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muat-riya stood.

khusobek was pleased. when he was not carrying messages for akashingo, or patrolling the pass, he was devoted entire to the palace and its needs.

as darkness gathered in the long desert, he stood watching the great falls, eyes drifting now to the stars. the crocodile contemplated hatshepsuun. even she had not had two palaces.

The echo to every pawstep is drowned out by the falls but Eset registers another and looks silently upon Khusobek in his coat of scarlet beneath the lunar light.

“Will you stay?” Her soft ask wakes the quiet from where she lays, curled against the draping vines.

There is a life in Muat-riya. But it will not be easy. They are vulnerable here with no years of work, nor lean harvest. No name in this desert. Who among them would choose to remain when the pageantry and flourish of their divinity has returned to the North?

laughs maniacally

will you stay?
she had only overheard it as she made her nightly sweep of the falls. she had gone to collect water, perhaps to combine with soil or flower petals for paint, and though the rushing cascade nearly drowned it out, she thought she heard a voice.
leaf-pouch in maw, she is a flash of skin and bone as she peers through the tendrils of vine. her eyes strike once, twice, unsteady —
eset. khusobek.
jealousy thunders ravenously within her, and she did not know what to do with it. oh! she says it loud enough to be heard, perhaps almost too loud.

his gaze, for a moment, was hard-pressed to find eset's shadowed form, and then there she appeared to his eyes, sleek and commanding.

"i will stay, queen of heaven," he purled, striding toward her. inji's scent; inji; she turned his head, and there was more than hunger in the red eyes. there was possession.

between he and eset, a knowing smoulder; between he and inji, the demands of pending concubinage and his role in her ascension.

"i will be traveling often for both muat-riya and akashingo, but here is where my head will lie when it is asleep."

Dilating eyes fall upon Khusobek’s own voltaic gleam, countering between disquiet and want. She should not desire this, but as he draws forward a raw compulsion begins to lift her croup, so that he might fit her to him-

There’s a gasp. Save for it, Inji says nothing. She does not need to; her eyes sear into them. It is the sharpness of a look that means to ward the hebsut off-

After a moment’s composure Eset slips through the veil of leaves, her lithe figure now freed to poise a chaste distance away from Khusobek.

“In the coming weeks I will have messages to relay to the Erpha-ha. Woud you please see that they are delivered?” Her tone is only professional.

a woman's gut instinct will never fail her. in both sets of eyes, even if only fleeting, she sees it. the desire. the history.
inji had never truly believed she was the only one to khusobek. he was certainly not her only patron. but he was not only a patron! he was — special. she thought what they had was special.
but she could not compete with eset. she didn't want to. eset was her friend.
she felt her heart sink into the depths of her stomach even as the eyes of the mazoi fell to her. sorry, she blurts, bleary-eyed, unthinkingly. her chin wavers and she forces herself to remain composed. i didn't mean, to, um, intrude. i'll-- i can leave?

by now, khusobek felt he knew the flare of eset's own hunger, but she had become removed from him before he was able to communicate that he had seen.

he assumed now he knew inji as well, for she had witnessed the leap of a silent flame between the crocodile and the hebsut and it was not one he wanted to veil.

"you intrude upon nothing, desert flower," khusobek said in invitation, his icewater eyes now upon her beautiful and stricken face. "eset, i will carry your messages, and inji, if there is anything you desire between here and the palace, tell me."

“Please, stay,” she looks to Inji.

She is upset- and the coywolf; she was not fit for conventional things. She could no longer have elaborate inner debates about what she was fit for.

A trickle of water strikes the rippling pools in uneven rhythm while Eset lowers the crown of her head into an appeasing recurve for the fellahin and mazoi.

Her steps make a return to shadow, this time to a limestone corridor that will lead her far from the lakes, far from here.

if she hadn't intruded, why did she wish she had not come here?
eset moves to depart and the sudden onset of crippling awkwardness presses down with the weight of an avalanche. she had one simple request. could you tell tuna that i said hello, for me?
and that i miss her? and that i feel terribly alone now?
swallowing the shards lodged in her throat, her eyes say to eset we will talk later before she shuffles to flank khusobek. she maintains the graceful smile, the facade of obliviousness. nothing is wrong. she is not stupid.
it's been a while, hasn't it, handsome?

Mature Content Warning

eset departed with a pantherine gait after which his eyes traveled, but only for a moment.

here there was no rashepses to claim inji; the crocodile wound her in his hard arms almost roughly, breathing the sweet florality of her scent as if he had never drunk its touch before.

khusobek murmured with lips trailing hungrily down her throat, "do not be jealous of eset. she does not reach for heaven as you do. muat-riya is her true lover." and their tangling was — different, the hebsut wringing from the crocodile all the dregs of power he happily surrendered to her.

the icewater eyes searched now for those of inji, for the expressive depths of vibrant purple to tell him her mind.

Mature Content Warning

khusobek hungers, and he channels it now toward inji. do not be jealous, he says, and in his arms all of her resolve thaws and melts away. do not be jealous. and so she won't be.
instead, she will spell out what is hers. there is fierceness in her touch, frustration; a relentlessness as they disappear into the vines.
she lies beneath him now not as a servant with a suitor, but something else entirely. hers, hers, hers; and in turn she wished to belong to him.

not a servant with suitor. dragons entangled; khusobek focused fiercely on not taking but endowment of pleasantry, counting each visceral response of her body as his own success.

likewise he felt her irritation burning beneath the ardor; he surrendered the vulnerable points of his own flesh to inji until she understood it was her possession he sought, to be held in thrall until he was nothing.

it was how he preferred to be loved, to be the vessel rather than hold any amphorae in his own hands.

the crocodile held her after — scorched, breathless, wondering when inji too would tire of him.

her lungs were aflame, skin damp and tingling. her mouth was left with the taste of him.
her face found the hard press of his chest, and with her nails she draws small, delicate shapes in his fur. you make a mess out of me, she says to him, because now she could not stop herself, and now she had no reason to. i missed you.
let her believe that she is the only one who has loved him, and he the same for her. let her believe that there is a future with him in it.
do you remember when you said you wanted to run away with me one day?

"i do." mingled, entwined; he lifted her dainty paw in the curve of his own sand-scarred pad, moving head until his kiss caressed her wrist, and he allowed himself the dream of returning to kadesh with a woman who wore a queen's eyes and who would bear him new sons. "i think of you each day."

wife nor concubine loved khusobek. the first had been a choice made in youthful adoration soon turned sour, and the second had been a decision that benefitted no one, least of all any of the children born between them. they all knew he belonged entire to pharaoh hatshepsuun.

khusobek had not thought of his family in months, but now as he caressed inji's face with his eyes, khusobek knew a return to kadesh would only be misery for her. that this was the dream of an old man, not servants in the corridor of a new pharaoh. but he wanted her to have it, wanted to be this sleeping loveliness for her, a hope that one day they both would wake.

khusobek expected to die in the harnesses of akashingo and muat-riya, but it was not a fate inji ever had to suffer. he had placed the throne within her reach.

maybe we already have, inji thought aloud. the twinkle of stars danced across the violet irises. muat-riya could be a new life, for us. we could--
there were so many things. they could wed, share a home; they could bring new life into the world. sons with his eyes, daughters with her hair. the simple life, the dream she never would have thought to become hers. the dream she never thought she had wanted until she first felt his gaze upon her.
it was soon, so soon. do not give up your youth, she could hear her tired mother say, opposed to the demand of her sharp-eyed father to find a man who will provide. survival, love, politics; and where did this fit in? would this be enough?
somewhere in the middle of an ever changing, ever cruel world, there was a star-crossed girl who lay in the arms of a man who kissed her wrists and looked at her as if she was crafted in the image of Hathor.
yes, she thought, that was enough. more than enough.
would they let us marry? pharaoh, semer-wati. a fellahin and a mazoi, a servant and a soldier. she felt her heart leap into her throat. would you...?

she looked at him with that same dazzling, and khusobek understood that inji had made more of him than he was. than he could be. he had told zaahira he would not plague another wife with his debauchery. break inji's heart, then, drive her away from he and this delicate moment that pulled painfully at the strings of a heart he had thought was dead.

a dream.

this was all it was.

could he dash it beneath his heel?

"i never intended to marry. i am not sure i mean to now, inji." honest, quiet. "i have seen how marriage transforms — this —" the languid sprawl of her body against his, the light of her eyes, the adoration upon her mouth, "into something bitter. something sour."

he had already had the things inji craved and they had not satisfied him. the idea of tying himself once more to any place, to any woman, reminded him of what hatshepsuun had taken from him. he belonged to her in a way he could not to anyone else, a servant willingly notched. "pharaoh would allow us to marry. but no rationale says i am a husband."

he would not speak of rashepses, not now; was this not what she wished? security beyond that of a mazoi who would never be more and aspired to nothing else?

i think you could be.
no, it was a no, a gentle one, but a no. the dream shatters right before her eyes and yet inji refused to let it. she exhales as she hoists herself up to her elbows, tossing an arm around his neck so that she may see his face dripping with moonlight. the face that had carved itself into her heart; the face locked behind a wall she meant to tear down.
her voice pitches, a new neediness, a vulnerability. i never thought i could be a wife, either, but-- you are good to me, khusobek. it doesn't have to be that way. it doesn't have to hurt. and it doesn't have to be now. just-- think about it.
a dream. it was a nice dream, she thought.

in the silverglow and the crook of her embrace, khusobek allowed himself to gather the small remnants of the dream and fit them together, gossamer ekeing through proverbial fingers —

inji, gently swelling with his children, sons and daughters who might be mazoi or might be fellahin, but no higher. nobility was not in his grasp. any seed from his loins would sprout up into servitude, and this raked his spine more than anything else.

a place in the desert for themselves, rooms in which to live as husband and wife. could he do it? would he? the man held a simmering hunger always for eset, a heady flirtation for tuna; he enjoyed being used for the pleasure of femininity, and he had no idea how to be a husband.

his icebound eyes mirrored the sentiment in her own for a briefest second. her beauty was achingly powerful; did she not understand how pregnancy would sap so much of this from her? why bear sons to a servant when a divine man would reward her for them?

and yet, "my dove of canaan, yes. i will think on this dream." languid movements to kiss her now, paw upon her nape to bring their faces together; he stirred in desire but the shout of another mazoi for a patrol shut his gaze in annoyance and amusement. another time. "go. i will see you again, inji. and i will think on it."

<33333

he will think about it.
there was no ascension of the ranks to be made from their union, and inji thought of this too as she met khusobek's kiss with her own. their children would be peasants beneath the crown and never anything more or less.
and here, a marriage for the sake of love was rarer than the finest diamond. but she thought she saw it in him, felt it in the way he touched her! she sought not children half-bred with holy blood, forever stained by theoretical illegitimacy and yet always a step above her; no, what she sought was children who would call him daddy.
perhaps it was foolish. but did it have to be?
she gives a chaste kiss to the scruff of his chin and smooths the tousled ruff of his cheeks before granting him freedom from her embrace. the space is cold without his touch, and the last thing she wanted was to get used to it.
you know where to find me, she whispers. be safe out there.
she went back to her room that night and slept with the comfort of his lingering scent.