I have only one thing to say to everyone.... "Patience is a virtue." Tee hee.

My recommendation of the day is Eve's "Never Spellbound by a Starry Sky." Everyone should read and review it, it's fabulous!:)

Title, I suppose, belongs to Harry Connick, Jr. Love him:)

Chapter 8

Just Kiss Me!

As promised, Achsu-rai arrived at the training room the next morning, albeit a little late. Nefertiri and Anck-su-namun had already begun to fight, and the only other person in the room was a young maidservant who stood near the door, observing. Upon Achsu-rai's entrance she bowed her head and fled the room, but the two other women were oblivious to anyone else's presence.

As Achsu-rai watched, Nefertiri lunged viciously at Anck-su-namun, the golden sai flashing dangerously close to her teacher's head. Anck-su-namun returned the attack, forcing Nefertiri to retreat quickly, almost into the corner of the room. One more swipe of the dagger and she was trapped, and the only thing keeping Anck's blade from her throat was her own thrashing sais. She held off Anck's blows as long as she could, then, ducking, managed to evade her. Unfortunately, as Nefertiri rolled away, Anck-su-namun had already whirled around, lashing out with her foot, and with a well-placed kick Nefertiri was sprawled on the ground.

"You disappoint me, Nefertiri," Anck-su-namun hissed, spinning her daggers in her nimble hands and turning away. "All this training, clearly going to waste--"

Anck-su-namun's sentence was never finished, for Nefertiri had leapt up from her position on the floor and threw herself at her opponent's back. With quick instincts Anck turned and took Nefertiri's attack with ease, soon turning her role of defendant into assailant in but a few fleeting moments, finally catching Nefertiri across the arm in one brutal swipe--

"Stop!" Achsu-rai bellowed, attempting to pull the two apart. "What are you trying to do, kill each other?"

"She started it," Nefertiri muttered, raising her mask.

"Princess," Achsu-rai said, trying not to let the alarm show in his voice, "you're bleeding."

"Just a skin wound," she said quietly, not bothering to inspect her arm before making the statement. "I'm not a child," she added, more to Anck-su-namun than to Achsu-rai.

"Well, you act like it sometimes," he told her anyhow.

"Look who's talking."

"Anck-su-namun, you will do well in the future to avoid drawing blood," he said sternly. "Now go."

Suspiciously filing away the seeming familiar ness between the two, Anck-su-namun retrieved her things and slunk out of the training room. She had not removed her gold-plated mask, and Achsu-rai found himself a bit unsettled by the sinister eye slits she had trained on him. He went to the nearby medicine cabinet and took out a clean cloth. "Let me see your arm."

"I can take of myself."

"Now."

Slightly frightened at his tone of voice, Nefertiri obeyed. As he cleaned the wound, she realized how much it actually did hurt. She'd been too enraged during the actual fight to even notice, but now...

"Ow," she protested, pulling her arm away. "Don't do that."

"Don't do what?" he asked, his anger getting the best of him. "Help you? Stop the pair of you from nearly killing each other?"

"That's our business."

"You're going to get yourself hurt!"

"What do you care?"

"Fine, go ahead, bleed to death."

For a moment they just stared at each other in silent fury, but then Nefertiri allowed him to take her arm again. He wound the bandage perhaps tighter than was necessary. "Why do you let her get to you like that?" he asked. "I thought you were friends."

Nefertiri's face once again bore that stony royal facade she wore so well. "Anck-su-namun was just a servant, and she is no longer. That's all there is to it."

"Don't lie to me."

"How do you know I'm lying?"

"I can tell."

"Can you? You think you know me so well?"

"I think I have known you forever, Princess."

After a strange sort of pause, Nefertiri cleared her throat and remarked, "It is dangerous to take such liberties with me, Achsu-rai. I can only imagine what my father might think if he heard you say such things."

"Your father is the only one keeping me from--" Achsu-rai cut short his sentence abruptly. He'd almost admitted to her that--

"What?"

"I have to be somewhere in a few minutes."

Nefertiri sighed heavily. "I'm sorry."

"For what?"

"For thinking there was something between us. I see now that I was wrong."

It was not her words that cut him so deeply, it was his inability to refute them out loud. "Don't say that."

"Am I wrong, then?"

Achsu-rai could see her composure breaking. It was not anger, not this time, that threatened to seethe over the walls she tried so hard to hold up...they were tears. He could see them shimmering in her glassy eyes, just waiting to tip over her eyelashes and smudge the lines of kohl so carefully applied that morning. Presented with a portrait like that, could the pharaoh, could anyone, blame him? He wanted more than anything to show her she was wrong, to kiss away the tears, to say the words he had so long wanted to say...

...just one kiss...

--

Holding the reader's interest is all about timing...cackle, cackle, cackle...leave me a review and perhaps the fates will smile on my keyboard.

If any of you particularly have a crush on Khalil, let me know, and you might get a nice little surprise in chapter 9;)