What would happen to Isidora if I died? The emperor would take her, I thought, and I gulped down another mouthful of precious air. It was the thought of her in his clutches that made me fill my lungs. I cried out for help, though I doubted anyone could hear me over the sounds of the ocean, and the ship still seemed very far away. I’d have to turn back and swim to shore. It was my only choice. Drawing upon my
heka
for a surge of strength, I fought the current. I’d drifted too far away to even make out the contours of my beach. The taste of salt water flooded my senses as I swam, buffeted by the waves. I heard men shout—sailors perhaps—and again cried out for help but dared not hope. My legs cramped painfully, toes curling in protest, and again, I sank beneath the water, squeezing my eyes shut tight. It was as if I swam through honey; my limbs were dead weight.
As I sank, something struck the side of my head, hard. The shooting pain warred for my attention with the ringing in my ears. It hit me again, and this time I clung to it. A stick? A tree branch? Something wooden. An oar. Moments later, I came up choking, gasping, spitting out seawater. A hand reached for mine, an iron grip on my forearm that battled the pull of the ocean itself.
I knew this hand at once and I had no fear, for the hand that held me now was the same one that had steadied me as a chained prisoner. The same hand that had reached through a small hole in the wall when I was a lonely child in Rome. He hoisted me onto the edge of the rowboat, where stunned sailors cried out as if they’d captured a mermaid. With my hair in wet tendrils, seaweed wrapped round one ankle, and my sodden white gown clinging to me, I may have looked like an exotic creature from the deep, but it was all I could do to keep from retching into the bottom of the boat like a pitiful mortal.
Strong hands clutched me and I found myself staring into that beloved face. So much the same, and yet so much changed. I flung my arms around his neck with a sob of gladness. “Helios!”
“Is it you, Selene?” Helios shook me. Literally, shook me. “Are you mad? You must be mad!”
“Yes,” I whispered, shivering with cold and horror at my nearsuicidal folly. “But you saved me.”
No one else could have. Not with magic or moonlight. Only Helios could have found me in the water, sensing me as one senses a breath in the dark. I clutched at him while men rowed the little craft back to the ship, oars dipping into the water, flashes of pale wood in the moonlight. And a strange sensation rushed through me, something I could only think was exhilaration.
The watchman on the ship cried out and there was some commotion on deck before a ladder was lowered down for us. Once aboard, Helios said, “Take her to my berth. Get her something dry, some blankets . . .”
A salty-looking sailor snapped to attention. “Aye, Captain.”
Captain
. So he was the skipper of this vessel.
“Go with him, Selene,” Helios said, in a coaxing tone, prying himself away. “I’ll join you shortly.”
My gown felt as if it had been woven from snow, so I allowed myself to be led inside his berth. Once inside, I didn’t wait for the sailor to return with a blanket but snatched one off the bed. I wrapped it around myself, then groaned at the familiar scent. It struck me at my core, the overwhelming recognition driving me to my knees. This was
his
blanket. This was
his
bed. Cautiously, I opened a bronze-studded wooden chest. It was filled with mismatched armor. A desert cloak. And there, his vulture amulet, wrapped carefully and stashed beneath the rest of his things. All these years, I’d tried to picture where he might sleep, what things he might have kept near him, but I’d never imagined this. It was agony to see how simply he lived while I spent my days in lavish palaces and ostentatious villas.
At last, Helios parted the curtains. Alone in the flickering lamplight, we stared. We’d been not quite fifteen years old the last time we were alone together. How must I look to him now at more than twenty? I noticed a scar on his chin that hadn’t been there before and another one on his forearm, the pale traces of what must have been a terrible gash. I wondered what flaws he saw in me that made him ask, “What happened to you?”
How I wished to reach up and straighten my bedraggled hair, but my fingers were clamped too tightly around the blanket for warmth. “I thought I could swim to your ship—”
“You’re mad!” he said again, drawing me to my feet. “To attempt such a thing . . .”
“Well, if you hadn’t disappeared on the docks, I wouldn’t have had to attempt it.”
He winced. “I thought perhaps you hadn’t recognized me—”
“Then you’re the one who is mad, Helios. I’d know you anywhere. Anywhere!”
His throat worked and his voice was hoarse. “Sweet Isis, Selene. Can you be real?”
“I should ask the same of you,” I whispered, hugging myself. “I thought I’d never see you again in this life.”
His head jerked up, wild grief in his eyes. “Philadelphus. Was it fever? They say it was fever, but I won’t believe it unless you say so.”
“Malaria,” I said, though I’d never be certain. “I was with him.” Helios squeezed his eyes shut and didn’t open them again until I let out a sob. “How can you be here on the Isle of Samos, Helios? How can you risk it?”
Removing his cloak, he wrapped it around me. “There’s no risk for me, Selene.” My knees threatened to buckle again at the sensation of his body’s warmth so close to mine. “Remember that I’ve been dead for five years now. No one knows me here.”
“Augustus winters on this island! What if Maecenas had seen you?”
“I’m much changed,” Helios said. “He wouldn’t know me.”
“You cannot be sure of that. Virgil is here too. When the emperor returns from Parthia, he’ll have Iullus and Tiberius with him. They all know you. And I know you.
I
know you.”
He hushed me, drawing me close. The heart in my chest leapt free of my iron control and my pulse thundered in my ears. He took my face in his hands and all my practiced defenses fell away, leaving me raw. I turned my head and he cupped my cheek in his large, warm palm. Oh, familiar ache. In the more than five years we’d been separated, it was like learning to know myself all over again. “Where are your guards, Selene? Who knows that you’re here?”
“No one.”
“What if someone looks for you and finds that you’re not in your rooms?”
“They’ll find my shoes in the sand and assume I’ve drowned.”
And I would be free.
It was a siren’s song, but I must resist. “We haven’t much time. It will be light soon. I have to get back. But tonight, I’ll build a fire on the beach outside the emperor’s villa when it’s safe. Come to me and I’ll explain everything.”
“It’s too dangerous,” he said.
That he should be the one to say such a thing to me! “You must come, Helios. If you disappear into the night again, I really will go mad. You
must
come.
You must come
.” Hysteria seized me. “Swear it. Swear that you’ll come to me tonight or else I’ll never be able to leave you again.”
“I swear it by Isis,” he said, and I believed him.
Thirty-five
THE first rays of dawn broke over the sea just as the rowboat was within swimming distance to shore. I held tearfully to Helios’s neck, made him promise again that he would return that night, then lowered myself back into the water. If questioned upon my return, I’d say that I’d gone swimming, got caught in the current, and was unable to get back to shore until now. I concocted the harrowing tale, ready for a dramatic performance, but by the time my bare feet touched bottom in the shallows, I saw no one combing the beach for me. The light was faintly golden now, and my sandals were still in the sand where I’d left them. I gathered them up, then, dripping water on the stairs, made my way up to the terrace and slipped into my rooms.
Tonight Helios will come to me.
I laughed with the elation of it all. I’d done it, and none were the wiser! I should have been exhausted. Unable to keep my eyes open. Yet the certainty that Helios would come left me as alert as a sentinel. I was careful to observe my daily routine, dressing for the day, playing with Isidora, reading correspondence, receiving visitors, and taking my meals in the main dining room. I did nothing to call attention to myself. I’d always been of the opinion that Maecenas could smell secrets in the wind, which was one of the reasons Augustus kept him close. Fortunately, the emperor’s political adviser didn’t come calling. Moreover, Virgil and Crinagoras were too delighted to fall back into one another’s company to worry themselves over me.
“I want a ship,” Isidora announced at dinner, giving me a look that stopped my heart.
“You shall have one, Princess,” Lady Lasthenia announced, hastily creating one from folded papyrus, pressing angles into angles. Fortunately, this bit of mundane magic made Isidora drowsy and good-humored by bedtime.
Tonight Helios will come to me.
With my hair oiled and gleaming and my skin freshly softened with aloe, I donned my best cloak, the one dyed in Gaetulian purple. Then I waited until dark, until the sounds of life within the villa quieted and most of the island was asleep. Taking a torch, I slipped from my bedroom down to the beach, a canopy of stars overhead. In my queen’s finery, I collected driftwood and pulled it into a pile, using my torch to set it alight. Then I waited.
Straining to hear the sound of the oars over the crackling fire, I stood in a pool of moonlight. I wanted Helios to see me illuminated by silver light. I didn’t want to appear to him as a shaking, traumatized girl but the goddess he’d known. How long must I wait? Five years might as well have been a lifetime, but these few hours had been agony and a tiny thread of worry tugged inside me. What if he didn’t come? More time passed and the fire burned low. Worry became a deadening weight. How many other women had waited, abandoned at the edge of the sea? He’d promised. He’d
promised
me. He’d vowed it by Isis!
Perhaps he couldn’t see the fire from his ship. I’d add more driftwood. Yes. And if I couldn’t find any, I’d throw my cloak into the fire, though it could buy a fleet of ships. Just as I reached for the clasp, I heard a faint splash. Maybe a fish jumping. Maybe a small boat. It was too dark to see. My breath caught, my muscles rigid as I leaned toward the water. The faint glow of a torch swayed. Then I saw a big man at the oars, alone, and it was everything I could do not to rush into the waves. I forced myself to stay by the dying embers of my fire, smoothing my gown while he pulled his small craft ashore and secreted it in the brush. At last, he emerged like a tall dark shadow, coming to a halt some feet away.
I nearly sobbed. “I feared you wouldn’t come.”
“Selene, I’m bound to you in life and death, for always. Don’t you know it?” He took a few steps closer and a look of awe passed over his features. “You’ve become a queen in truth.”
“Your queen,” I said, because even in the guise of a mercenary he would always be Egypt’s king.
“Yes,” he admitted, finally close enough to take my face in his hands. “You’ve always been that.”
“I’ve looked for you, worried that you’d die somewhere far away and I’d never know. Tell me everything.”
Talking wasn’t foremost on his mind; he leaned forward to kiss me. I thought to turn away, so he wouldn’t taste the poison of the emperor in my treasonous mouth. I thought to turn away, because I must know what had passed between him and the Kandake of Meroë. I thought to turn away because I was—at least in the eyes of the world—married to another man. But there could be no turning away from Helios. He kissed me with such ferocity that all my questions flew away, any desire to speak extinguished. His flesh and blood, warm and alive, was such a miracle to me that I forgot all else. I wanted only this—a kiss as familiar to me as my own soul but as mysterious as the afterlife.
In all the years we’d been apart, and all the ways I’d imagined kissing him again, I couldn’t have predicted the way it would strip me bare. I’d taken such pride in mastering my every reaction that I’d forgotten entirely what it was to feel something with my whole body, without restraint. “Selene . . .” They say the gods can call you by your true name and hold you in their thrall; I believe it, because when Helios said my name, I’d have done anything for him. Anything. Since my marriage to Juba, whatever tentative passions I experienced were always tempered by darker realities. Even my first time with Helios had been tainted by grief and pain, all mixed up with the
heka
and the desire of an eternal goddess for her god. Now I claimed a lust that was mine alone. I didn’t want Helios because he was the god or because he was the husband I should have married or because I needed his kisses to wash the emperor away. I wanted him because I
wanted
him, a deep, defiant desire. Kissing him boldly, I bunched his tunic in my fists, trying to yank it off. My eagerness made amusement rumble in his chest. “Selene, wait . . .”
“I don’t want to wait,” I said, trying to pull him down, but that was like trying to move a colossus.
He held me against his chest where his heartbeat galloped against my ear. “I just thought you’d like to do this somewhere warm and dry this time.”
I glanced to the terrace where my oil lamps still burned and he swept me up into his arms. Kissing my cheeks, my shoulders, my neck, my mouth . . . he carried me up the stairs and through the open doors. He didn’t look upon the riches of the room with avarice—he didn’t seem to notice the priceless statues and vast mosaic floor. His eyes were on my face. The whole bed, heaped with pillows, creaked with his bulk as he climbed atop me. “Selene, are you sure?”
“I’ll die if you don’t.” I knew that I should be thinking of the consequences, weighing the risks, plotting what lies I must tell in the aftermath, but my need for him had become such a torment that I truly believed it would kill me to deny it.
I believe it still.
AFTERWARD, we lay tangled together, damp and breathless. Whereas I’d gone limp, too weak to lift my head from the pillow, his hand still caressed me, tracing the pale lines on my belly. They weren’t so prominent as when Isidora was first born, but it vexed me that his fingers should worry over them. “I have a daughter.”