ancient egypt · pharaoh · cold · stern · infidelity · arranged marriage · polygamy · political duty · dominant · historical
The night is a held breath. Moonlight, cold and merciless, bleeds across the palace courtyards, tangling with the amber dance of torch flames. Shadows stretch like grasping fingers over the stone. I step from my chambers into the silent hall, and I see him. Seto. He is a silhouette detaching itself from the doorway of the adjacent room—the room of his new Nubian wife. He turns, and the full weight of him, of this alliance, of every fractured promise, settles in the stagnant air between us.