Nebet’s eyes shone. “What are you talking about, child?” she said, her voice thick. “Of course you deserve my love. You’ve never done anything wrong.”
“I haven’t done many things right either. I know you’re trying to protect me from whatever is happening in the palace, but you can’t. You have to tell me, Nebet.”
She clasped her hands together in prayer.
“You have to let me go,” Sita said quietly.
Nebet let out a small sob, then nodded. “As you wish, Sitamun.” She steadied her voice. “The girl who told me about the guards—she’d come looking for Tadia. Tadia hadn’t returned to the women’s chambers, and they’d received a message that all the king’s servants, concubines, and lesser wives were to go to the Horus Room to attend a special ritual to honor the late king. She didn’t want Tadia to be late, so she asked me to pass along the message if I saw her.
“I thought… I thought it was strange to call all those people together at this time of night. And the Horus Room? Why there? I just… I have a bad feeling, Sitamun.”
Sita shivered.
A tear trickled down the attendant’s cheek. “Your brother was always so beautiful, you know? So charming.Even as a little baby. ‘He Whose Face Is the Sun,’ that’s what they called him. He shoneso brightly.But now it makes me wonder. The sun shines, Sitamun, but it alsoburns.” Her lip trembled. “Don’t go.”
Sita clambered to her feet, her heart hammering. “I’m sorry,” she said, and rushed out the door.
***
Sita ran through the desolate halls of the palace, a place that had come to feel more like a cage than a home.
The Horus Room was a seldom used ceremonial chamber, one of the many relics of a palace built long before her father’s reign. Unlike his predecessor, Amunmose considered himself a modern king, and had done away with some of the more archaic rituals that Sematawy had been keen to restore. Growing up, the dusty Horus Room had often been a secret playground for her and Mery, where they would pretend to be king and queen and reenact ancient ceremonies using whatever was at hand. Thinking back on those once-fond memories set Sita’s stomach twisting.
She didn’t stop running until she reached the muggy, forgotten corridor, lit by dim torchlight. The door to the Horus Room stood at its end, covered by a red linen curtain. A woman stood before it, dressed in mourning yellow.
“Mother?”
Queen Bintanath turned, and Sita flinched at the sight of her. The heavy kohl around her mother’s eyes had run down her face in black rivulets. She looked haunted, like a shell of her former self.
“Sita,” she said softly. “It’s so nice to see you.”
“What’s Mery done, Mother? What’s happening in there?”
Sita tried to step past her, but Queen Bintanath refused to move aside. She seemed dazed, distracted. She laid a hand on Sita’s cheek in an uncharacteristically affectionate gesture and smiled, sending a chill down Sita’s spine.
“Such a beautiful girl,” she said. “A face born to be carved in stone—I always thought so. And now it will be, for you will become queen of this kingdom and sit by Mery’s side as he leads Khetara into a great future. Isn’t that wonderful?”
Sita jerked away. “Wait, youapproveof this? Your own children, bedding together?” Her life was spinning out of control. “Did you know he was planning this marriage? How could you possibly—”
“Shh…”Queen Bintanath said, putting a finger to her lips asif she were speaking to a child. “Mery only confessed his love for you this evening, before me and the viziers. Oh, we were surprised at first, but after your brother explained it to us, it made perfect sense.
“Your father, may he live forever in the West, allowed this kingdom to stray too far from the old ways. In order to bring Khetara back to the prosperity it once had, we must return to our roots. And that begins with you, Sitamun. The blood of Isis flows through your veins, my girl. Nebet always claimed that it was she who blessed you when you were born, she who named you. I never believed her, but now… now I do. The gods are speaking through your brother’s lips, and like Isis and Osiris, he will soon have you as both his sister and his wife. And through your union a new nation will be born.”
“How can you say these things?” Sita asked, shaking her head. “How can you not see that this is all wrong?”
Only after the accusation left her lips did Sita feel its sting in her own heart. Couldn’t anyone, had they known the truth, have said the same to her?Isn’t that how I sounded when I was under Mery’s spell? Didn’t I nod and smile and parrot his words, because he’d poured them so sweetly into my ears?She’d known about the poisoned cakes. Known that they were going to kill her father and an innocent child.
How can you not have seen that it was all wrong?
“Before Mery takes the throne,” the queen went on, as if Sita hadn’t spoken, “your brother wishes to send his beloved father to the Duat in the manner of the ancient kings. Kings who brought with them an honored retinue to serve them in the afterlife.”
Sita’s agonized thoughts came to a sudden halt. Her heart quickened as she turned her gaze toward the red curtain, and her ears to the ominous silence coming from beyond it. If her father’s lesser wives, concubines, and servants were all inside that room,why was it so quiet?
“No,” she said, her voice hoarse. She looked from her mother to the portal of the Horus Room. “He wouldn’t…”
Then, before the queen could stop her, Sita plunged through the curtain.
Sita thought about that moment many times in the days and months that followed. It remained perfectly preserved, stored in the deepest, darkest corner of her mind until the day she died.
