good meat in his belly, the drink turning veins to fire. khusobek, who had left the next rotation outside the queen's chamber to another guard, now lay in spinning pleasantry upon a rough-hewn floor.

eset's voice reached for him, through the stupor, the flesh-buzzing, the tiny knifing to imagine inji and rashepses together: a gift and a pharaoh. had he ever wanted that?

his eyes were open now, blinking toward the servant's pointed face. there was no fatal urgency that might indicate the queen was in danger, though khusobek came to his feet all the same. 

was there a new shade to the gaze above the collarless throat? the crocodile was still, waiting for what he did not understand, for her voice in a way had been its own order.

no fellahin could seek to command a mazoi.

but eset's tone made her flicker pharaonic in his blood.

he imagined the press of paw to the heavy power of his throat,

and his eyes darkened into a moonless navy expansion of wanting pupil;

it was not her mouth for which khusobek meant now. it was the downcast head, mouth upon her instep, then ankle, then forearm; the rounded curve of her shoulder; throat, eartip;

her fire, spicewine upon a kiss that was finally at last for her own jawline, and khusobek felt now that eset felt the answering aching fibres of him; hers entire for however long she wished.

he was burning. eset was a brand of fire which breathed heat into him as if a bellows flared between their bodies. 

the sound in her throat was feral; it glistened in unseen patterns of want, singed to a body gone malleable in the strong, demanding circlet of her arms; his breath heated the wall of stone as he was put against it, marvelling at how hungry his flesh was for her order.

eset's voice was a jeweled whisper. khusobek eagerly descended, body bearing the points of her teeth in a proud arc of fanged stippling that would be visible from throat to flank — for a moment of pure conflagration, it was only the crocodile, the falcon, and the marble behind him.

melody had ordered. inji had been timid until the last. eset was neither; she came for him with the force of a lioness prowling through the shadows of a desert night, and he answered with the shuddering bleat of a gazelle caught in her teeth.

once more; a scintillating pause wherein they drank the glint of one another's gaze; khusobek's embrace was poised, his breath trembling against her dark fur, willing eset to command him for the finality, his ears begging to hear any demand in her smokewoven voice.

the need of his flesh was not his own pleasure, it was hers; it was to see the wildfire beating in pulsepoint and flank again and again, to be consumed entire as the land beneath inundation.

hers in completion, tireless, answering command spoke and not; a willing automaton, a fawning golem constructed solely for her devourment.

his breath was caught in stages; khusobek remained attuned to her. a snap of proverbial fingers would bring him alive once more.