The idea that I’m some washed-up ex-lover who went to all this trouble…it’s the sort of story you spin to make some ridiculous worldview make sense.
That doesn’t mean I shouldn’t look into it.
I put my pen down and turn to the man himself. Memnon’s taken a seat at the chair by my bedside, and he’s studying the dozens of notebooks I’ve shelved on my bookcase.
I don’t know why he hasn’t left me yet. I expected him to. What I wasn’t expecting was to enjoy his company. He’s weird and edgy and just…a lot all at once, but I don’t really want to part ways with him.
His attention moves from the notebooks to the sticky notes that pepper my belongings—they’re on the covers of my textbooks, one is on my lampshade, another on my desk, and still another on the back of my door. I know that last one is a reminder to check that I’ve packed my notebook for the day.
Memnon taps on the chair’s armrest and jiggles his leg impatiently.
“Stop it,” I say.
Memnon’s gaze flicks to me. He doesn’t say anything, but there’s a question in his eyes.
“You look like you’re trying to figure something out.” He looks like he’s trying to figure me out. I rub my arms. “It’s making me nervous.”
His fingers cease tapping; his leg stops jiggling. Not that it does any good. Memnon caged his restlessness, but I can see it still prowling in his eyes.
I move over to my bed and sit on the mattress, so close to Memnon, my knee brushes his.
“Who are you?” I ask. “Beyond Memnon the Cursed.”
At my words, the sorcerer seems to tear himself away from his own thoughts. “I was never Memnon the Cursed. I was Memnon the Indomitable. I presume you gave me the new title when you buried me.”
I bite my tongue to keep from arguing with him on that point. “What else?” I say instead.
He tilts his head a little, considering my question. “What do you want to know?” he asks.
“I don’t know—anything, everything.”
He stares at me for a long time, those enigmatic eyes seeming to plumb my depths. He inhales, then begins.
“I was born Uvagukis Memnon, son of Uvagukis Tamara, queen of the Sarmatians, and Ilyapa Khuno, sorcerer king of the Moche.”
“They ruled different nations?”
“Est amage, they ruled different landmasses. My father was from the area you know as Peru. The only reason he met my mother is because he knew how to manipulate ley lines.”
Ley lines are magical roads that lie like a net across the world. They’re areas where space and time wrinkles. If one knows how to navigate them correctly, they can cross entire oceans in minutes. Hell, they can travel to other realms in minutes—the Otherworld and the Underworld share these same ley lines with earth.
I don’t know much more than that about them.
“You’re telling me that two thousand years ago, your dad left South America to visit a continent across the world?”
Because that would upend the entire history nonmagical humans have established about the moment the East met the West. But then, it would also explain why I discovered Memnon himself, a man who lived in Eurasia, asleep in a crypt somewhere in northern Peru.
“He did more traveling than just that,” Memnon says. “But yes.”
I’d like to linger on this, but the truth is I’m not particularly interested in Memnon’s dad. I’m interested in Memnon himself.
I search his face. “What else?”
The corners of his eyes crinkle, like I’m amusing him—or maybe he’s simply pleased to have captured my attention.
“I learned to ride a horse at the same time I learned to walk, and I killed my first opponent at thirteen,” he says. “But perhaps most importantly, my power first awoke when you called to it.”
Normally, supernaturals drink a concoction called bittersweet to Awaken their powers. To hear that this didn’t happen to Memnon, that instead, a person—Roxilana, I assume—awoke it…
“How?”
Memnon gives me a heavy look. “Trauma. When you were a child, a Roman legion attacked your village and killed your family. In your fear, you called out to me through our bond.”
I’m barely breathing. I don’t bother correcting him on the fact this is not me he’s speaking of.
“I was confused for many moons about the fearful voice in my head. I didn’t know who you were or where you lived—or even that you lived. I thought you were a spirit, one who spoke a language I didn’t initially know. And you couldn’t hear me, not for a long while.
“But once you did”—Memnon smiles—“things got very fun.
“We spoke to each other all the time—sometimes when we didn’t even mean to. I remember being in the middle of battle when I heard you curse at yourself for breaking a bowl.”
I stare at Memnon, hanging on every word.
“I started searching for you when I was thirteen, but it was only once I was crowned king that I was able to lead my horde west, into the Roman Empire, and find you.”
The sorcerer falls silent.
There’s an ache in me, a very real ache, at his story. I don’t know why. Maybe because it sounds romantic—kings, and hordes, and a search for a woman he was connected to but could not find.
“What else?” I ask.
Memnon’s eyes linger on me. For a moment, they are so incredibly desolate. Then his mouth curves into a sly smile, and that calculating gleam reenters his expression. “Curious, Empress?”
My own eyes fall to his lips. “Why do you call me that? ‘Empress’?”
He settles back into his seat, and now his mouth curves into a sinful smirk. “Because the Romans subjugated you, and I quite like paying homage to your power in their language. It gives me a petty little thrill. You liked it even more.”
“Roxilana,” I whisper. “This all happened to Roxilana.”
Memnon’s eyes are like embers; I can’t look away from him. I sense so many pent-up feelings behind that face.
“Yes,” he agrees, “it happened to my Roxilana.”
This moment feels as though it’s balanced on a tightrope. At any second, one of us could fall.
“What do you want?” I say softly.
“Everything,” he says. “My empire, my riches, my palace, my adoring subjects. But most of all—I want you.”
I don’t know who moves first, him or me, only that we come together, and it feels inescapable. There is my rational, orderly mind, and then there is this. Instinct.
Memnon’s mouth finds mine, and he ravages it, kissing me with all the intensity one would expect from a warrior-king. I gasp in a breath when suddenly his tongue is there, sweeping through.
My body awakens at the contact, feverish for more of this, whatever this is. I delve my fingers into his hair.
Memnon groans into my mouth, then hoists me into his arms, wrapping my legs around him and cradling my ass.
“My queen, my queen,” he murmurs. “I need you to remember.”
“Shut up about that,” I murmur back. Memnon’s cute little delusions could ruin a perfectly good make-out session.
If I thought the sorcerer would be offended at my rudeness, I thought wrong. He smiles against my lips, then nips my lower one.
I moan.
“That is no way to talk to your king.”
On second thought, I could totally get behind role-playing this. “I’ll talk to you the way I want.”
At my words, Memnon growls, squeezing my ass, his smile searing against my lips. He maneuvers us onto my bed. My back bounces a little as it hits the mattress.