Chrysocolla (4 page)

“Would you still have chosen me?” I asked.

I didn’t know why, but I needed the reassurance. I had spent the last few months getting to know Kye. I actually liked him. He was a wonderful man and had easily filled the spot of best friend when my world changed, and Logan kept my friends away.

“I’ll always choose you as my mother, but Logan is never on my list as a father. I’d rather not have been born at all than to have him as a father,” Kye replied. His plan made a bit more sense now.

“And when you disappear, how do you expect that will make me feel?” I asked. Had he considered that if his plan worked, I would have been left in Egypt alone with family I had never met.

“It’s nice to hear I’ll be missed.” Kye stood up and walked over to sit next to me. “I can live with the fact of never being born if I can save you from the fate Logan has planned for you. Since I was a small child, all I ever wanted to do was protect you. Logan wasn’t just a terrible father; he was just as terrible at being a husband. You were never happy with him for even one moment. You aren’t meant to end up with him. I’ve seen how it’s really meant to be. I need to make that future for you. I need you to be with Seti and be happy. I can’t stand to see you suffer more at the hands of Logan. Even if it means I will disappear, I can live with that if I know you’ll get the ending you were meant to have. No one should ever have to live the life you will live if we don’t fix this.”

I shivered a little. I was even more curious now about what Kye’s childhood was like, but his determination to change it made me not want to ask for details. It sounded like it would be too painful to talk about, and maybe too painful for me to know what my fate would be if we didn’t stop Logan. Maybe I would another time, but I had heard enough. My future with Logan was one that I wanted to avoid at all costs. I was a bit happy the goddess had given me more stones. Hopefully, that would be enough to keep me out of trouble.

Kye threw an arm up and over my shoulder. He let out a loud sigh.

“It’s nice to finally tell you.” He gave me a squeeze. The familiar warmth of family ran from him to me. “Even if I disappear at the end of all this, it was still the best few months of my life.”

What had his life been like?

Looping my arm underneath and behind him, I squeezed him back. He was the only reason I was still going on and fighting back. Without him, I would have been stuck with Logan. I was just as happy to have him as he was to have me.

“I don’t know if I can grasp the son thing, you’re a bit too old for me to do that, but I will say you’ve been the best friend I’ve had since Logan found me to fake save me. I wish I had your memories of being a family. I wish I could remember you more as a child and everything that went on in our lives.”

Kye pulled me tighter, squishing my head to his shoulder. I couldn’t see his face, and I wondered if that was the reason he was still hugging me.

“When I was a child I lived with you until I was five. After Logan found out that your happiness was me, he took me away, trying to make you dependent on him. After that, I got to see you twice a year for a couple days. That was it. I grew up missing you and knowing that it was my father that kept me from you. We never were a family.” I was held too tight to look at his face, but I felt the lone tear drop on my head. “You taught me everything you knew about time travel. You knew that if I didn’t save you one day, no one could. I wish I could have saved you sooner and gotten rid of Logan. If he wasn’t around you would have never had to go through any of this.”

Kye sounded defeated. I was surprised. He had saved me.

“Could you have really done anything different?” I asked as he released me, and I could look up at him to read his face as he talked. “You were just a kid.”

Kye shrugged. “I should have been able to. Kid or not, I was the only one that could help you, and I never did. I was too afraid he’d find out.”

“He thought you’d change the past?” I asked. If that was true, why did Logan ever leave Kye alone with me?

“Because I took a vow to obey our bloodline,” Kye replied. “In order to not bounce around time periods and never age, I promised Logan that if he left me in one time period until I wanted to leave, then I would do everything that was needed for my family.”

“As in, he planned for you to help him?” I asked. Kye had seemed conflicted since the first day I met him.

Kye shrugged. “I couldn’t go against him until you asked me to. See, you are my bloodline also. Logan did his best to always forget that. He always saw you as just a trophy and never a person. I wish I could have acted sooner, but it was the best I could come up with.”

“You were just a child,” I replied. He’d been thirteen when he came to the past to live. That wasn’t old enough to be rescuing people.

“I may have been young, but every year that passed that I didn’t help, it was my fault you had to live through the pain of being with Logan. I wish I could have gone back and stopped it all at the beginning. All the times he’s messed with your life should have never happened.”

“Wait.” I looked up at Kye. He had told me that Logan had rearranged my past eight times. I was curious what my life was like in those times.

“You know how you only remember things after you can time travel?” Kye asked.

I nodded. I understood that part.

“You don’t remember those other lives at all.” Kye was saying what I already knew.

No, I didn’t.

“But they were all the same ending. You ended up with Seti. You had a family and were happy. I wasn’t part of it. That’s how it’s supposed to end. That’s how we have to make it end. I promise you that I will spend my life making this right. You have a destiny that Logan can’t change and shouldn’t change. When he takes away your future, he doesn’t just mess with you and your life. He messed up history. You don’t want to see the future he made, and we will need to figure out how to change it back to the real future you are destined to live.”

Kye was so serious that all I could do was stare into his violet eyes. I wanted more than anything to know about the past he had and remembered, but I could see how much pain was behind it. Kye didn’t have a happy childhood. Logan wasn’t a good father. There was so much bad he remembered, but there was one good thing. He loved me. I couldn’t have been that bad of a mother if he was determined that he was trying to change the past and erase his future. Or maybe my future with Logan was worse than I could image. Either way, we had a lot to worry about. Kye was back to staring at the sky like Logan might just pop right into view.

“And I suppose you aren’t going to tell me what that future is,” I teased, trying to lighten the mood. Kye turned and looked at me. He grinned and understood that things were getting too serious for the moment.

“Nah, why would I do that? Where would the fun be if you knew how it was supposed to end?” Kye was teasing me right back. He understood. I needed that. We both did.

My father returned
only briefly before leaving us to wait again. He was a busy man and didn’t exactly have time for me to ask the hundreds of questions I had. It was hard to just sit around without knowing what to do. What was Logan planning? How come Kye was still here? Something had to be in the works. Something had to change. Everything we had planned was working, but Kye was still proof that Logan would get his way. Seth had already made it to the edge of the city, and we had less than an hour until I would see him again, yet somehow Logan was still going to win. I hated the feeling of defeat but hated it worse when it felt like we were so close to the end.

With each passing minute, Kye grew more worried. His memories were slowly changing, and Logan must have done something again. Logan had erased everything Kye remembered back to the first time Logan took him officially time traveling. Kye, luckily, had been time traveling since he was a little kid and at a much younger age than Logan ever knew, so he kept memories that Logan thought he was erasing. Nonetheless, it made Kye worry more. Logan didn’t want Kye to know anything or be able to help me. We would be completely unprepared for anything Logan might do without Kye’s knowledge.

When my father returned, I could already tell that Seth was nearby. I could feel the tingles I felt around him, along with the warm fuzzies that meant my mother was with him. My family and friends had returned.

“If you stay in the shadows, no one will question you,” my father was explaining to Kye.

I had a feeling, by how my father looked at Kye, that he knew exactly who Kye was, but he was discreet in not saying anything.

Kye nodded to my father. I looked at the man I had only met the day before. He was wearing a small white shendyt like Seth wore in the past, but something made it seem less military and more ceremonial-like. There were gold bands around my father’s upper arms and wrists. I already knew by his home that he was wealthy, but I had to wonder if it was from the military. Were military leaders wealthy? And, for that matter, why wasn’t he with Seth’s father. Weren’t they co-leaders of the military? I had many questions and no time to ask.

“I have to say a prayer to the gods for Paramessu to return and the bounty he brings back. After that, we can find a place for us all to meet alone. Don’t let her out of your sight,” my father warned Kye. “I may be able to stop Logan from time traveling into my country, but that doesn’t stop him from physically sneaking across the borders.”

Kye nodded. I really wanted to know more. How did my father stop time travelers in his country? What did that even mean? Was my father actually a god like the Goddess? I didn’t know what he was or what his job was. I had way more questions than answers. He didn’t seem like he was still in the military, and since he was about to say prayers made it seem more like he was a priest of some sort now. Would he be in the position to marry my mother? I sure hoped they knew what they were doing by bringing my mother to Egypt. The last thing I wanted was to deal with her having to marry the pharaoh instead of my father.

My father stopped by the doorway. He gave me one last look before nodding to Kye. We were to follow him. Kye motioned for me to join him at the doorway. My father was further down the hallway and surrounded by guards. Two men marched in front of him, and two were behind him. It did strike me as odd for a military leader to need guards, but then again, if my father held the power to help keep his country safe from people like Logan, I would want him to be protected at all times also. I never imagined I was the child of a priest, but I never imagined meeting a goddess and being given the power to travel through time, either. Life just kept throwing me surprises.

Once Kye was sure my father was far enough ahead of us, he took my arm and guided me with him through the shadows. We weren’t exactly behind my father as we followed him, but even with all our jumping between shadows, we kept up with him. As my father rounded the bend in front of us, I could feel the pull of Seth even more. I paused mid-step at the tingles.

Kye stopped and looked at me. “Danger?” he whispered.

“No, Seth,” I replied. “He’s right up on the other side of that wall.”

Kye nodded.

“Are you going to tell him about me?” Kye asked.

I shook my head. I didn’t plan to lie to Seth but telling him would only upset him. For now it was safer to keep Kye’s secret a secret. If it came down to it, I would tell him, but at the moment I wanted my happy reunion that kept getting lost along the way.

We began creeping closer to where my father just disappeared. As we neared, I heard more voices. There were more than just my mother, Seth, his father and Dee there. It sounded like a crowd. Kye stepped forward and motioned for me to stop. He peered around the corner and then stepped back to me.

“One more thing. Don’t call Seti
Seth
around here,” Kye told me quietly so that anyone passing couldn’t hear us.

“What?” I asked. There wasn’t much of a difference if you asked me.

“Some might see it as blasphemous if you call him by the name of a god. Seth is the god, and Seti is really the man you love. Not exactly the same,” Kye explained.

Seth was Seti. I knew that, but I hadn’t thought about that. Seth was the name of one of the Egyptian gods, and everyone from the past called Seth Seti. I should have picked up on that much with my years of growing up around my grandfather. Yes, I would have to change that. Seti. Really not too much of a difference. Gosh, I hoped I wouldn’t mess that one up at some important moment. I’d hate to ruin my father’s position with a mistake like that.

“Don’t move out of the shadow, but I think your father came this direction because he knew you’d have a good view of everything.” Kye stepped back and allowed me to pass him.

I stepped forward and around the corner but stayed in the shadow of the pillar we were standing by. My father was about twenty feet down from me, sitting in an ornate chair with his bodyguards nearby. He sat with his head held high looking every bit like the Egyptian people pictured from the painted tombs discovered in the time I was born. He wore just a little skirt that hid close to nothing of his body. A large gold collar was around his neck and a few gold bracelets were strategically placed on his arms, but beyond that he wore nothing more. It was strange to know that man was my father. He didn’t look like any of the fathers I knew growing up. He seemed as completely comfortable sitting around half-naked as my friend’s fathers did in their suits and ties. He looked magnificent, and I could picture the war leader he had been at one time. His body certainly wasn’t that of an old man; he seemed fit enough to be standing beside Seth and his father, not sitting around a palace. His posture gave away a man who had been in the military for a long time, and again I had to wonder why he wasn’t still there with Seth’s father.

My father sat up five steps from the mass of people that were now suddenly quiet. General Paramessu was kneeling in front of my father, and everyone behind him followed suit. Again, strange, but everything was strange to me. This was where I was supposed to be, but it was way more foreign to me than just a new country.