I Shall Rewrite the Stars

Chapter 4

***

“Being blunt and being rude are not all that different,” I grumble, allowing him to pull me to my feet. Brushing sand from my ruined skirt, I smile. “But I’d expect no less from you, Juba. You always were harshest when our lives were in danger.”

“Pardon?” he asks, keeping hold of my hand when I try to pull away.

“I…” I shake my head. “Never mind. I know I must seem…”

“Of unsound mind?”

I take the blow with a bitter hum. “Something like that. And while I’ve no time to convince you otherwise, I want you to know how grateful I am to have met you tonight. Your words were painful, but much needed.”

“I’m merely an overstepping slave,” Juba says, and tosses my hand away like it burns. “Don’t misunderstand; I really don’t have any love for royalty. I don’t even know why I offered advice to you, when I should be off searching for even the slightest sign that you’re not in fact a madwoman.”

The laugh that bubbles past my lips does me no favors, as proven by the look he slowly turns on me. But I needed this moment of clarity, of pause from the dire reality of my situation.

I needed someone to reassure me that all my setbacks are not surefire and unavoidable death sentences.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” Juba asks.

I realize I’ve begun to smile, and my cheeks warm. “You just…restored my hope. I’m so happy, I could cry.”

A tinge of pink dusts his cheeks, barely visible in the creeping darkness of nightfall, before Juba plucks the short, curved sickle from his hip and turns away. “Go. There’s no time left to spare.”

“I know,” I say, pondering where Ceari might be right now. The Great Hall is the obvious answer, but he’ll have noticed that I’ve yet to make an appearance. So maybe…

“Selene,” Juba says with a glance back. “Does it really not bother you to have spoken so casually to a mere Romasian slave?”

I smile. “Not at all. Especially since you’re not a mere Romasian slave. You are Juba, the man who helped me when I needed it most. I will never think of you as anything less.”

 “…I see.”

We part with that, and I am halfway to my bed chamber when my heart clenches with the most shattering of realizations. Juba and I only met in our first lives because I was captured and shipped off to Vaticana. If somehow there’s still time to repel Roma, if Kemet doesn’t fall, then tonight’s meeting may be the first and last I ever have with Juba in this life.

My steps slow to a drag, and then a stop in the middle of a long, empty hallway.

‘Changing fate will require sacrifices, Selene’

Isis’ voice rings through my mind, prodding my chest like a blade. For all the unspeakable suffering I’d endured in my first life following this devastating night, Juba was the one good thing to come from it all. The one kindness that fate offered to me.

And now…

“What am I to do?”

“Brush that mesheh’s nest you call hair, slap on a fresh dress, and pray that Father doesn’t have a fit for how late we are.”

I jolt, startled by Ceari’s teasing voice, and turn to find him grinning down at me with crossed arms.

“Wanna tell me why you’re avoiding the party?” he asks.

“I’m not…” I trail off, wringing my hands against my skirt. I need to be direct, to tell him everything in the most succinct way possible. But what if he doesn’t believe me? What if, when I need him to more than ever before, Cearion refuses to listen to me?

“Say it,” he says, his tone shifting from playful to deathly serious. “And don’t bother pretending that nothing’s wrong. I can scent that your fear from earlier has grown.”

“Mother forbade me to,” I reply. “And I will sound crazy.”

“Say it anyway.” When I hesitate, Ceari sets both hands onto my shoulders, his claw-like nails careful not to scratch me. “If this is truly serious, then I’ll answer to Mother for making you talk. Now tell me what’s happened.”

“Kemet is…” I swallow hard. “She’s going to fall, Ceari. Come dawn, half the people in this city will lie dead, including our parents, and I…I’ve no idea how to stop it.”

He holds my gaze even as his face pales and hardens. “Isis told you this?”

I shake my head. “She didn’t need to, because I’ve already lived this cursed night—and the next six years that follow.”

 Tensed, prepared for dismissal or a call for the guards to drag me away, tears flood my eyes when Ceari instead launches straight into the most important questions: who will attack us; when; from where will they enter the city?

I try to answer everything as best as I can, following him when he pivots and storms back down the hall.

“And Mother truly forbade you to speak of all this?” he growls. “Has she lost her mind?”

“She was trying to protect me,” I try, to which he scoffs.

“Given the choice between gossips and Roma, it’s obvious which is more dangerous. She should have known better!”

“She knew that those gossips would call for my head—”

Ceari turns on his heel, dragging me to his chest so fast I can hardly catch my breath. Eyes darting left then right, his head twitches up, and Ceari angles me away from the intersection mere feet ahead of us.

When I peer around his arm, I see nothing; hear nothing but the wind and the faint sounds of flutes in the distance. But Cearion’s senses, heightened thanks to Settesh’s blessing, are never wrong. The moment he slides a dagger from the sheath at his hip, I know there is danger too close for comfort.

“Stay calm and listen,” Ceari commands, and nudges me behind himself. “The air is flooding with the scents of blood and fear, and I hear screaming from the west. Whatever Roma’s going to do, it’s just begun.”

A flash of memories from my first life pierces my mind. The screaming of the innocent; the clash of swords on shields; Father’s command for someone to get Mother out of the Great Hall.

“Focus, Selene!” Cearion snaps, drawing my gaze up from my trembling hands. “I know you’re scared and…” He releases a shuddering breath. “I believe you—about everything. Re-living tonight is going to be hard, but you’re my sister. A lioness of Kemet! You can handle whatever’s to come. Alright?”

“I failed before,” I say.

“And you’ve grown a lot, since. So hold your head high and face this like the survivor that first life forced you to be.”

Before I can reply a scream shatters the air, and then the all too familiar clash of blades shatters any lingering semblance of peace.

“Damn it!” Cearion shouts, sparing me a quick glance. “If they’re already in the palace then you need to clear the halls. Go to Mother’s tower. If she’s not there when you arrive, she’ll be there soon after.”

“Roma will set the palace on fire,” I object. “They burned everything from our library to the—”

“Worry about escaping fires after you’ve escaped the threat of Romasian swords. I have to find Father. Now run, Selene!”

I don’t want to—for all the world I don’t want to! But if we’re confronted, I’ll just hold Ceari back. So I follow him to the intersection, and when he goes right, I turn left.

More screams fill the air, followed by the smashing of unseen objects and the mocking roar of invaders. I push past every ounce of fear screaming at me to be still and cower. Making myself small and obedient spared me when I was a slave, but the invaders will only see a defiant principessa should they spot me now.

I have to be brave. I have to be swift. I have to find Mother and make her listen to me, and then we will devise a plan to…

To what?

The attack has begun, the enemy is inside our home. Isis said that kingdoms will wither and good people will die. I’d thought she meant the rest of the world will struggle to hold off Roma once they’d failed to conquer Kemet. But what if she was speaking of Kemet? What if she looked so sad, because she knew from the very beginning that there was no hope for my kingdom?

“Why even send me back if this was all a lost cause?” I hiss beneath my breath, pausing to peer down the hall on my left. Upon finding it empty, I sprint for the large, unguarded doors of Mother’s bedchamber.

Soon as I’ve slipped inside, I bend to tear my gown at the knees. With my legs free, I move more easily into the wide expanse of a gilded antechamber. Mother’s desk lies piled with scrolls, quills, and seals to my right, while shelves packed with even more scrolls line the wall to my left.

Tucked into the corner between the last shelf and the far wall, a tapestry hangs to the floor, depicting the tragic scene of Isis weeping over a young man who cradles the body of his lost lover in his arms. The girl, Isis’ Chosen from 1,000 years ago, angered the great spirits and brought war to the world. In the end, only sacrificing her life earned their pardon, and allowed peaceful days to return once more.

“To think we would share the fate of enraging the stars,” I mutter, pressing both hands into the tapestry and heaving forward. The wall gives slowly, drawing backward to reveal a dusty, hidden passage.

I have only been in Mother’s tower once before, when I was small. The room at its top looks out over the city, and is high enough to see the great lighthouse on Pharos Island, just beyond the coast—

A crash sounds behind me, and I stumble into the hidden passageway, throwing a hand out to catch myself against the wall. No sooner do I turn back than the door returns to its original position, stranding me in pitch black nothingness.

“Be brave,” I whisper, feeling with my toes for the first step up, then the next and the next. “Be the lioness Ceari said I can be.”

Clinging to the wall, I climb as fast as I can, nearly sick with dizziness when at last a flickering sliver of light appears, and Mother hisses, “Halt or I will strike you dead.”

“It’s me,” I say, popping my head into the open air. Standing with a dagger in hand, Mother drops her arm to her side, whilst Helios dips down to grasp me under my arms and heft me into a bone-crushing hug.

“Where were you?” He demands. “We thought they’d captured you—we feared you were already dead!”

“I was with Ceari,” I say, craning my neck around to face Mother. “He told me to come here and wait for you.”

“He went after your Father?” Mother asks with a low curse. “No matter. They’ll break away and join us soon.”

“How can you be so sure?” Ptolemy huffs, her brown hair bared and tied into a high knot atop her head; her gown splotched with drying red stains. “Half the guards were dead before those Romasian fools reached the Great Hall. For all we know, Father and—”

“Shut your mouth, Ptolemy!” Helios roars, setting me on my feet to whirl on our sister. “If you’ve nothing helpful to say then just keep quiet!”

“Wishful thinking won’t save us.”

“Assuming the worst won’t save us either!”

“Enough—both of you!” Mother commands, pacing a few steps before turning to pace back, the dagger trembling in her hand. “As soon as Cearion tells your father that Selene is safe, they will join us. And when they do, Antonius and I will give our orders to—”

“To what?” Ptolemy explodes, throwing her arms wide. “Roma has already taken the palace! Alexandria is burning and we’re cowering in a tower. The only true option left for us, is to run.”

“We will never—” Helios begins, his wide eyes piercing me when I interrupt with a mutter of, “She’s right.”

“Selene?” Mother whispers, and her eyes slowly widen. “Don’t tell me…is this what Isis told you? Did you know this attack would befall us?”

“I did,” I say, flinching back from the cushion Ptolemy launches at me.

“Are you serious?” she demands. “You knew they were coming and allowed us to just stumble into their trap?”

“I didn’t—”

“Why didn’t you stop it? Why didn’t you tell someone—anyone?”

“I tried!” I cry, throwing my hands up to block the quill she throws next.

“Liar!” Ptolemy shouts, ripping a second quill from a short table set against a wall of long, narrow windows. “Traitor!”

“She didn’t bring Roma to our shores,” Helios says, narrowly blocking the second quill from smacking me in the face. “Stop it, Ptolemy!”

“If we lose everything tonight, it will be because of her! She might as well have opened the city gates and invited them in!”

Wish as I might, I can’t deny that. I didn’t try hard enough to convince Mother to listen to me. I didn’t go to Ceari as I should have. Just like in my first life, I let fear overwhelm me, made every possible mistake, and now I…

I’m exhausted. Returning to the past didn’t ease the memory of my suffering. My mind has been hazy since long before my return to this time, and my emotions are an utter wreck, and I—

Excuses, every last one of them. All facts, but not one truly good reason to have messed up so terribly.

“So long as we’re still alive, there is hope,” I say, ignoring Ptolemy’s scoff. “Kemet may fall tonight—will fall tonight, but so long as our family lives, there will be a chance to reclaim our kingdom.”

“We’ll be powerless,” Helios mutters, casting a wary glance toward the billowing smoke beyond the windows. “No gold, no army, no influence.”

“The blessings and gifted powers of the spirits do not vanish with our riches,” Mother argues. “And our influence is tied to the very blood in our veins. Rallying allies to our cause will be difficult, but not impossible, for Roma is feared by many and loved by few. There are powerful rulers across the world who will take up arms for us, if properly persuaded.”

“Persuaded as in convinced to form marriage alliances,” Ptolemy presumes. “If we lose Kemet, then the only one of us with any real worth will be Cearion, and he’ll sooner wed a wild boar than a wealthy man’s daughter.”

A harsh chuckle draws our eyes to the opening in the floor, where a figure emerges from the darkness of the stairwell.

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that.”

***