My cry wasn't the only one. The formerly hushed audience erupted in screams. Chairs pushed back as people scrambled out of their seats to run toward the exits.
Belzoni even pulled me backward, an expression of utter disbelief on his face. The jerking of the mummy stopped, but then I heard a deep sigh, barely audible over the chaos from the fleeing audience. It was the sound of lungs filling for the first time in thousands of years.
She was there. I felt her powerful presence all around me, inside me. She was breathing life back into me, just like her blood had given life to my shriveled flesh. I still couldn't move. My body was bound too tightly, and I didn't have the strength yet to break free of it. I still couldn't see, but I knew now my face was covered. The smell of millennia cloaked my nostrils. I tasted it in the back of my throat, but it didn't matter. Nothing mattered. I was alive. And she was here.
I forced my body to relax. She had woken me. Now it would take time for my body to restore itself. I had everything I needed and the memories of her to sustain me… as I once again allowed myself to drift…
Centuries of peace had gone by. Centuries of bliss in Vaelora's arms. Together we ruled the lands of Orasis. She kept the balance of right and wrong while I kept our enemies at bay and increased our lands by conquering our neighbors. My soldiers,just like their ancestors and their ancestors before them, stotod loyal by my side; we fought shoulder to shoulder and bled together like brothers. Not that any mortal could harm me, but I made a point after each battle to cut my arm or thigh, to prove to them that I would bleed for them.
Vaelora disliked my new scars, but I wore them with pride, each a witness to one of my victories.
"I just don't understand why you have to maim yourself," she argued for the hundredth time while sewing my flesh for me.
"It's nothing you would ever understand as a woman or a goddess," I tried to explain again.
"Try me," she challenged.
We had been here before, but I loved her enough to humor her. Again and again if I needed to. "You weren't born from flesh and blood, Vaelora, you justbecame."
She nodded. She was the one who told me her story—how one day she justwas—just as she was now—perfect in every way but emotions. I liked to think that over the centuries, I had been able to teach her some, but as much as she struggled and was willing to learn, she remained majestic and distant.
Her lack of emotions made her perfect for her role as leader. She would just as soon cut my head off as that of a murderer if I overstepped one of her laws. She would always do what needed to be done, it was one of the reasons I loved her so much, but there were days when I yearned for her to feel the same for me.
"You never had to struggle for anything—" I stopped because she lifted her hand.
"I struggled." Her clear blue eyes penetrated mine with her usual intensity. In them I could see her straining to understand. "When the people of Orasis forsook me, I struggled. When my brothers' greed grew and the people suffered, I struggled. I fought with them. I argued, I pleaded. I still don't understand how they couldn't see the wrong they were doing."
"That's where we differ."
I drew in a deep breath, forcing myself to find the right words. I was a warlord, not a philosopher. My battles were fought with steel, not conversation. Of all the men in the world, I was the least suited to explain emotions—but for her, I had to try.
"You struggled because something was wrong. You can't stand injustice," I said, watching the way her expression flickered—she really couldn’t. It drove her mad. "It’s in your nature to seek balance, to correct what is broken. But you don’t feel those wrongs, not the way mortals do."
I studied her, knowing this truth would be difficult for her to hear. "You have some compassion, I know you do," I continued. "But you can walk past a beaten slave without blinking because, in your mind, they deserved it. The balance demanded it, and that’s enough for you."
She blinked, not understanding, and I laughed because of the way she chose her next words, "What's wrong with that?"
"A slave has to obey, that's the natural order of things." That was the truth. "But if the slave had been a servant, the servant could have refused whatever order was given without being beaten."
"But they would have lost their job." She argued.
"Yes. But they would not have been beaten," I reiterated.
"I don't understand," she pleaded with me. "You're making my head hurt."
I laughed, "You are a goddess, you know no pain."
She tilted her head, "I would feel pain if I lost you."
That was the closest she would ever come to sayingI love you.
"You would miss me," I corrected. "That's not the same as feeling pain."
"Oh, you humans!" She threw her hands up in the air.
A grin spread across my face—she hadn’t called me human in a long time. Some days, even the memory of my own mortality felt distant, as if it belonged to another life. Once, I had been mortal. A man of flesh and blood. Now, I was immortal, yet unlike the other gods, emotion still ran through me.
I still felt.
