reign we have become friendly enough to exchange ambassadors.

Why would my parents ever believe that Gustavian will send warships instead? Why would they ever believe that Roma will shatter 1,000 years of relative peace in a single given night?

“They wouldn’t, and they never would have listened to me, no matter how hard I tried,” I scoff at myself, cursing my cowardice—my inability to demand my parents’ ear and attention.

Then I curse my parents for believing that the only price of peace was their hard work and devotion to serving our kingdom.

“Why weren’t they chosen to go back in time?” I sneer at the empty, moonless sky. “Rea, spirit of the sun, blessed Mother with wisdom, and Horasus, spirit of war, blessed Father with military might. Either of them would have been a better choice than me. Anyone would have been a better choice than me!”

A fresh tear slips down my cheek, and I press my forehead harder against my knees. My sandals, heavy with sapphires and pearls, pinch my toes. The long, emerald sash at my chest pools on the ground at my hip, slashed with stains from grass and sand.

The breeze catches the long strands of my silver hair, sweeping them across the expanses of my bare arms.

I spent my final evening as royalty in this exact spot, in my first life. Grief-stricken by the perceived rejection of the spirits, I was inconsolable. The celebrations were canceled, the guests commanded to return to their lodgings without explanation, and my parents overcome with fear that the people might decide I was cursed.

But what did the peoples’ opinions truly matter in the end? Kemet would no longer exist come the following morning, nor would several hundred of the very people my parents spent their final moments worrying over.

Rage burns in my heart as I think of it all, slithering past the grief, sadness, and fear. Teeth gritted, I throw my head back against the fat trunk of the sycamore. “You told me I can change this mess!” I hiss at the invisible moon. “So tell me how. Tell me what I’m supposed to do next!”

The low beat of drums and murmur of guests from the great hall are my only response, and the empty sky taunts me.

More tears slip free, frustrated and angry, before fear swallows me again, and I set to begging.

“Please. Please.”

As my eyes slip shut, I see Isis sitting like a speck of white in a sea of darkness. Her back toward me and arms wrapped tight around her raised knees, her long hair shifts as she peers over one shoulder with tear-rimmed eyes.

I am sad, but she looks utterly devastated.

‘Just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you can do everything,’ she whispers.

“Wasn’t the point of returning to the past to do just that? To change everything?” I ask.

She looks down, then away. ‘Changing fate will require sacrifices, Selene. Kingdoms will wither, good people will die. You can either choose what is most important to protect and fight for it, or else sit still and lose it all.’

“And how am I to make such a decision? I am barely eighteen—I am as good as a child still!”

“Clearly.”

My eyes fly wide, my heart stumbling between surprise and humiliation at the masculine scoff.

No one has ever found me in this garden, not even the Romasians when they attacked. So who could have—

“Tell me, is it common for Kemite principessas to be this upset about entering adulthood? Would you like me to fetch someone to come and comfort you?”

“You see a woman in distress and choose to mock her?” I huff, wiping furiously at my eyes. “How dare you?”

Footsteps pad toward me, and a familiar scent wafts on the breeze as the stranger steps closer. Cinnamon and sea salt cloak the air, stilling my breath as a flood of memories banish all other thoughts from my mind.

A hard-earned and gentle smile.

A large, scarred hand extended toward me.

A passionate kiss—my second and final.

A heartbroken whisper of ‘I will’, that shatters my soul.

“Juba,” I breathe, and lift my eyes to his.

The long, scarlet ends of his scarf drift forward to brush my left arm and right cheek as he kneels. Beautiful, midnight blue eyes narrow with obvious confusion in a face just as sun-kissed and handsome as the last time I saw him in our previous life.

My dearest Juba.

My beloved husband.

“Why would a principessa know my name?” Juba asks, the harsh suspicion in his tone a dagger to my aching heart. “Ambassador or no, I find it strange that you’ve recognized me on sight.”

What am I to say? I knew you in one lifetime and now we’ve found each other again? If I were struck deaf and blind I would recognize you by scent and the feel of your hands in mine? I could live a thousand lives and in each one I would only ever fall in love with you?

My heart thumps painfully, desperately.

What if he’s just dazed? What if he can’t see me clearly and doesn’t recognize me yet? Surely I can’t be the only one who remembers our first—

“Principessa?” Juba asks, his voice a touch deeper.

I know this tone, this verbal shield that he used with anyone who might pose a threat. It’s a voice he never, not even once used with me in our first lives.

Juba doesn’t remember me.

My heart breaks, and a defeated smile lifts my lips as the saddest thought occurs to me. “Are you here to lead his invasion? Have you come to kill me, Juba?”

His eyes widen, then dart left and right. A full minute passes before Juba looks at me again, his hands fisting at his sides. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Principessa.”

“You weren’t meant to be here,” I say, recalling our first life’s first meeting in Vaticana. “So why are you? I don’t understand…”

“Do you mean to say you were unaware that I’m Roma’s ambassador?” His eyes narrow. “Or do you mean that a slave has no business attending a royal banquet?”

“I…” I hate that he’s looking at me like this. Where is the tender gaze I’d adored? Where is the amused grin when I stumble over my words? We were fast friends in our first lives, so why is he looking at me like he despises me now? “I can’t bear it.”

“What?”

“I can’t stand the idea that you’ve become my enemy, Juba. Anyone else—anyone at all. But not you!”

“I don’t understand what you’re saying,” he insists. “I think you may be confused.”

“If only that were the case.” Unsure if this meeting is a true blessing or a sick addition to my cursed fate, I set my hand atop Juba’s and brush the spot where his wedding band should be. “I know that tonight Kemet shall meet her end. But what I don’t know, what I need to know, is your role in her conquest.”

“I—”

“Please, Juba, tell me honestly,” I beg. “What role will you play? How much of what I hold dear will be destroyed by your own hands? And if it has to be this way, if the only change of fate is that you should deal the first blow, then do as I ask and start with me instead.”

“Principessa, I truly don’t—”

“Selene.”

“What?”

“I am Selene,” I say, squeezing his hand. “Not Principessa. Not a title or a person whom you despise.”

“I could never—” he begins, but I cut him off with a scoff.

“You hate royalty, as you well should. After all that Gustavian has done, I could never blame you. But I am not him! I am…”

I am your dearest friend. Your confidant. I am your wife, and have loved you even after my dying breath.

But I can’t tell him any of that, as already Juba is looking at me like I am insane. And how can I blame him? Just because my heart beats for this man doesn’t mean he feels the same.

“You would do well to mind your words,” Juba hisses, again peering all around us. “My master is not—”

“Someone whom either of us care for. But what does it matter if I slander him now? I will curse him in my heart after he’s conquered Kemet and enslaved me. It makes no difference if I use my last bit of freedom to hate him alongside you.”

Juba is quiet a long while, then asks, “You truly believe that Roma will conquer Kemet?”

“I know they will,” I say, sniffling softly. “You’re here to scope out our defenses, are you not? Or are you meant to distract us until the soldiers have flooded in from the shore?”

“I’ve already said that I am a mere ambassador.”

“And we both know you are far more when Gustavian orders you to be.”

Juba stiffens, all pretense of patience lost from his expression. “If I believed Kemet were in danger, why would I go to the first place Roma would target? Do you think me too stupid to finish my scoping and be gone to the safety of a distant vantage point?”

Juba didn’t care to discuss the things Gustavian made him do, in our first lives, but he did tell me once how the basics of Romasian invasions worked. Scouts were sent in to gather information, which was then used to assess the best time and place to strike a target. Only those who could get the most crucial details were sent in first, and because of their great value to Roma, they were ordered to retreat well in advance of the impending invasion.

So why would Gustavian send Juba tonight, when he’d never cared if my husband should return dead or alive? Why allow someone he enjoys humiliating to be pampered as an ambassador, even if it’s all for a single night’s show?

My stomach sinks.

“He needs an excuse to justify attacking us, so the common Romasians won’t fear that he’s become a dictator,” I say. “What better excuse than the lie that we’ve murdered his personal slave-turned-ambassador?”

Juba curses from between clenched teeth. “It would be just like him to—” He stops with a shake of his head. “If you know all that, then why have Kemet’s armies not mobilized? Why are your parents entertaining guests like nothing is amiss?”

“Because they won’t listen to me,” I say. “I tried to tell them, tried to explain the threat we’re facing, and yet—”

“They didn’t listen at first, so you just gave up and set to weeping in this garden?” Juba rolls his eyes. “The lives of everyone you know are at stake. Stand up and fight for them!”

“How exactly am I supposed to do that? I have no military authority. Even if I begged the guards to go on alert, they would seek my parents’ direction and return to their posts when my concerns were ignored.”

“Doing nothing means certain death.”

“Am I to steal a sword I don’t know how to use, and make my final stand at the nearest beach?” I fling my hands out. “You understand powerlessness, Juba, but you have never been as powerless as I am now!”

He takes a deep breath, and holds my eyes as he says slowly, “If all I could do was take up a sword and wait at the beach, I would do it. Anything is better than sitting still and accepting your fate.”

But I’ve already suffered so much, I wish to say. Why should my final moments of peace be spent quivering in fear before the Romasians?

“Is there anyone who might listen to you?” Juba asks softer. “Anyone at all who will stand by your side no matter what insanities you claim to be true?”

I consider it for a moment. “Cearion would believe me,” I say. “Helios, too.”

“Which is the more powerful?”

“Cearion.”

“Then find and convince him. Alone you may be just an underestimated principessa, but a single strong ally can change everything. So go find your brother, and then do whatever the two of you are able to, to stop Roma’s invasion.”

“And if we fail?”

Juba stands and extends his hand toward me. “You’ll face death knowing you did more than hide and weep out here in your garden.”

***