I bite back a yelp when the skin gives beneath my fingers. It has the icy chill of death clinging to it, but it’s—it’s supple the way living skin is.
Slowly, I trace the scar, following the line of it to his ear, then down, to the edge of his jaw. My hand brushes against his hair, and there is an ache in me so deep. So, so deep.
Free me…little witch…please…
The sound of his voice only sharpens that ache.
How long I have waited…for you…only you…
I place my hand against the man’s cheek, ignoring the way that inky-blue magic is filling up this room and that shrewd little voice inside my head is screaming at me to run from this place.
Instead, I draw in a sharp breath, then speak a single command in the same language that surrounds us. “Obat’iwavak.”
Wake.
CHAPTER 7
Wind tears through the chamber, nearly extinguishing the torches. A scream rises, and another voice fills the room.
What have you done? it wails.
I pull my hand from the man’s cheek, blinking away the strange daze that’s shrouded me ever since my plane crashed.
What am I doing?
Before I can come up with an answer, the man’s eyes snap open.
I stumble back, a hand going to my mouth to muffle my scream.
His irises are a beautiful brown color—dark along the outside edge and light like bourbon on the inside. His pupils dilate as they take me in.
Memnon draws a deep breath, his chest finally rising. As he does so, several scales from his armor slide off his chest, clinking as they fall.
“Roxilana,” the man breathes, still staring at my face.
My breath catches at his voice. It’s no longer echoing and disembodied, and the rough, human quality makes it all the more intimate.
If longing were a sound, this would be it.
His eyes seem to devour my form. “You found me. Saved me.” He’s still speaking in the same language written on the walls. I don’t know what it is or why I understand it.
Memnon sits up, and dozens more metal scales fall from his chest.
I take a step back, then another.
He places his hands on the lip of the stone coffin and rises.
Oh, Great Goddess, he’s getting out.
In one fluid movement, he steps out of the sarcophagus. His clothes slide off his body, and his scale armor falls like rain to the ground, tinkling as it goes.
The undead man doesn’t seem to notice any of it; his eyes stay fixed on me.
I, however, do notice—both because it leaves him naked and because his exposed skin is covered in strange stylized tattoos, the images mirroring that of the artwork around me. Animals and flowers twist up his arms and spill onto his chest and neck. More wrap around his calves and climb his thighs. There are a few others sprinkled onto his lower abs, and there may be more on his back that I can’t see. It looks like the ink is slowly closing in on him from his outer extremities to the very center of him.
He strides toward me, staring at me like I’m his oxygen, completely oblivious to the fact he’s mostly naked, save for the few remnants of armor and clothing that cling to him like linen wrappings.
“I knew you would come, my queen.” The air stirs around him with his magic, it fills the space and brushes against me. “I knew it wasn’t true. It couldn’t be. A love like ours defies everything.”
His words evoke images I can’t make sense of. I see miles and miles of grass stretching in every direction. I hear the snapping of tents in the wind, the clopping of hooves. There’s skin on mine, flickering lamplight, and a voice in my ear. I am yours forever…
The images slide away as quickly as they come.
“Vak zuwi sanburvak,” I say, not needing my magic to respond to him in the same language. It’s there, buried in my bones. You are mistaken.
“Mistaken?” He laughs, and holy shit, whoever or whatever this man is, he’s got a really nice laugh.
He steps up to me and cups my face, and I’m taken aback by how proprietary the touch is. Not to mention the way he’s looking at me.
“I’m not…I don’t know you.” The words don’t exactly match up with their English translations. Whatever old language this is, the lexicon doesn’t even focus on the same things English does. I feel like a different person when I speak it.
“You don’t know me?” His lips twist into a playful smile. “Come now, what sort of game is this, Roxilana?” His eyes twinkle, and he really doesn’t give a shit that he’s naked right now.
I wrap my hands around his wrists, ready to push him away. But at the contact, he lets out a ragged exhale, closing his eyes briefly.
“Your touch, Roxi. How I have yearned for it. I was caught in a nightmare I couldn’t wake from.” He opens his eyes, his expression painfully raw. “Long I have languished. Through it all, I held on to the hope that you would come and save me, my queen.”
Okay, something is very, very wrong here. I’m not this Roxilana, nor am I a queen or an empress. And I’m definitely not his.
I open my mouth to say this very thing when Memnon leans and kisses me.
I suck in a sharp breath.
What in the ever-loving hell?
A naked and newly resurrected man is kissing me.
That thought has barely registered when his lips part mine like I’m a lock and he’s the key. And then I taste him.
He should taste like cobwebs and rotting corpses—but if anything, I swear I taste heavy, decadent wine on his tongue.
My hands move from his wrists to his pecs, my touch knocking away a few more pieces of scale armor. I have every intention of pushing him away, but his tongue strokes mine in the most carnal way, and my fingers decide to dig into his skin instead.
He groans at the pressure, stepping in closer, his naked thigh brushing my clothed one.
And…unwittingly, I kiss him back.
He makes another sexy-as-sin noise and pulls me flush against him, kissing me like he’ll die if he stops.
One of his hands has dropped to my waist, and now he’s toying with the edge of my shirt, and I know exactly where this will go if don’t stop it now.
It takes a whole lot of willpower to break off the kiss, and even then, my feet don’t want to move away from him.
Memnon’s still cupping my face with one of his hands, his dark eyes searching mine.
“I called to you, Roxi. For so long I called to you, but you never answered. My power grew weak, and then it slumbered, only rousing when…” He blinks, looking down at himself, then at my attire for the first time. “Am I dead?” he asks, his gaze rising to mine once more. “Are you here to lead my soul to the afterlife?”
The afterlife?
“What are you talking about?” I say. I step back, out of his embrace. “My name is Selene, not Roxi.”
His brows pull together, his mouth twisting into a frown.
This man is obviously confused. He thinks I’m someone else and that we’re somewhere else, and I don’t know enough about this entire situation to figure out how to handle it well.