Chrysocolla (12 page)

“And I can do this, just like I could trace the stone?” I was being sarcastic, but he didn’t seem to notice or maybe just didn’t care.

Kye smiled and nodded. He had such faith in me, but I had no clue how to do any of it. Kye held up the stone, which he had spent the night cleaning. It now had a very vibrant blue shine to it and even standing away from it, I could feel the stone pulse with the energy of the goddess. I had had the stone all along.

“The mom I grew up with could do anything. I know you can too, because it is in you. Some things people are just born with. You were born to be able to do anything. That’s why the goddess chose you. That’s why she never trained you. You have it in you if you just believe that you can do it.”

My heart beat a little faster. After seeing my mother in the future, I knew exactly what he was talking about. My mother was always born to be my mother. That much couldn’t be changed. Maybe Kye was right. Maybe I was meant to be able to do it.

“So, what? I just imagine the stone breaking up into tiny little pieces and put it on him?” I asked.

I loved his confidence in me, but I still wasn’t sure of anything anymore. I looked over at Seth. He had just as much faith in my ability. He smiled at me, and it made me even more determined. He believed in me, too. I had no clue what to do, but I wanted to put the stone in Seth.

“Um, yeah, just like that,” Kye replied, pulling my attention back to him.

I turned back to him and couldn’t stop my mouth from dropping open. The place in his hand where the blue chrysocolla stone had been was now replaced by a mass of blue dust swirling.

“Umm, what am I supposed to do with that?” I asked. I was too shocked to even know how I did it in the first place.

“Well, put it on Seti, would be the logical thing to do,” Kye said, keeping his hand still. I was guessing that he was worried that I would lose my concentration and the dust would fall. That was very much likely to happen since I had no clue.

“Where do I put it on him?” I asked, trying not to panic at the powdery cloud that I was somehow controlling.

Seth took my face in his hands and made me look only at him.

“Mari, this is easy. You’ve got this.” He was being as reassuring as he could be, but I still had my doubts. “Remember how all I had to do was tell you how to do the log run back at college? You could do exactly what was asked, just by believing in yourself. Believe in yourself now. You can do this.”

“Where should I put it on him?” I asked Kye and Ty. “If it’s on his skin, most won’t see it, but Logan will.”

“How about the soles of his feet?” Kye suggested.

“We walk around barefoot a lot. He might still see it,” Ty nixed Kye’s suggestion.

I moved to look at the guys as they talked, but Seth kept my face looking at him.

“In his hair?” Kye suggested.

“Not a problem when I have hair, but if I were to shave it off, Logan would be able to see it,” Seth answered, staring straight into my eyes while talking to the guys.

“I don’t know where I can put it without it being seen,” I replied. Really, Egyptian clothing left very little to hide anything.

“Mari, you’re a natural in this world. You can figure it out,” Seth replied, his thumb stroking my face.

I kept looking into his eyes. I had to figure out some place to put the stone in him. I had to find some place hidden on him. I had to keep him safe, and Kye was right. Seth was going to be a target when Logan found he couldn’t lure me back. I didn’t want Logan to find out we had the stone already. This had to be a surprise.

Seth’s deep brown eyes twinkled as if he could read my thoughts. He had complete faith in me. I stared back at him, wondering what he was thinking. His mouth quirked a little into a smile, but I couldn’t take my gaze away from his eyes. The beautiful brown color kept me concentrating on him as I thought of the blue swirling mist of stone. Slowly the edges of his brown eyes became blue. Startled, I moved to pull back, but Seth held me in place.

“Finish it,” he told me.

Finish it? I hadn’t even meant to do that.

“Mari, look at me,” Seth directed me. “Concentrate on me.”

I looked at his eyes and got lost in the new mixture of color. The blue was barely noticeable and only at the edges. It gave an almost hazel look to his already stunning eyes.

“See, not hard,” Seth told me as his grip on my face relaxed.

I turned back to Kye. The stone dust was completely gone. I had just imprinted the stone on Seth without having the slightest clue what I was doing.

“See? You’re a natural at all this goddess stuff,” Ty commented, looking closer at Seth’s eyes.

I may have been a natural at all of it, but I still would have liked to know how I did it and I sure hoped I wouldn’t have to do it again.

It was strange
to be sitting in my mother and father’s rooms in the palace. I had thought my rooms were elaborate until I saw where my father actually slept. The light linen was just like Seth’s room back in college, but the large amounts of gold were more than shocking. In present day terms, his place was worth a fortune. I couldn’t even imagine how much it was worth to the Egyptians. But it wasn’t like they cared. He was their pharaoh after all. And this wasn’t even his main palace.

Servants brought food as I sat beside Seth and his father. General Paramessu was busy talking to my father, and I was busy not paying attention. All their politics talk got boring after two minutes. I was learning how to ignore them as they spoke.

“Mari?” my father addressed me, and I realized I should have been paying attention.

“Did finding the stone change anything?” the general asked.

I looked at Seth, and then at Kye.

“Nope, it didn’t,” I answered.

“So Logan can still get the stone and change everything,” my mother asked. She was much better at paying attention or fake paying attention, which ever she was doing. I wasn’t quite sure.

“Oh no, he can’t get the stone. He won’t even know where to find it. But it still didn’t change anything,” I answered. I glanced at Seth with his new blue-rimmed brown eyes. Only people who had time traveled would be able to see it.

“But I thought the stone was the last one he was looking for,” the general added. He didn’t like where the conversation was going. He wanted an end to the business with Logan just as much as I did, but I think it had to do more with securing his family’s power than anything else.

“It is, but somehow things still don’t work out,” Kye replied for me this time.

Kye wasn’t about to tell either the general or my parents who he was. Even though my mother and father were his grandparents, I had to agree with him that it was too risky. We knew what to expect from the general. Ty told us that if Seth’s father knew, he would lock Kye up or torture him to find out everything. His father wasn’t someone you messed around with.

“Can you actually be certain that it doesn’t work?” Paramessu asked, eyeing over Kye. It seemed like even without knowing who he was, there was still a chance he wanted to lock Kye away.

“We are certain,” I answered, trying to take the focus off Kye.

“Then what will make the difference?” the general only glanced at me before going back to study Kye.

“We hope it’s marriage. Kye has seen the past change many times, but in each time and scenario that Logan does, I never got to marry Mari,” Seth jumped in, also trying to divert his father’s attention. He might not like Kye too much, but he knew, as much as Ty, that his father wasn’t someone you played around with. We didn’t need the general thinking that he had to persuade Kye to talk.

Servants stood outside the room as new people appeared behind them. I didn’t know who anyone was, but they seemed important. My father stood, and the general stood with him.

“I’m sorry to have to leave, but we must attend to these men,” my father spoke to everyone but looked directly at my mother. She smiled and nodded. Looking at the group of men that had arrived before, her smiled dropped as she nodded to one that was staring intently at the three of us that were left sitting by the food.

“Friends of yours?” I asked sarcastically.

My mother shook her head and her smile returned.

“No one I thought we’d ever see again,” my mother added, but didn’t explain further.

I looked at Seth, and he discreetly nodded his head. He knew who the men were, and I’d have to corner him to get details since my mother wasn’t sharing.

“How are the wedding plans going?” Kye asked, changing the subject.

“Great,” my mother said, her cheerfulness completely back. “We’ll head back home tomorrow to finish everything, and the wedding should happen in four days.”

“Four?” I asked. I thought it was supposed to take a week.

“With things not changing, we didn’t want to take any chances. Four days was the fastest we could get everything in order,” my mother replied. Even though she was back to her cheery self, I still wondered about the guests. “Don’t worry. We’ll have you kids married soon enough.”

I wish that was all I was worrying about. There was just too much more going on. Logan was still out there and possibly in Egypt. I had powers to do just about anything, yet had no clue how to control them. And now men showed up that made my mother worry and my father rush away. What more did we need to have happen?

“So what did you do with my stone?” my mother asked, admitting for the first time that we had taken her stone and that she remembered us in the future.

“You knew we were going to visit you,” I accused, and she grinned.

“I’ve known that for over eighteen years. It’s a relief that you finally came. I was beginning to think I did something wrong to change the future,” my mom added. “You left without taking the stone.”

“Because you gave it to me for my first official date with Logan. Do you remember how I lost it after that day?”

“I remember. I was worried, but since my memories didn’t change, somehow it was okay. Did you find it again?”

“No, Logan went back into the past and stole everything from that first date down to the items I wore. He was trying to recreate our past. Little did he know what he was giving me.” My mother grinned. The nail polish was amazing.

“So, in other words, you never lost it. It was taken from you?” My mother smiled as she figured it all out.

“Yep.” Never lost. She had been worried, and she thought she’d kept that from me. I felt horrible for months knowing that I lost something precious to my mother. It was all for nothing as I always had the necklace.

“We were just lucky Logan had no clue what he was taking,” Kye added. We were lucky. I hoped I’d have more of that luck.

“What if he finds out?” Seth asked, looking around the room at the many servants that were coming and going.

“He isn’t going to change it again. Logan gets that this is his last chance. The goddess putting the stones into Mari made it so that he can’t just keep taking stones and changing things. His chances are up. Also, he’s finally getting that every time he changes one detail in his favor, two more are changed not in his favor. Fate has to equal out what he’s doing.” I was glad to hear that, but still I worried. Kye was still with us.

“Well, enough talk about that,” my mother added as she wiped her hands on the cloth next to her. “We have a wedding to celebrate soon. I can’t wait to see the capital and the palace. It’s where you should have been raised. I hope it will feel like home.”

I smiled at my mother. I could feel the slight hint of bitterness in her voice, and I didn’t blame her. It was where I should have been raised. It should have been my home, but it wasn’t too late. Seth reached over and took my hand in his.

“It’s your home now.” He told me exactly what I needed to hear. In reality, where ever Seth was would always be my home.

The slight blue rimmed his irises, and I smiled back at him and his new eyes. No one could keep us apart now. We still had more battles to fight, but we were one step closer. I could feel it. We were going to win this. I just didn’t know how.

Chapter 6

Unexpected News

The boat ride
down the Nile was nothing I could have been prepared for. First off, it felt wrong. I’d never been on a river that flowed north before. As the current pulled at the boats, I felt disoriented. Second, the difference between the sand in the distance and the green banks that surrounded us was unreal. How could one spot be barren of water and the other lush enough to be a tropical oasis? It was such a contrast.

I wasn’t expecting anything on our boat ride, but the abundance of river life was more than fascinating. Birds flew without a care and alligators snapped at anything that got too close. Hippos waded around in the water or sat with just their little eyes above the water line. I had never seen a hippo on any of our travels anywhere but in the zoo. It was strange to see what always seemed like such docile creature not being what you remember as a child seeing them in their glass-caged worlds.

The approach to the capital via the river was amazing. We slowed down as we came closer to the city. Buildings rose up on both sides of the river. A great white building, several stories high and almost as long as the city, rose up in the middle of everything. Stone columns with painted scenes were standing tall and proudly. I couldn’t wait to get closer to see more.

My father told us how he had moved the capital back to Memphis from Thebes only during his own reign. I couldn’t imagine any other city could be as beautiful as what was before me. Buildings stretched as far as I could see. I didn’t know they had cities as big as this one in the past. How could they even support a city like this? It was amazing.

“My family is from here in Memphis,” Seth said as he stood beside me on the boat. His father was standing on another boat, watching the city.

We passed beside the enormous city, flowing with the current of the river. The houses began to get sparser as we continued away from the bustling center. Another city appeared on the horizon, when we didn’t stop at the gigantic city we had just passed.