"So what do we do ?" Amelia asked as she circled in the small, confine space of our cabin inside the boat.
For some reason, we had been forced back inside our room and guards had been placed to watch our door. Every five minutes or so, they'd knock to see if everything was alright and we had to reply with another knock.
Amelia was pacing around the room, Callum was sitting on the bed and had requested something to write on while I just stood there.
"Can't we find a way to prove her innocence?" I asked but Amelia wasn't listening as she was engaged in her own monologue and Callum was absorbed in his thinking.
How could we get Eopei out of this trouble?
"I guess we just have to wait and see." Callum finally said.
"Are you freaking kidding me?"
"All we know is that she got arrested and that follows the event of the past, the ones in the history books we have. But these books don't tell us what happened after; we know that her brother came to look for her and that they disappeared but it's most probably because of politics. There's a lot of theories that lead to assassination."
Amelia stopped circling around and dropped on the bed, next to Callum.
He shifted away to make some space and they both turned to look at me. When I didn't say anything, Amelia widened her eyes and gestured for me to say something.
"So do we wait and see?" I asked.
"I suggest we do exactly that. Wait and see. We need to think of who could possibly want to kill her and why, but also we need someone we can trust to protect her." Callum explained and he gave us a detailed idea of what he wanted to do.
1. We needed to make sure that Eopei was safe, treated properly and well... alive.
2. We needed to find someone that we could trust and that would look after her even though she was technically an enemy of the state.
3. We had to find who would want to kill her and why.
But as for now, I knew exactly who we could trust.
----------------
"You want me to do what?"
Aero had been helping some guards train on the deck when we went up to talk to him. He stopped his training session but didn't seem to comprehend our request.
"Could you please ensure that Eopei is safe? That no one tries to kill her?" I repeated again.
" I heard you the first time. But do you understand it's impossible for me to protect her? It would be going against an imperial order and I'm only an officer. Why don't you ask General Ta..."
I stopped him before he even pronounced that name.
"I think he doesn't want to be talked to right now. You are the only one we can trust."
And so Officer Aero agreed to help us out. He would take duty to watch Eopei's cell from times to times and watch out for any particular or suspicious behavior from anyone.
Callum also suggested that we did more research on our side, so we would find out more details about what had happened at the time. Amelia volunteered to help him out and they both went back to the cabin to "mind map" the events.
I stayed on the deck a bit more, trying to refresh my mind from all that had happened in the last few hours.
We had sailed further away than the Egyptian coast and no boat was following us, which meant we weren't going to be attacked anytime soon. The wind was good and the weather was calm so no storm might compromise the journey back to Rome.
"Where did the other gods go?"
I turned around so fast my neck started to hurt. A sharp pain spread around but I ignored it as Tatum Marcus was now facing me.
His eyes had dark circles that fell on this cheekbones, his lips were dried and it seemed as if all life had been drained out of his body. He could walk but couldn't run, had to hold into something to stand straight and was still recovering from his wound.
"They wanted to rest." I replied "how are you?"
"I'm fine. The wounds are healing and I just need to rest a bit more before training again."
He was about to turn around and leave but he suddenly tripped forward. With his reflex, he grabbed the wooden rail and caught himself just in time before falling over me. Now we were only a few centimeters away from another, my eyes fixed right on his lips. I could feel his breath near my ear and I was trapped by his hands that were positioned on both side of the rail. He was shaking, as if he's ran a marathon and would probably fall over in a few seconds.
However I was surprised to see that he didn't collapse. He simply maintained himself up by holding onto the rail. My back was pressed against it, the ocean a few meters under and him just so close. So so close.
"Are you alright?" I whispered but he did not reply. His eyes met mine but he did not look away. He just stood there, as if everything was alright, as if everything was normal and as if it was supposed to be that way.
"I'm too old aren't I?" He suddenly said, his voice shaking.
"Pardon?"
"And you're just so young?"
I didn't understand what he meant by that.
What was too old? Why was he...
Oh.
Had he meant that we had to much of an age difference?
I realized he was talking about us. With my time-traveling from the present to the past, I was only eighteen but he...
He was a young general in a roman army, he had lived through Cleopatra's reign and he had fought in many battles or wars. He had seen palaces being build and he had survived many disasters or diseases. But that was thousands of years ago. That was ages away from my time.
The young man I knew, the man who stood in front of me, might appear about twenty years old ( more or less ) but he was older in the sense that he was in the past. We had thousands of years apart.
We would never make it work out...
I had thousands of years to wait before being born and he had died thousands of years ago when I took my first breath.
But when I wanted to tell him it didn't matter, when I wanted to hold him close and tell him everything would be alright, when I wanted to stay by his side, he was long gone.
{Author's note}
Hey guys! I'm sorry if you've got trouble finding the story :( there's a few problems because I mostly update on my iPod app (which is all in French even though I registered with an English account) and so the story changed from French to English and I can't settle it or solve the problem :(
It means that less people can view my story since it appears in the French version of the site but not English (I guess that's how it works?).
We were classes in the top 1000 of teen fiction but not anymore. I'm so grateful we even made it that far so let's try our best to share, comment and vote please! Don't forget to do so because it means a lot to me!!! If you could share the story to your friends it would be so important for me as well :)
Please write comments in your thoughts or how you feel about each characters or what you wish would happen?? I read all the comments and will reply :p
Thank you again so much! And see you soon for another chapter update!