Return Once More (18 page)

Shock dimmed the pleasure in his eyes. “Apologies, Kaia.”

The bio-tat admonished me with facts about proper courting behavior for ladies of class during this time and heat rose to my cheeks. “Don't, please. I'm not upset.”

“We're not … I'm not …”

He looked so helpless and flustered that I couldn't help but laugh, standing on my tiptoes and pressing my hands to his cheeks, then planting another kiss on his mouth. “Caesarion. This is not a normal situation. We're breaking so many rules, you kissing me in a barn is hardly worth getting upset over.”

“I've never felt this way before, it's … different.”

I felt my eyebrows shoot up, a self-conscious tug clenching my gut. “Different bad?”

“No, definitely not. It is good, but only … After the way we began in the gardens, I worry. I don't wish to have you because I am Pharaoh and you must submit to my wishes.” He closed his eyes and blew out a breath. “I'm saying this wrong.”

I bit my lip to suppress the laugh this time, giving him as serious a look as I could muster. “You're doing fine. That was a misunderstanding.”

“Not to you. I made you feel less than the lady you are, and I cannot fix it.”

The edge of sorrow in his words sliced through my heart. “We come from different times and places and cultures. But I promise that I kissed you just now because I have never wanted anything more, and I sincerely hope to do it again.”

He bent forward at my words, passion burning in his eyes, and our mouths connected. This time he kissed me without fear and I tasted him, drank him in like he was lifesaving water on that first, scorching trip to Central America. Every bit of me responded, melting into him as I memorized the softness of his mouth, the heat of his tongue as it played with mine, the gentle nip of his teeth along my jaw.

Caesarion eased back too soon, breathing hard. “Please say you'll return.”

“I'll try.”

I had kissed boys before—Oz had been my first kiss, strangely enough, during a game of Seven Minutes in the Air Lock our third year at the Academy—but nothing like this. Nothing that had come close to making me feel completely lost, transported, confused at what present and past and future meant anymore. What my entire life meant.

“I do not need to remind you that my time is running out.” Tears gathered in my eyes at the sorrow in his words. One slipped away. He brushed it with a thumb. “No, don't cry. Say you'll return before that day.”

“I promise. This isn't good-bye.”

He pulled me against his chest, crushing me in a tight hug that was probably almost as inappropriate as a kiss, then set me away. “Very well. Then go,” he said gruffly.

Neither of us moved. I tipped my head, unsure of the new rules. Maybe there weren't any. “Um. Are you going to watch?”

“I want to know everything about you.”

“Caesarion, I'm trusting you with a great secret. History—this planet, these people—they're much more fragile than they might seem to you. If anything significant is upset, we may never see each other again. I might disappear altogether.”

“And that is reason enough for me to keep silent, though I would not have thought to betray your confidence. Your trust is evident, and it means a great deal that you've given it to me after such a short time. At any rate, this lonely, discarded Pharaoh has not a soul to tell.”

Loneliness spilled out of his every pore, tingeing the air with regret. It squeezed my heart into a pancake. The truth of his words pounded in the base of my skull harder than the stupid bio-tat had when he'd kissed me. He had no one. His family was gone, his city abandoned to Octavian and Rome, with only a few loyal guards willing to risk their lives to save his.

In a few short weeks, he would die alone.

“See you,” I whispered.

The cuff fell down to my wrist with a sturdy shake. A couple of quick punches and one whispered word marked my return trip, and the blue field spread around me. It usually comforted me, the knowledge that the strange and often horrific events of my day had concluded, but now, it put impossible miles between me and this boy I could have loved, leaving me cold.

Lost.

The last thing I saw before the final light switched to green was Caesarion's wide, sad eyes watching me go.

Sanchi, Amalgam of Genesis–50 NE (New Era)

“Kaia, what in the System are you still doing in the Archives? You've been in here all day! And why aren't you answering my wrist comms?”

Analeigh's voice made me jump three feet into the air, and I hadn't even been doing anything wrong. At least not at the moment. Mostly I'd been trying to deal with my guilt over betraying the Historians, even if it was to my True.

“You scared the space trash out of me.”

“That usually happens when you're doing something wrong, but this just looks like a reflection on …” She peered over my shoulder at the archive I had pulled to the front of the screen. “The destruction of the Temple? Why are you bothering with that?”

Analeigh swiped her finger a few times, enlarging the recording data, but that it marked the beginning of my ancestral line didn't register.

I rolled my eyes at her and elbowed her away. “I guess I'm feeling nostalgic. Family and love. Broken hearts.” Analeigh wrinkled her pixie nose. “What for?”

“I don't know. Just curious, I guess.” I paused, wishing she could understand. Knowing she couldn't. “I think they were Trues. Her and Titus.”

She got it then, and flopped onto the waist-high stool next to mine with a sigh. “Are you being sappy again? Is this because of your Companion card? I knew you shouldn't have looked. You've always had too many romantic illusions, and now you're all moony because Caesarion died a long time ago.”

“Maybe it's not that he died so long ago, A.L., but that he didn't have to die so young. It's not that I had any expectations that I would get an Oz of my own—”

“Thank the stars. Who would wish for
that
?” she interrupted with a frown. “I mean, I know it's cool that they're, like, instantly in love or whatever, but how is that even possible? That they've known each other for five years, then she gets a card and suddenly,
boom,
feelings?”

Boom, feelings
pretty much described my past couple of days, but she had a point. I had felt the undeniable draw to Caesarion from the moment I'd laid eyes on him. Sarah had always been kinder to Oz than the rest of us, more understanding of his awkward silences. Quick to defend him, protesting that he was shy, not weird. It had made a strange kind of sense when her card had come out with his name on it, but still … now that I had experienced it, I had a hard time believing they hadn't felt it.

Then again, people were different. It stood to reason that love would be, too.

“Maybe they
did
have feelings for each other but never acted on them. I mean, it's not like Oz has ever been super into girls or dating or anything.” I shrugged.

“Right? I think you're the only girl he ever kissed before Sarah.”

“Don't remind me.” I needed to change the subject before she remembered I hadn't answered about where I'd been all day. “So, you know Jonah confirmed he saved that girl. Rosie.”

Analeigh's expression grew wary. “Right, but he didn't say much else.”

“Well, he must have warned her ahead of time since she never left the building that day. I still can't believe he was so irresponsible. He could have killed us all.”

“You're being dramatic. It was just one girl.”

“Nobody's
just one girl
, Kaia. What if it had somehow affected the invention of the atmosphere that supports human life in Genesis? Would the terraforming just have dissolved?”

She gave an extreme example, but those kinds of unknowns existed. The Historians had mapped most of Earth Before's major events over the past fifty years and had flagged specific people and happenings that were essential to our ability to survive, but there were simply too many outside influences to draw every single event backward and forward through history—to know for sure what could make them disappear or change their course.

One of our first lessons with Minnie Gatling had been trying to trace the influences on Hitler. We researched every moment from his birth to death, but being sure what could have happened if a single outside influence had been removed—the father who abused him, the ancestor who passed down a genetic proclivity toward mental illness—those lines grew blurry fast.

Which was the reason for the hard and fast
never interfere
rule. Even if it meant letting a madman murder six million people for no reason at all, because what if the alternative turned out to be even worse? With all of our advances, everything we knew, we couldn't predict the future.

“You want to get out of here? It's Pey's birthday, and she left passes for us in case we wanted to meet everyone at Stars in My Pies.” Analeigh looked hopeful—whether because she wanted to go out or wanted the two of us to get back to normal was hard to say. Maybe both.

I stood, stretching my muscles, still sore from riding that bloody horse. I had changed out of my ancient Egyptian garb, and the decontamination shower had washed the sand and dirt out of random places on my body. “Sure. Is Sarah there?”

“Probably. She and Oz went with his dad to dinner, but if she had anything to say about it, I'm sure they're free now.”

The mention of Oz's dad twisted my lips in a grimace. Yet another reason to be happy he hadn't been my True. His father was a Historian and an Elder, and as stern as they came. The man saw everything with these beady black eyes. Like some kind of hawk or vulture.

“I could go for some pie.” It wasn't real pie, like the kind we'd seen in diners on observations, because we only had synthetic milk, but it was good enough.

Analeigh frowned. “You should shower first, because you smell weird.”

I froze. “Weird like what?”

“Like … livestock?” She narrowed her eyes at me. “Where were you really, Kaia? There are no cows in the Archives. Or on Sanchi. Or in Genesis.”

So much for the decontamination shower. I should have used the shampoo instead of forgoing a hair wash.

I wandered away from the table comp, touching several dots with a slippered toe until I found Oz's. I poked it, trying to bide my time before answering Analeigh's question, but also curious. Instead of recording him in Stars in My Pies, as expected, the bio data claimed he'd been in early eighteenth-century London for the past twenty minutes.

Nothing significant came to mind, as far as events of that time and place, but we were all off duty today. He shouldn't have been anywhere, except with Sarah.

With my own transgressions hogging my head space, I almost pushed Oz's weird travels aside. But something stopped me. Jonah had known saving Rosie Shapiro wouldn't change anything significant, but if there was a way to track history forward as well as back, no one had told me. My brother warned me that everyone at the Academy couldn't be trusted—that the Historians had a secret.

And Oz's dad was an Elder.

Jonah had traveled alone, and I'd caught Oz doing the same thing. My brother and I shared a double dose of stubborn, so maybe Oz presented a better alternative for finding out whether it might be possible to predict the consequences of saving Caesarion's life.

When I closed Oz's dot and turned, Analeigh stared at me with her eyebrows raised, arms crossed over her chest. All of the secrets felt heavy on my shoulders. To unburden myself meant weighing down my best friend and that felt selfish.

“I want to tell you, Analeigh, but it's better if I don't. You're a terrible liar and this isn't your problem.”

I tried moving around her but she blocked my path.

“Kaia. I am
freaking out
. You found your brother's cuff and the first thing you did was break major policy to go see him. Jonah ran off without a word, never said good-bye to anyone, and now you're disappearing, and keeping secrets, and …” Tears filled her big green eyes. “I don't want to lose you. I don't want you to leave. I want us to take our certifications and stay here. Together.”

My throat tightened. “I don't want that, either. I'll tell you everything, I promise. Just not right now. Give me a few days to try to figure it out.”

Her eyes were serious as they lingered on mine. It was the look Sarah and I jokingly referred to as her “mom” expression. “Promise me, Kaia.”

“I promise.”

I flashed her a wobbly grin that reflected none of the ache gnawing me open from the inside and fled the room, heading for the safe solitude of the shower.

I didn't want to end up like my brother, living outside established rules, an outcast from the System—not at all. True Companion or not, Caesarion lived in the past. Even if he could be saved, he could never be mine forever. I wanted to fall in love with a boy and get married, have children of my own, and continue my work at the Academy, and there wasn't anything I believed in more than the calling of the Historians. It was important and, more than that, I loved it.

But I wanted to know Caesarion, too. And I wanted to be a good daughter and a good friend. And to make sure future generations of humans had a healthy society to grow up in. And yes, fine, I wanted to save the ancient boy I was meant to love from the unfairness of his world.

Jonah's cuff and his chip allowed me to be both selfish and remain at the Academy, at least for now. Hopefully, my luck would hold until I could figure out whether I could alter Caesarion's fate without upsetting the fate of the universe.

Or until Octavian killed him.

*

“Are you sure you don't want to come?”

“Yeah. I'm kind of tired. I might be coming down with something.” I avoided Analeigh's gaze by snuggling into my bed and rolling toward the wall. I'd shoved the chip back in my wrist while I'd been in the bathroom, the sound of running water covering my muffled groan.