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“Yes,” Aeson replies in an unflinching loud voice. “She is my Choice and I have made my Claim.”
He saved me. . . . He saved my life.
“I need you.” He blinks, and then pauses, while a sudden fierce blush floods his face, and at the same time an odd vulnerable fear lurks in his eyes. “I am—I am in love with you.”
“Listen to me, Gwenevere Lark, you matter to me. You matter to me so much—more than anything or anyone! You—you—I can’t even begin to tell you how much, because I don’t think I understand it myself. I am in love with you, and have been for so long now that I don’t remember how it is not to love you. . . .”
“There are quite a number of things that frighten me, Gwen,” he tells me softly. “And much of it involves you—your happiness, your safety. If something were to happen to you, I would lose my mind.”
“Okay, you both need to please stop talking about me in third person and in extended metaphors.
And then Aeson releases Xel’s arm slowly, without breaking their stare. “Don’t touch her like that,” he says in a very quiet voice of a serpent.
Aeson takes the Pegasus and brings it up to his lips. He then puts it in his own shirt breast pocket. “Next to my heart,” he says. “Always.”
“I still don’t have a proper love gift for you yet, im amrevu,” Aeson says, watching me with intensity. “However, I have this—” He reaches with his right hand to untie the black armband around his left sleeve. The black length of silk comes loose, and he folds it carefully into a square and hands it to me.
“Contenders! You may now begin Stage One of the Games of the Atlantis Grail!”
“You, Gwen Lark, appear to be the Audience Top Choice for Favorite Kill.”
“Not to mention, we’ll need more than an hour of uninterrupted sleep. I don’t know about you, but I get very cranky if I don’t get my zees.”
And so, hating myself, I answer nature’s call right there, squatting over an ancient stone of the Great Pyramid of Giza, just out of sight of my teammates. At least, I tell myself, there might be more rain, and it will wash away the shameful result of my betrayal of ancient history.
And then, I notice that his lips are moving silently. Chihar Agwath appears to be having a silent conversation with a ghost.
“Imperial Lady Gwen Lark, I regret my orders. You are not what they say you are. And I am honored to know you.”
Yeah, it’s a little petty of me, but. . . . I’m Shoelace Girl.
Aeson’s black armband, clean and neatly folded, lies over my heart. He is with me, always.
“I’m tired of saying goodbye to you. For the last time—you will come back to me,” he says.
And suddenly I realize that Chihar’s pegasus and Kokayi’s pegasus are both staring at me. “Wait—can they hear me too?” I mind-speak. Two new alien voices reply in unison. We can hear you. And then, all of a sudden, a chorus of a hundred alien voices speaks in my head, coming from all directions around the cove. We can all hear you.
“How can I?” I moan inside my mind. “I’ve got the L.A. County highway system rush hour going on in my head. . . .”
And then something new happens. I hear the Games crowd begin to chant, “Im-pe-ra-tris! Im-pe-ra-tris!” A strange electric chill of awe passes through me.
