Alex hauled his right leg over the lower half of Yanit's body, then he immediately collapsed onto his back in a panting heap. Yanit snuggled up to his left side and reached out to run her hand over his chest. After a few moments, she started giggling.

'What's so funny?' Alex asked.

'I can't believe how red your face has gone,' said Yanit. 'In fact, it's your whole head... and your shoulders... and it goes down practically to the bottom of your pecs!'

'What can I say?' Alex laughed. 'You inflame me, Yanit.'

Yanit smiled, then she peered over Alex's chest at the candlelit nightstand beside the bed.

'Oh, look at the time,' she said. 'Happy Christmas, my love.'

'It's not Christmas yet,' said Alex.

'Your watch says three minutes past twelve.'

'Yeah, but it isn't Christmas 'til you've had a sleep.'

'Oh, I see,' Yanit said with a laugh. 'So if we stay up all night making love and don't go to sleep at all, will Christmas Day never actually happen?'

'Technically, it won't,' said Alex.

'Then I hope Christmas never, ever comes!' Yanit grinned, and she started to nuzzle his chest.

'Do you know what I really want for Christmas, Yanit?' said Alex. 'I want the War to be over, and I want my family to be safe and happy, and I want our daughter to grow up in a better world than the one we're a part of right now, and I want to be able to hold you in my arms and know we'll never, ever be apart.'

'You can do that last thing right now, my darling,' said Yanit. 'And the rest will come in time; I just know it will!'

'Do you think we're taking advantage of my mom, using her as a twenty-four hour babysitting service?'

'No, I don't think we're taking advantage of her. She loves running her little nursery; apart from anything else, it helps to take her mind off other things.'

Alex raised an eyebrow and said, 'Did she tell you that?'

'Yes, she did,' said Yanit. 'Alex, do you believe in destiny?'

'It's hard not to, being the Supreme Medjai,' said Alex. 'I've always known that there's a fine line between destiny and coincidence, but I guess they're really the same thing.'

'Yes, I agree,' said Yanit.

'I know you believe in destiny,' said Alex. 'The first day we met, you told me it was your destiny to be a Medjai warrior.'

'Little did I realise that becoming a Medjai was only half the story,' said Yanit. 'You're my true destiny, Alex; you always were.'

Alex adopted a pensive expression for a few moments, then he turned his head so that he was looking into Yanit's eyes.

'There's one part of my life story that I've never told you, Yanit,' said Alex. 'I haven't been keeping it from you deliberately – it's just that I never really think about it myself, or at least I don't form any coherent thoughts about it if it does ever cross my mind.'

'You don't have to excuse yourself to me, Alex,' Yanit assured him. 'After all, I kept that story about my breaking the doorknob from you until the time seemed right to mention it.'

Alex laughed and nodded, then he pulled himself to his feet and went over to a nearby chest of drawers. After rooting amongst some of his clothes for a while, he withdrew a small, gold-embossed sheet of writing paper. He looked at it for a few moments, then he crossed back over to the bed and handed the paper to Yanit.

'What is it?' she asked.

'The final secret,' said Alex. 'My final secret. Go ahead and read it, Yanit.'

'Such tiny writing,' Yanit remarked, blinking at the mysterious missive, 'but very neatly and deliberately formed. The Forbidden City, China. August twenty-ninth, nineteen thirty-five. Dear Alex, I write to wish you a very happy twelfth birthday, and also to show you how much my written English has improved over the past few months, and to make you an offer that I hope you will find suitably appealing. I am sure you will be pleased to learn that Lin Chou has now fully recovered from the injuries he suffered as a result of my thoughtlessness (as you see, I am now completely willing to take full responsibility for my own actions and mistakes, and I can also use brackets correctly) and he suggests that you might like to come here to the Forbidden City to stay with us for perhaps ten or even twelve months. I myself would greatly enjoy your company of course, and there are many fun things that I would dearly like the two of us to do together, but the crux of Lin Chou's suggestion is more a matter of business than of pleasure. I am sure you do not need me to remind you of the success you enjoyed in harnessing your manacle's power of telekinesis after availing yourself of Lin Chou's teachings, and now he is very keen to continue working with you if you would like to do so. He is certain that he can help you further to access and control the powers of your manacle, and he suggests that you should also be trained in several of the martial arts, as he is well aware of your physical prowess and would like to help you hone and direct your skills effectively. Your accommodation would be first-class, and I should naturally arrange for you to have your own staff of servants. I eagerly await your response, Alex, and I hope with all my heart that you will answer in the affirmative. Your friend, Emperor Jin Wu. But you didn't go, did you?'

'No,' said Alex. 'All the arrangements were in place for me to start at the Medjai Academy, so I wrote Jin Wu a very nice letter saying thanks but no thanks, and wishing him and Lin Chou all the best for the future. And we've exchanged important news and birthday greetings ever since.'

'But that's not the whole story, right?'

'Right. Yanit, you don't know how close I was to sending Ardeth the letter saying thanks but no thanks, and taking Jin Wu up on his offer as soon as I possibly could. I'd learned more from Lin Chou about the Manacle and about myself in a few days than I'd ever learned in my life before, and than I ever did learn here at the Medjai Academy. I really wanted to go to China... and there were so many times over the next couple of years when I wished I had gone to China! I almost wrote to ask Jin Wu to save me from the Medjai Academy so many times... but I didn't ever go through with it.'

'Were you put off by the idea of all the "fun things" he wanted to do with you?' said Yanit, grinning widely. 'It sounds to me like he had a distinctly sexual agenda, Alex.'

'Don't be silly,' said Alex, only managing a half-smile. 'Actually, the one part of the letter that did put me off slightly was the "staff of servants" bit. But I definitely found the rest of it "suitably appealing" – studying with Lin Chou, getting a real handle on the Manacle, learning the martial arts... and hanging out with Jin Wu, which I'm sure would've been a lot of fun and totally platonic. But I talked it over with my parents and my Uncle Jonathan – we must've discussed it for about a week – and in the end I decided to stick with the Medjai training, as that seemed to make more sense because of the direct connection to the Manacle and Imhotep.'

'But you didn't really like your Medjai training to begin with, did you?'

'No, I didn't.'

'So why didn't you go to China at that point?'

'I didn't want to quit – I wasn't about to let Ardeth's training scheme get the better of me!'

'So it was a matter of pride?'

'Yeah, I guess it was. And then it turned out that I had Medjai blood after all – which I was really happy about, as I'm sure you remember – and a little later I found out I was the Supreme Medjai, so I had to've made the right decision when I chose my Medjai training over going back to China, right? I mean, that's destiny in action, isn't it? So how could I not believe in it?'

'Yes, I see what you mean,' said Yanit. 'All very neat and tidy, Alex.'

'Except it isn't,' said Alex, 'because the truth is, it wasn't my pride or my Medjai blood that kept me coming back here in the end – it was you, Yanit. I wanted to be here because you were here. I knew how important being a Medjai was to you, and so it had to be important to me too, because you were important to me. If I'd gone running off to China, I'd have lost you forever.'

'That's nonsense, Alex,' said Yanit. 'We'd have stayed in touch, and we'd have come back together when the time was right. After all, if anyone did have a distinctly sexual agenda after getting to know you, it was definitely me!'

'But what if I'd taken Jin Wu up on his offer in the first place, before I met you?' Alex pointed out. 'Our paths might never have crossed, Yanit! We might've lived the whole of our lives completely unaware of each other's existence!'

'Actually, if you hadn't been here, I suspect the Dark Medjai would have killed us all,' said Yanit.

'I couldn't have defeated him without you,' Alex pointed out.

'I wouldn't have tried to defeat him if you hadn't been there to stand up to Fadil,' said Yanit. 'I'd have been stuck in that sand trap with all the others!'

'This is why I know I made the right choice,' said Alex. 'Because you and I were able to defeat the Dark Medjai together, and do a whole load of other stuff together, and fall in love and get rid of the Scarab and Imhotep and have a baby together! None of that would've happened if I'd gone to China.'

'It might have, eventually,' said Yanit. 'Imagine if you'd completed your training with Lin Chou, and you'd used your mastery of the Manacle and your formidable martial arts skills to defeat Imhotep for good, and Ardeth had written to congratulate you and asked you to come to the Medjai Academy to tell the recruits all about your adventures, and I'd seen you standing on the platform in the assembly hall...'

'And you'd have hated me!' said Alex. 'You'd have thought I was a preening prima donna with delusions of godhood who'd snubbed the sacred ways of the Medjai! And maybe that's exactly what I would've been, for all I know!'

Yanit smiled and said, 'Even if that's true, I'd still have fancied the pants off you. And I'd still have fallen in love with you, once I'd gotten to know you. That's destiny in action, and nothing will ever convince me that you and I weren't always going to be each other's.'

'In that case,' said Alex, leaning back against the headboard, 'I guess it never really made any difference whether I went to China or came here. So long as I have you, Yanit, nothing else matters.'

Yanit's smile widened, then she leapt up and straddled Alex's body, letting Jin Wu's letter drop to the floor as she arranged herself on all fours.

'I'm very happy to hear you say that, Alex,' she said, thrusting herself against him. 'For a moment I thought you might be regretting your decision not to go to China all those years ago, even if it did mean you'd probably have popped your blueberries inside Jin Wu instead of inside me!'

'The Medjai route was hard for me – much harder than I ever thought it could be,' said Alex. 'Do I think I'd have had an easier time in China? Yes, I do. Do I think it would've been better for me, both practically and emotionally? Yes, I do. But now I couldn't care less – for the first time in five years, I really couldn't care less! Because if you and I were always destined to be together, Yanit, how we got here just doesn't matter one way or the other!'

Yanit pulled herself into a half-kneeling, half-sitting position so that most of her weight was supported by Alex's pelvis. She shook her long black hair back over her shoulders, and fixed Alex with a sultry look. Alex stared unblinkingly at Yanit's dusky, naked body, and swallowed a gulp.

'Would you do it all again, Alex,' said Yanit, 'exactly as it was before, with all the pain and the hardship and the self-doubt, for the two of us to be here in this precise position, at this precise moment?'

Alex nodded and said, 'I'd do it a thousand times, Yanit.'

Yanit smiled, wrapped her arms around Alex's shoulders, leaned her face in close to his, and whispered, 'I bet I can push you up to a thousand and one!'

Yanit awoke to the sight of Alex crouching on the floor beside the bed, his face almost exactly level with hers. He smiled at her, then he rose to his feet with Jin Wu's letter clasped in his hand. As Yanit watched, Alex held the sheet of paper to the flame of the bedside candle. It flared up at once. Alex spent a few seconds dropping ash into the circular dish at the base of the candlestick, then he threw in what remained of the letter and left it to smoulder. Turning away from the burning paper, he climbed carefully over Yanit and then snuggled up to her back so that they were in the spooning position. Yanit leaned over her shoulder and kissed him.

'Did that small piece of pyromania make you feel better, my love?' she asked.

'I'm not really sure,' Alex replied. 'But I am sure that I'm not gonna let myself worry anymore about what might've been – I'll only think about the present, and certain parts of the past, and try to use what I've learned to be the best father, the best brother and the best Supreme Medjai I can be in the future.'

'No one could ever hope to do more,' said Yanit. 'So you're definitely feeling okay, then?

'Yeah, I am.'

'Not out of sorts at all?'

'No, I don't think so,' said Alex. 'Why do you ask?'

'Because you've been lying there for more than thirty seconds,' said Yanit, 'and you haven't made any attempt to breach my gates from behind!'

'I thought you might just want to snuggle for a while,' said Alex.

'Don't be silly,' said Yanit, and she smiled as Alex readjusted his position slightly. 'Hmm, I've just realised – it must be Christmas Day, now that we've had a sleep.'

'So it must,' said Alex. 'Happy Christmas, Yanit.'

'I'll be happy after you've filled my stocking,' said Yanit. 'Alex, do you think there's a parallel universe where we're in this exact position at this exact time, except we're in China instead of Egypt?'

'I'm not going to think about parallel universes; that's the same as thinking about what might've been,' Alex pointed out.

'Oh yeah, I guess it is,' said Yanit. 'But you could think about a universe where we're not in this position at this exact time, in China or Egypt or anywhere else, because that could never have been – it's an impossibility!'

'Yeah,' said Alex, as his breathing began to quicken, 'a total impossibility!'