Prologue
The young woman awoke with a start, eyes wide and chest heaving with each labored breath that she took. Pain blossomed across her abdomen, tears filled her eyes and her lower lip quivered as she fought to hold back a sob. Reaching up, she ran a hand through the matted mess of her red hair, trying to still the shaking in her extremities. She could hear the blood rushing through her ears, her heart thundering in her chest and beating against her ribcage faster than a hummingbird's wings.
Ever since her return from the cursed city, she had been having dreams. Dreams that felt real and made her feel a yearning she had never before known. Her heart ached at the loss of something that was not hers and she placed a hand on her belly. Tears fell silently down her cheeks, biting her lip to keep the whimpering at bay. She had no right to feel this way, no reason to feel this way, and yet she did. A loss she had never felt before. An emptiness that was not her own, but one she felt just as acutely as though it were.
The woman in her dream had looked so startlingly familiar. Most of her dreams consisted of the woman standing proudly at an altar, making offerings to a goddess. A fearsome beast with the body of a woman, her head the likeness of a ravenous lioness, deadly, but beautiful all the same. It was clear that the woman was a priestess of some kind, her patron goddess being that of Sekhmet. However, this dream was different. There was a note of finality to this dream, a darkness that loomed over her.
She knew from her previous dreams that the woman was pregnant. In her dreamlike state, the redhead watched the woman in her dreams as she wandered through the temple of her patron goddess. Her belly was slightly swollen, one of her hands placed lovingly -protectively- over the bump. She seemed at ease with a smile on her fair face and joy in her eyes. However, even being asleep, she could feel a cold chill descend upon the woman, watching as she stilled near a likeness of Sekhmet. She could see the woman's posture change in an instant, her body now rigid and eyes narrowed. But it was too late. She watched on, helpless, as a man stepped forth from the shadows with a deadly blade in one hand and rage in his eyes.
The woman tried to yell for her guards, her voice cracking as she pleaded with the man. Her hands were wrapped around her abdomen, tears filling her eyes as she begged for her unborn child's life, but to no avail. She could feel the woman's fear as though it were her own, the finality of it all crashing down around her. The last thing she saw before jolting awake were the limestone eyes of an angry goddess. She had sat up screaming just as the man lunged for the woman. She could feel a searing pain in her abdomen, tears filling her eyes as she cried for something that was not, and would never be, hers.
Wide awake, the redhead threw the threadbare blanket from her body, her bare feet making contact with the cool floor beneath her. Her elbows rested on her knees, head in her hands as she shed silent tears.
"Why?" she questioned no one in particular. "Why?"
So, I've gone through and done an edit on the whole fic! If you've read it already, I highly recommend you go back and read it again if you wanna read the changes! Much love!