The Golden Queen

Nine

Nine

FATE; did such a thing even exist? Ahmose truly believed I had been brought here for a higher purpose by their god Ra, who the sun would never rise without. However, I still wondered if I was in the twenty-first century, locked away in a padded cell somewhere. I didn't know what to believe anymore. Time travel, gods, magic; these were things that belonged in fairy tales. I believed in facts and science, and now I was in a place where none of that existed.

Sometime later when Ahmose had fallen into a peaceful slumber, I made my way back to my own chamber clutching a lantern tightly in my grasp, terrified of the shadows that loomed in the halls, barely able to hold my head up. What if someone tried to slip another serpent into his room while I was away? Should I stay with him longer to keep guard? The perpetrator was still here and could easily fool the guards with a trusting façade. The muscles in my belly tightened when I thought about someone killing him during the night.

But my tired eyes could no longer hold themselves open when my head finally found the comfort of my soft pillow. And I too found sleep.

Though my body was finally resting, I was still worn from rage and grief. Not even in sleep could I escape the gnawing emotions.

An assassin was here. Within the palace, someone, whom Ahmose at one point must have trusted, wanted to kill him. What was their gain in killing a good man? What part of the story was I missing?

Believing it was the only way I would be safe in Egypt without him, he had named me his heiress, putting me at the head of the line for Pharaoh's crown. That meant I would have power over Thutmosis, history's lion, who wanted to sink his teeth into me. Ahmose hadn't ensured my safety. He had acted hastily while being laid upon his deathbed and hadn't clearly thought this impulsive decision through. If anything, he had thrown me straight into the line of fire.

Either way, the consequence was the same: I had altered history, and the future was inevitably changing. Now I was as blind as Ahmose, having depended entirely on what I had learned from history, and couldn't predict what would happen next.

My stomach tossed like an ocean of great waves battering my insides, begging for escape from this nightmare even for just a few hours.

Eventually, my tired brain gave out, and then I began to dream. I plummeted into turmoil as my dream shifted and coiled, becoming serpents that glided from the shadows that now filled me with a sense of terror, tangling me in their cold, rigid bodies. But they did not bite me. Instead, they gazed at me with their golden eyes and suddenly became very still, shifting their hooded heads from me to the passage that led from my chamber to darkness. They wanted me to follow.

I climbed out of bed and headed to the corridor, suddenly so afraid, I hesitated in the doorway. But it was not the serpents I feared; I was afraid of the dark. My chamber was lighted by the blue aura of the bright moon, but in my doorway there was only blackness. It was so thick I feared if I reached out to touch it, my hand would brush a wall.

The serpents hissed, as if to encourage me onward, and when I stepped one foot into the black hall, it suddenly became lighted by moonlight. In the hall, I found guards and servants who were barely more than shadows. They wept miserably, the guards with their faces covered by their hands, and the servants on their knees with their heads bowed.

Among the servants, I found the girl who always tended to me, her arms wrapped around a small boy. He rubbed his eyes with little fists, more confused by the sorrow that suddenly gripped the household than I was. I sunk to my knees before them.

"What is happening? Where is Pharaoh?" I asked, forgetting she couldn't speak Latin. I received a stifled groan in reply. She lifted her face and wiped her tears away. She mumbled, and patted the small boy's ebony hair. Her face was as pale as a lily as she consoled the child. She turned her gaze to me, though her eyes were distant and unfocused, as if I wasn't even there. My stomach coiled into a cold knot.