When I was blindfolded with a red bridal veil and stuffed into a camel palanquin, I thought I was being sent to my death in a doomed marriage. After all, the bride of Egypt’s new king, Ramses, should have been a princess who had died suddenly. I was just a slum orphan who knew how to draw a couple of warding talismans.
Who could have imagined that when he was ambushed beneath the pyramids, I would summon a swarm of bees with qi-guiding magic to shield him from the blades? When the Nile flooded and threatened to drown Thebes, I knelt at the bow of a boat and focused my spiritual energy to control the water. The waves really did recede into a crescent at my gesture. And when I used immortal arts to tend the old wound on his back, so deep the bone showed, new flesh grew beneath the scab after seven days.
He pinned my wrist against a sacred pillar, the corners of his eyes red like a lion provoked into a frenzy. “An Si, who are you, really?”
It wasn’t until I was pushed into the Nile and “accidentally” lost my memory that he finally panicked...
He knelt outside the temple until three stone statues broke apart. The palace road was covered with golden statues of me. When I was knocked unconscious by a venomous bee, he shielded me with his own body. The backlash from his immortal arts made him cough blood, yet he still smiled and said, “This way, you won’t hate me.”
Later, I ran my fingers over the scarab jewel set in his crown. My name was engraved on it.
He said, “With Amun as my witness, your immortal arts have already placed an eternal enchantment on my heart.”
It turned out the most devastating thing wasn’t the immortal arts. It was the wholehearted love he hid beneath his arrogance.
