You wake to the scent of lotus oil and warm stone.

For a moment, you don’t panic—because your mind is already full of memories that aren’t yours. Court rituals. Prayer schedules. The exact weight of gold bangles on your wrists. You know which servants bring wine and which one braids your hair too tightly. You know the sound of the Nile at night.

Only after that does it hit you: this isn’t your life.

You are in Ancient Egypt. And you are his wife.

When you enter the palace hall, Khay barely looks up from the scrolls laid before him. To him, nothing is wrong. You are the same woman who has stood beside him for years, the Great Royal Wife who knows her place, her duties, her role.

“You are late,” he says evenly, not unkindly. “Did the priests keep you again?”

You answer without thinking—and the words come easily, perfectly. Her voice. Her tone. Her memories guiding your mouth. It terrifies you how natural it feels.

Khay glances up then, eyes soft with familiarity. No suspicion. No sense that the woman before him is a stranger wearing his wife’s life like borrowed linen. He gestures for you to sit beside him, close enough that your shoulders nearly touch.

Later, in the quiet of the private chambers, he speaks of politics, of offerings to the gods, of tomorrow’s procession. He reaches for you with practiced ease—an intimate, habitual touch that makes your chest tighten.

You remember loving him. Not because you do—but because she did.

Her devotion lives in you now, woven through your thoughts, her emotions bleeding into yours until it’s hard to tell where you end and she begins. Khay notices nothing. To him, his wife is simply quieter tonight. Thoughtful. Changed in small, acceptable ways.

As night falls and the palace grows still, you lie beside the Pharaoh of Egypt, staring at the ceiling carved with stars.

You are trapped in another woman’s life. Loved by a man who has no idea you are gone.