NINE

| ZANNANZA |

In this exotic, sumptuous palace, it feels a lifetime ago I stood in my father’s shadowy apartment and learned of the request of an enemy queen to send one of his sons to become the next Pharaoh and save her royal line from usurpers.

Our worlds could not be more different. In Hatti, we are practical, our stone palaces built solid to endure the biting cold of harsh winters, and our men rough and battle-scarred from spending most of their time on campaign. But in Egypt, life is another thing altogether, spent in luxury with an attention to beauty and detail I would have not imagined in all my days. I feel as if I have left the land of mortals and arrived in the land of the gods.

And before me, the glittering goddess who will be mine.

She is authentic to the last heartbeat of our ruse. I cannot admire her more. This is a woman worthy to be my match. I breathe my thanks to Teshub as the doors close behind me. Together we have achieved the impossible.

| ANKHESENAMUN |

The satchel lands on the floor with a soft thump. He crosses the reception room, his stride steady and confident, no longer the merchant but a prince. He comes to a stop just behind me. The heat of his body radiates against my back, and I catch the faint, clean scent of natron soap. I wait in delicious anticipation, knowing he will touch me, even though it is forbidden by death, and that his touch will herald a new era of peace and unity. No more wars, we will trade, learn, and prosper. And all of it will be built on love.

| ZANNANZA |

I breathe in the scent of her, an intoxicating mix of warm earth, the sky after a storm, and almond blossoms. The top of her crown crests the height of my chin and under the embellishment of her heavy gown, gemmed collar and belt, this lone queen exudes the fragility of a newborn foal.

My heart hungers for her. I know I already love her. A woman I have never touched. We have been chosen by the gods. Our union will change the course of history.

I have waited long enough. I reach out to her.

| ANKHESENAMUN |

His fingertips brush against the side of my neck, across the gems upon my shoulder, and down the length of my arm. His touch is light, exquisite, nothing like the northern warrior I expected. Want floods me.

“Look at me,” he murmurs into my ear as he catches my hand and pulls me to face him.

I do not resist. I turn and lift my chin.

His dark, unreadable eyes move from mine to explore the curves and hollows of my face. He reaches up and traces the outline of my lips with his thumb, and I cannot bear it, I close my eyes, filled with longing to feel his lips against mine, to close the final distance between us.

He grasps my face in his hands, the strength in his grip undeniable, yet his gentleness as he holds me steady promises the safety I have longed for. I wait, my senses clinging to this heartbeat, memorizing each of our ragged breaths, the callouses of his palms against my cheeks, the whisper of my gown against his kilt.

His lips brush mine. A taste, nothing more, but it unlocks a door within me I didn’t know I possessed. A memory floods me, one I could never have had, of another world, strange, beautiful, and exotic beyond my wildest imaginings. I stand upon a terrace in the sky, wearing armor the color of polished silver. Beneath me, under a solid floor that is as clear as a garden pool, a vast city burns, its towering structures scorched by a fire so hot it burns a molten blue.

The stride of another approaches. I turn. A warrior, clad in a complex construction of black metal fitted precisely over his powerful body tosses aside weapons I am unable to comprehend or describe. He strides toward me, but I feel no fear. Instead, I am filled with longing. He removes the covering from his head and sets it aside. He turns, and his gaze penetrates me. I know him. This glorious, powerful warrior with eyes of silver and the blackest of hair held back by a metallic band that beats with a life of its own, silver, and black, with overlapping lines of cerulean light pulsing along its length.

“My love,” he breathes. “We have won the day.”

And then, he kisses me.

I fall into him, answer him with a passion I did not know any could possess and taste blood.

A laugh. I open my eyes. Zannanza stands before me in the moonlight, rubbing his fist against his bleeding lip.

“You are much more than I hoped for.” He says with a dark smile. A shimmer of silver slides over his eyes and in the light of the flickering torches, I see him again, the warrior who kissed me above a burning city, not wearing the tunic of a merchant but clad in black armor. I wonder if I have lost my senses, and my mind has left me as it left my father.

I take a step back, reach for the support of the terrace wall. I miss and stumble.

He catches me. I cannot look at him. I am afraid of who I will see.

“My queen?”

“Who are you?” I whisper, my gaze locked on his sandals, willing them to stay as they are, to not see that strange sheath of black metal encase him again.

“I—” he begins, then says nothing for several beats. “Who do you see?” he asks.

“I saw you, but not you.” I answer, desperate to not be mad. To understand.

He waits. Demands nothing. Tendrils of his curiosity touch me.

“I was someone else,” I cut a look up at him, to gauge his response.

He nods. “As was I.”

I blink. “You saw it too?”

“I saw it. Felt it.”

“Like a memory?”

Another nod.

“So . . . I have not gone mad?”

He laughs once more, and the tension slides away, like a bad dream evaporating in the light of a clean, new day. “If you are,” he says, “then I am too. I doubt we have both lost our minds at the same time.”

“What did you see?”

He describes her, her silver armor, the clear floor, the strange, burning city. His weapons.

I share my version, the metallic band encircling his brow, shot with pulsing cerulean beams of light. The kiss.

“With a first kiss like that,” he smiles, and the harsh, sun-darkened planes of his face soften. He lifts an eyebrow and cuts a look up to the stars. “We’ve been blessed by the gods.”

I long to trace my fingers against his jaw and cheekbones, to memorize him by touch. Silence falls between us. He takes my hand, runs his thumb over my gold-tipped fingers. The torchlight catches against their luster. He tilts my fingers, one at a time so the reflected flames slide from one fingertip to another, as though my fingertips contain the power of fire. The effect is mesmerizing. I wonder why I never thought to do the same.

“My father is the Storm God, Teshub,” he says, so low I must strain to catch his words before the night breeze snatches them away. “The King of Hatti confirmed it before I left.” He meets my eyes. His smile, a distant memory. “It is why he sent me.”

“You are the son of a god.” I breathe. I cannot believe my good fortune.

He nods. “Teshub is the king of the gods.”

“And your mother?” I cannot help myself. I must know all.

“She was the Tawananna, Queen Henti,” his eyes move over the golden glow of my city. Below, in my garden, the warble of a nightbird, the splash of a fish in the lotus pool. “My father wed the most beautiful woman in all the empire,” he continues, his gaze far-off, as though he can see clear across my empire to his, “though she had not a single drop of royal blood in her body.”

“But she must have a father?” I press. “A warrior, or perhaps a merchant of means?”

Zanannza lifts his brow as he considers his answer and my heart tumbles anew, drawn like a moth to a flame. He is truly the son of a god. His charisma strikes me, a power that radiates from his ka.

“He found her alone and unconscious in the sanctuary of ruined temple to Ishara with not a scrap of clothing on her body.”

I blink. “A victim of warring tribes?”

He pulls his gaze from the horizon and lets it rest on mine; the obliqueness of his look awakens a tingle of anticipation in me. He is the son of a god, and his mother—

“She must have known how she ended in such a dire situation,” I persist. “Or perhaps those in the area knew?”

His look hardens. “My father conquered all of Hatti singlehandedly. While on campaign, he stopped to make sacrifices in the temple ruins. He found my mother there—the most beautiful woman he had ever seen—her body warm despite the frozen air of the northern mountains, where none but the wild rams lived. There were no nearby towns.”

“And?”

“And she had no memory of her life before the heartbeat he shook her awake, in rude health, clad only in her dark hair.”

I take a step back. “Then, is your mother,” I breathe, taking in the wonder of him anew, “also not one of us?”

“The King of Hatti is a warrior to his core,” he says, though no pride gilds in his words. “He usurped the throne from his brother. For a long time, I was never sure if his tale of how he met my mother was true, or a way for him to vindicate his usurping, by creating a legend where his queen was sent to him by the gods.”

“Ah,” I say, gratified by this explanation. “He would not be the first king to do so.”

Zanannza gestures to a nearby divan. We sit. He lifts the golden pitcher set upon the low table to pour us each a cup of wine.

I stay his hand with a touch of my gold-capped fingers. “Wait,” I say, “I will send for a servant to taste it first.”

“There is no need,” he says and sips against my cry of warning.

“My lord prince, I fear you have made a grievous error.” I cannot believe after all we have endured, I could lose him here, now, over a cup of tainted wine. Anger circles me. “How could you—” I begin, furious at the tears blurring my vision. I swipe them away, staining my gold-capped fingers with smears of kohl.

He catches my fingers in his and wipes them clean with the hem of his tunic. “Do not shed any tears for me, Queen of Egypt. I am the son of a god. If it is poisoned, I will know soon enough if it’s not safe for you. There is no need to send an innocent person to their death.”

“But how can you know?” I am undone. I may be a queen, but I am as mortal as my subjects. All of us fear death equally. I cannot take my eyes from him, as I envision what will soon come—of how Benut died in my arms, drowning in foul-smelling bile.

“Because before my mother vanished, she summoned me to her apartments and confided the truth of what happened that day in the ruined temple of Ishara.”

“Vanished? I understood from my mother that Hatti’s queen had been banished to Alashiya so your father could make a marriage alliance with the daughter of the King of Babylon.”

He scoffs and takes another sip of wine which distresses me anew, though this time I refuse to allow myself to react.

“Another tale from my father. He sent a concubine of his in her stead, veiled, so none would know she was not Henti. No,” he continues, cradling the cup of wine in his hands, his eyes once more upon the stars, “my mother left us, to return to the ruined temple in the mountains from whence she came. Marduk came to her in a dream, bade her return to him. The night she departed, she told me she was born Isitu, daughter of a priestess of Ishtar—” he cuts a look to me, “and the god Marduk, from the empire that gave rise to Babylon, more than two thousand years ago.”

“But how—” I shake my head. “It is impossible. How could she not age in all that time if she was born mortal?”

“She did not age, but there is a reason” he says. “She was sent to our time by Marduk, by stepping naked through a doorway of light hidden far below the great Etemen’anki zigguratu. She woke a heartbeat later to find my father wrapping his cloak around her. When he asked who she was, she did as Marduk willed, confessing she remembered nothing of her previous life.”

“Why would she be sent to your father? Who is Marduk to your people?”

A shrug. “He is not one of our gods. Though it is intriguing that my father is now allied with Babylon through marriage, where Marduk is still their god.”

I eye the half-empty cup in his hand. He catches my glance. “The wine is not tainted,” he says. “If it were I would have purged myself by now.”

He hands my cup to me and lifts his in a silent toast.

We drink, and though I am tingling with curiosity, I wait. My god-prince from Hatti sets his cup down, rests his elbows on his thighs, hardened by a multitude of campaigns and darkened by Aten’s light, and folds his fingers together. The emblem of his merchant’s ring a mockery to his true existence.

“How old were you when your mother returned to her time?”

“Twelve,” he answers and drinks deep. The cords of his neck ripple as he does. He turns, catches me watching him.

A sudden heat high upon my cheeks betrays me. I look away, but it is too late. The ghost of his smile haunts me. I have pleased him which pleases me. My blush deepens.

“Though I was beloved by my mother, I was never close to my father,” Zanannza continues. He rises, strides to the edge of the terrace and leans on his elbows against its ledge to gaze up at the stars. The muscles in his arms flex against his weight and I wonder how it will be to feel his powerful bulk over me, our bodies pressed together in the act of love. My brother-husband Tutankhamun was not a warrior, nor was he strong, though his mind was sharp, and he could make me laugh. But this, this longing to run my fingers over every carved hollow and cleft of my god-prince, this carnal need, I have never felt such a thing before. I take a deeper sip of wine to hide my burning cheeks in the basin of my cup. To hide my quiet smile.

“It wasn’t until he summoned me to be sent to you that the whole of it came together. He was jealous of my lineage, the grandson of Marduk, and the son of Teshub, my mother able to transcend time and distance. Not one drop of his blood flowed through me.” He laughs, though it is mirthless. “For the first twelve years of my life, I believed he never looked at me was because I was his fourth son, and of little value to him while my elder brothers lived and fought.” He crosses his legs, one over the other, a lion at ease. His casualness in my presence speaks volumes. This is a man of confidence, of certainty, of such sureness of mind that once more I am overcome with gratitude to Aten for his gift of this husband-king to me. He will be the Pharaoh my empire desperately needs. He will rout out the vermin, and the jackal Ay will find himself put back in his place, though I would not grieve to see him stripped of his titles. It is over. At last.

I lift my gaze from his legs, as well-formed and as those of my own royal horses and meet his eyes again.

“There you are,” he says. Another hint of a dark smile. “Perhaps my tale is dull?”

“It is not,” I answer, and give him a brazen look I did not know I had within me to possess. “I was thanking Aten for sending you to me.”

“And here I was thanking my father,” his admiration of me is open, and I feel my cheeks blaze anew. “To think I will be able to walk by your side every day of my life. My father would be envious. Again.” He smiles, dazzles me in a fresh flash of brilliance before his expression darkens. He pushes away from the wall and returns to his cup of wine, though he does not sit. “But let us speak our minds,” he says, after he takes a long drink. “Now that I am here, what have you planned? I have twelve of my father’s Mesedi with me, powerful warriors, but not enough to go to war for you.”

I nod. I had, of course, prepared for this. “We must be wed. Tonight.”

“I am ready,” he answers.

This is the part I have been dreading. The part where the loss of Benut will strike hardest.

“To seal your right to the throne, we must have the king’s ring,” I say, “Once that is upon your finger, none can challenge you. Not even Ay.”

He notes my hesitation. “You do not have it.”

I shake my head. “I know where it is. My maid has hidden it well—it is why Ay has not been able to seize the throne from me while I live.”

“And if you were to go to the gods?”

“He would have a new ring made and none would know that the true ring, the one worn by the pharaohs of my forefathers throughout the ages still lies buried under a rock in a cave outside the city.”

“And you tell me this because . . .”

“Benut is gone. Poisoned by food meant for me.” The burn of tears strikes my eyes anew. I brush them away. Now is not the time to grieve. Later, when all is done. She will be honored as she deserves.

“Tell me where the ring is hidden, and I will send my men to retrieve it.”

“They will need to be armed,” I say.

“For?”

“It is a lion’s den.”

He erupts in a deep throated laugh filled with delight, and his joy fills me with pleasure. I had feared he would fly into a rage, but no, this son of Teshub relishes the challenge. Of course, a lion would not intimidate him.

“There is nothing I love more than a lion hunt,” he says. “Consider it done.”

He laughs anew, savoring our ruse. “I would have loved to meet your maid. What courage she must have possessed.”

I smile. “Benut was prudent. Her brother had told her of the lion’s den, and that he had been watching its movements, for it roamed close to his farm. He knew when it went to hunt, and when it would return to rest. She went when it was hunting, of course.”

The smile on his lips vanishes. “The lion could have returned while she was there. She risked her life for you.”

“She risked her life for Egypt.” I set down my wine and stand. “For I am Egypt.”

He takes my hand and kneels before me, my god-husband-to-be. “And I am your servant.”

He cannot stay. It is impossible to believe Ay’s spies will not have informed him Zanannza has been here far longer than he should, but I am prepared to claim I wished to learn what news he had of other lands. I eye my god-prince from the disarray of my bed, where the love we made was both nothing like and far more than I expected. I did not know a woman could feel the things he made me feel and am grateful he had the sense to muffle my cries with his kiss, otherwise I might have alerted the entire palace to our act.

Though I have just caught my breath, and my skin still gleams with a sheen of perspiration, I long for him to do those things to me again. He is a proficient lover, my new husband, and a ripple of jealousy slides through me as I watch him pull his merchant’s tunic over the hardened planes of his muscled chest, marked by the whitened lines and puckers of more than a dozen battle scars. I imagine those other women who have shared a bed with him. I envy their pleasure, their intimacy and wish it had been only mine from the beginning. He comes back to me, pulling his hair back into its leather thong, and settling his empty merchant’s pack across his shoulder, for I have taken all his purple cloth and opals—his wedding gift to me.

“Tomorrow I will return to your throne room with a slain lion.” His teeth are white and even through his smile. He twines his fingers with mine and tilts his head to the arrangement of divans and low tables littered with my discarded gown, belt, crown, and jewels. “Your apartment lacks a proper rug for us to . . . lie on.”

I smile, contentment filling me as he kisses each of my fingertips, no longer covered in their golden caps. “Until then, guard yourself with care my queen.”

And then, he is gone, and I am alone once more.