Chapter Sixteen

"Where are we going?" Delia couldn't help but ask Zaid when he took a turn away from the hotel. So much for never talking to him again.

"The library. I want to do some research about the temple."

She gaped at him. "You mean you started digging without knowing anything about the place? What if it was like a trap or something?"

"Of course I know about the temple," Zaid said, annoyed. "But I don't know enough, and Ishizu has all the books. She studies them like a freaking mother hen.

"What's wrong with that? If you love your work, then you should be reading too," Delia said, thinking of Seto.

"That's why I'm going to the library to get some more files and books. They won't help much, but it's gonna be a start." Zaid turned the wheel and parked the car in the lot efficiently.

She followed him out grumpily. If he was going to take her away from the job on her first day, then he should've at least dropped her off at the hotel before coming here.

"Do you even know what the temple is called?" she asked as they headed to the library's entrance.

Zaid said something that she couldn't catch, meaning that it wasn't in English or any other language she spoke. She guessed that it was probably Arabic, since it was Egypt's official language.

"It literally means 'love spawns death' if translated into English, but it's actually just one of the many temples that ancient Egyptians built to honor the dead and Osiris," Zaid explained, holding open the library door for her. At least he had some gentlemanly manners.

This doesn't look like a library, was her first thought as they entered the three-story building.

Delia wandered around as Zaid went straight toward the librarian. The place was huge. She wasn't big on books, but this place, it looked like that it contained all the books in the world. On one side was a shelf that occupied the entire wall, which was three stories. To her right were stairs to the second and third floor. It place smelled of old musty books as well. Seriously, this was a library? Even bookstores weren't this big.

"What are you looking at?"

"Why is it so big?" she muttered as she took another long look around her before facing Zaid. He was carrying several books and tons of folders with papers sticking out everywhere. He really didn't have the scholarly look, so it was kind of hilarious to see him holding all those things.

"Are you already done?" she asked.

"Yeah, I called a few days ago, so Vivian already had everything ready for me," Zaid grumbled as they headed out. Even though she was only inside for a short amount of time, she still felt kind of dizzy. It was just she'd never seen or expected any library to be that humongous.

They arrived back at the hotel about twenty minutes later. As Zaid started to gather the books and files from the car, she asked, "Why are you getting those? You don't live here."

He merely threw her an annoyed glance as he stepped back to let the valet take the car. "You didn't think I'd let you off the hook this easily, did you? We're going to read through this together. It'll go much faster."

One closer glance at the things he carried showed her nothing eligible. All she saw were scribbles. "You know, Zaid, I don't read Arabic," she said, pointing out what seemed was the obvious.

Zaid grunted as if he just realized it. Maybe it wasn't so obvious after all. "Well, I'm sure you can find something in English," he muttered gloomily.

"We could just skip all this and return to the site," she suggested, fluttering her lashes at him even though she knew she couldn't pull off the innocent look well at all. "I feel perfectly fine now."

"No."

Delia resisted the urge to stomp her feet. That would just be too childish. "Why? Don't you want to help at the site with whatever they found? You could be missing an important moment in archeological history!"

All she received was a droll look. "You think I want to babysit you when I could be on the site working? Ishizu made me take you."

"You listen to Ishizu?" Delia asked as she slid her card in and the door unlocked. She opened the door and almost closed it in Zaid's face but thought better of it. She was here to be independent and to learn, not to throw tantrums when things didn't go her way.

"I don't like listening to her, but it's no use arguing with that woman. She's as stubborn as a mule." Zaid kicked the door closed.

Delia grinned, feeling rather vindicated. She had no idea Ishizu was like that, but at least she was something who could help if Delia ever needed someone to deal with Zaid.

Dumping everything on the coffee table, Zaid sank into the sofa. He turned to the files and started to skim through them. Delia popped down on the other side, thinking of ways to get rid of him, or better, to get back to the site instead of reading. She definitely didn't come here to read.

As she was thinking, something came flying from Zaid's direction and hit her on the head. "There's something in English. You can read it."

"Why do I have to read it? I hate reading," Delia grumbled. She didn't really hate reading, but that wasn't the point.

"Do you think I like to read?" Zaid shot her an ice cold glare. "If we finish reading this today, I can take you back to the site tomorrow. If we don't, then you'll have to stay here and read all by yourself tomorrow until you're done with all this."

"Why me?" she wailed, sounding like an actress from a bad soap opera. Zaid's lips quirked at the corners. Looking at him, she asked, this time serious, "Why do we have to do this? Can't Ishizu just tell us?"

"I doubt that she would know what happened to you in the temple earlier."

"We won't know by reading. We'll find out more if we just go back to the site."

Zaid threw up his hands, exasperated. "Just stop talking and read, OK? We don't know if what happened to you earlier could hurt you or not, so we can't risk letting you near that temple unless we know more."

"Ha! So that's the problem!" She pointed at him accusingly.

"Yes! If worrying about your safety is a crime, then sue me." Delia suddenly found herself speechless. He was worried? About her? "I'm sure that boyfriend of yours would do the same thing."

Flustered, Delia mumbled, "You don't know anything about Seto." She picked up the files Zaid laid out for her and said, "If I help by reading all this, promise me you'll let me go back to the site tomorrow. I'll die of boredom if you don't."

"I promise."

"Good."

Delia started skimming through the English files. Zaid continued to give her random papers as she flipped through them. Most of them were pretty useless stuff or things that she already knew about, such as that the temple was used to honor Anubis and Osiris. However, she found out that it was build around 1000 BC; high priests of Egypt used it to mummify people of high status.

On a script that was almost unreadable, Delia found that this temple was also where high priests unlocked monsters that were within people who had high spiritual power and locked them in stone tablets, where the monsters were used for fighting.

It also indicated that sometimes people who had these monsters taken from them either died or became crazy, but in rare cases they returned to normal after being sick for a short amount of time. Yet, the most amazing thing was that these monsters were real and very hard to control. They could destroy the world if not properly managed.

How bizarre, she thought as she read it. Even though a small voice in the back of her head warned her not to throw it away, she disregarded what she'd just read from the script and considered it as garbage written by people who had nothing better to do than to just make up stories.

"Did you find anything?" Zaid leaned over the coffee table and asked.

"Hold on. I'm almost done," she said absentmindedly and did her best to concentrate on reading instead of on the large male inches away and sighed when Zaid stood up and left the room.

When she finished, Zaid came back to the room with two glasses of water and handed her one. "Thanks," she said as she took it. "So did you find anything?"

"Yeah. I put everything useful in that stack." He pointed to the shorter stack of papers and books.

"So what does it say?"

Delia thought she should've done the same thing he did, but she had no idea which one was useful and which ones weren't since she didn't know what she was supposed to be looking for.

Zaid plopped down beside her and reached over to grab the book on top of the short stack. He didn't act like someone who'd just confessed to the girl he liked. Rather, from the focused expression on his face, it felt like nothing had ever happened. It was almost hard to believe that Zaid was such a stubborn person much like Seto.

"Mainly, it just said that temple was constructed in 1000 BC. It was very popular until the Pharaoh had it closed after some incident or experiment a high priest did," Zaid explained.

"Closed?" Her brows furrowed. "What happened?"

"Gee, be patient. I'm getting there," he complained. Delia glared at him and waited, though she'd rather whack him on the head. He was just so infuriating. "Anyway," he continued, "they have different versions of what happened. The most popular is that the high priest succeeded in resurrecting a person, but that person wasn't normal. She was evil and threatened to destroy the world, so all the priests had to work together to kill her. After that the temple was banned from use."

Delia rolled her eyes. Of course it was something like that. Didn't every story have something to do with an evil person trying to destroy the world and ultimately failing at it?

Seeing that she wasn't going to comment, Zaid went on, "Another version of the story is more bizarre. It's almost the same, but instead, it has records about duel monsters."

"Duel monsters?" Now she was hooked. She recalled the script about the monsters sealed in the stone tablets. Perhaps it wasn't crap after all.

"Yeah. Back then, monsters were sealed in stone tablets, where priests summoned them to fight each other." So it's true. "We have proof that they really existed as real monsters, even though no one really believes us."

She could tell from his tone that he was waiting for her to make fun of him, to make light of it, but honestly, she wanted to know more.

"Go on," she urged him.

He shot her a surprised look which she responded by arching a brow at him. Smiling, Zaid said, "So, the other version said that a high priest fell in love with a Protector."

"Protector? What's that?"

"Protectors are special monsters that weren't sealed in the stone tablets. They are bodyguards of certain people who can afford them. Mostly, only the aristocracy has them, especially the royal family, but if a peasant has the spiritual power to summon and hold them, then they probably have one as well.

"These protectors can be seen as real people, but they're invisible to the normal eye, unless they're seen with people who have a considerable amount of spiritual power, like the priests. Even then, they are usually semi-transparent, only extremely powerful priests can see them in solid form. It is said that this Protector, whose name was Resurrection"—Delia's heart lurched. Resurrection. That was what Seto had called her in the temple.

Zaid didn't notice that she had pale visibly and continued, "Resurrection was the Protector of a princess from south of Egypt. Dalila, the princess from this kingdom, married Pharaoh Atem from the northern kingdom to seal an alliance against the southernmost kingdom during this time. As Dalila's protector, Resurrection went with her master.

"The records have it that Resurrection looked exactly like Dalila, because she is actually Dalila's twin sisters who died of disease. The king, their father, could not stand the sorrow of losing his younger daughter, so he went to the temple in Egypt secretly and tried to resurrect his daughter. But the daughter he'd resurrected wasn't human, but actually a monster that looked like his daughter. In the end, he sacrificed himself so he could bring back the soul of his daughter to put into the monster's body.

"Before he died, he named her Resurrection, because she will have the power to resurrect anything from death, except for a human, because the gods would not allow her to cheat the cycle that was as old as time. His father also tied her to his other daughter, Dalila, thus making Resurrection Dalila's Protector, so that when Dalila went to Egypt for her marriage, she will have someone to protect her."

"So when Resurrection met this high priest, they fell in love? What's this priest's name?" Delia asked, even thought she already knew who the priest was.

Something mysterious glinted in Zaid's eyes. "You'd be surprised, but the priest's name was Seto Kaiba."

Delia shrugged, not lest bothered by the fact. "What happened to them to make the temple disappear?"

This time, it was Zaid who shrugged. "It doesn't really say. Something about a girl that the priest used to love came between them, but the thing was, the girl was dead. Priest Seto preserved her body because he was the one who caused her death, but it seemed something happened between them and Resurrection tried to resurrect the girl and lost her soul in the process."

That sounded similar to what she'd deduced from the episode in the temple. "So what happened to the girl and Priest Seto afterwards?"

"I don't know. All it says is that the temple banned from us again by anyone after that incident, except for the priest, but after he died, it was basically abandoned."

Normally, after hearing this, Delia would never have considered it to be real, but after what had happened in the temple, she was certain that this story was real. She had been inside of Resurrection and saw the past where she had resurrected the girl that Seto used to love—Kisara.

"Does it ring any bells?"

Delia looked up at Zaid, startled. "No, not really," she lied, deciding not to tell him more than what she already did.

Zaid was quiet for a minute, as if he knew she was lying, but then he said, "Well, we're done with reading. Wanna go get something to eat?" He stood up and stretched.

"Eat?" She'd just had brunch before she'd left the site. However, when she looked out the window, she realized that the sun was almost below the horizon. "Did we read that long?"

"Apparently so," Zaid said with a sheepish grin and pulled her up. "Come on. It'll be our first date."

Delia studied him, then looked at herself, and burst out laughing. They were both covered in dirt. It would be some kind of first date to go in what they were dressed in. From the sheepish look on Zaid's face, he was probably thinking the same thing.

"I don't think that's a good idea," she said while trying to step to the side, but his arm wrapped around her waist before she could escape. Taking a step forward, he forced her to sit down again and planted one hand on either side of her face, effectively caging her. "Don't, Zaid. I'm warning you."

"And why should I listen?" He leaned closer, his nose almost touching hers. Delia's breath hitched as his large male presence crowded her.

"Because I'm going to hurt you if you don't."

Zaid grinned, his eyes dropping to her lips. "I just want a taste," he murmured and lowered his head toward hers.

Before she lost her wits, Delia threw up her hands and pushed him. Taken by surprise, Zaid fell to the left, but he took her with him. She struggled, but somehow when it was all over Delia found herself lying under him on the sofa, his thighs over her legs to stop her from moving, his hands holding both of her wrists prisoner.

"Kiss me," he whispered against her ear and nipped at her earlobe.

"Stop it," she ordered breathlessly and couldn't stop the involuntary shiver that the sensation sent through her system.

She should be scared. After all, she was completely helpless against him, but instead, she was curious, almost impatient for what was about to happen.

"You don't mean it. If you want me to stop, say it like you mean it." Zaid's lips moved around her jaw and tugged on her lower lip.

Unable, or unwilling, to escape it, Delia turned her head and met him head on. She felt his lips curve against hers in a smile and wanted to hit him, but soon found her thoughts scatter to the four winds as he angled his head and deepened the kiss.

Delia didn't know what happened, but she felt a sense of déjà vu. His scent, the feeling his hard body against hers, all felt so familiar. Their tongues dueled, and once again she felt like she wasn't in control of her body, just like…

Just like back in the temple.

Shocked, Delia tore her mouth again. The sound of ragged breathing filled her ears, hers and his. When she found the courage to look at Zaid, the intensity behind his look scared her, but it was gone in a second. A smile curved his lips, just not as easygoing as before, "So did you forget your boyfriend?"

For a second, her mind drew a blank, then when the meaning of those words registered in her mind, she began struggling, not that it was any use, but she didn't plan on stopping until he got off of her. "Let me go, you bastard!"

She couldn't believe it! She'd actually enjoyed his kiss!

"Let go of me!" Her scream died off as unexpected tears flooded out. How could she have enjoyed it? What kind of person was she? Oh God, how could she face Seto again?

Zaid, seeing her tears, relented, and barely dodged her knee aimed for his groin.

"Go! Get away from me!" Delia point to the door, trying to retain her calm and will away the tears. She couldn't believe she was crying in front of this jerk! Yet, the thought of losing Seto, of having him hate her, was unbearable.

She'd rather die.

Zaid didn't move, instead just sat there looking at her with an inscrutable expression, as if she'd just ruined his love life instead of the other way around. Then his lips thinned and anger flared in his eyes.

"You don't belong with him," he said tightly.

Shocked, Delia opened her mouth, but before she could ask what he meant by that, he'd already stalked out and slammed the door behind him.

Feeling defeated, Delia collapsed on the sofa. His last words till confused her. He'd spoken as if he knew that to be the truth, but how? And the kiss. Yet, she'd enjoyed it, but at the same time, it hadn't been her. The sense of déjà vu was clear in her mind.

Instead of thinking herself into a stupor, Delia's mind returned to Seto and her heart lurched. Please please never let him find out about this, she prayed to whatever deity there was. If she lost him after all this, she wouldn't know what to do. He was the only anchor holding her here, making her life bearable.

Don't make me lose him, please.

After leaving Delia's penthouse, Zaid drove back to the site. Some people were still there, finishing up for the day. He didn't leave the car, but instead reclined in his seat and just looked at the empty lot in front of him. It hadn't always been empty, and no doubt soon his team will uncover the area, but now, nothing was there expect for the cars.

He recalled driving past here three years ago, when there was nothing but sand next to the road, and he'd stopped, pulled by some mysterious force. That night, he had remembered—the past, the endless reincarnations, the loneliness, the uncertainty of not knowing if this was the one. If he had to wait for another lifetime for his second chance.

Then he had met her at the airport. Delia Yasune. And he had known that this was it.

His second chance. Hers. Kaiba's. And Kisara's.

Sighing, Zaid closed his eyes. In his mind, he saw the area as it was 3000 years ago. Tall, ionic columns rose, framing a courtyard with a small fountain in the middle. He could still remember that day clearly, when he'd last seen her. Sitting at the edge of the fountain, her hair flowing in the wind, he remembered how his heart had wrenched just seeing her again.

"You said too much." The images disappeared at the sound of those words, spoken in that familiar soft and gentle voice.

His eyes opened and he turned to face the blue-haired girl that appeared in his passenger seat. "What are you doing here?"

She gave him a sad smile. "The same thing you are." Taking her eyes off of him, she stared into the distance at the temple. "We should not interfere."

Zaid snorted. "And what are you doing here if not interfering?"

"He's coming," was all she said, her expression one of longing.

"And you're going to see him," Zaid said calmly. He didn't need to ask who "he" was, for there was only one person the woman beside him waited for, just like he had waited. When she said nothing, he rolled his eyes, "So much for not interfering."

"We both have things we want, prince."

"That we do, and we'll both do anything to have them." Zaid let his expression harden. "But if you hurt her, I won't let you go so easily this time."

She studied him before saying softly, "You mistake me. I do not want him, nor do I wish to harm Layla. I just want him to be happy. That's all I'm here for, to make up for what happened 3000 years ago."

Stunned, Zaid was speechless. All these years and he had been mistaken.

"Think about what you want, prince. This time we should help them find what they lost."

At those words, Zaid's jaw clenched. "She's not his," he warned her darkly.

All she did was throw him a fleeting smile and said, "We'll see," before disappearing, leaving Zaid to his own thoughts.

A/N: So it shouldn't take me this long to update, since I've really got nothing better to do right now, but I just couldn't find the inspiration to write, therefore the 3 weeks in between. Anyway, the Zaid part was completely out of thin air. I wanted someone else to compete for Delia's affections, but didn't want it to be just a normal thing, so I decided hmm, why not let Zaid be part of their past too? Makes it so much more interesting, isn't?

As always, please REVIEW and till next time!