“We swore to be each other’s from this life into the next, so if there is a chance to be with him again now, I will continue to risk everything until I have succeeded.”
I realized then that the swell of Anubis’s knot had finally started to lessen. The emptiness that lingered was… odd, yet still left me feeling content.
He drew his hands from me, rolled up from hovering over me, and smiled—or so I believed—like he had before.
“I am impressed. You would indeed make an excellent consort.”
“Thank you, but while you are great at many things, and I do fear failing down this path with all the unknowns ahead of me, my heart is Meryt’s. My body may be taken by others, but the performance will always be for him.” I looked again to where he had been, confident now that I would see him again. I had to.
“As you say,” Anubis rumbled.
He released me from his knot with an easy slide now that it had calmed. I looked quickly to see it before the fall of his loincloth covered him again, and it was a daunting, foreign thing compared to a mortal man’s, but I still might have salivated over the prospect of it had I seen it before it entered me.
The warmth of his release remained as he spun me around, situating me upright upon the slab again. He cleaned me of the new mess on my skin with the same cloth as before, just as soothing and warm. Only once he was finished did he hold out his hand and help me from the table.
“Now, you needn’t meet the others as bare as a babe.” Anubis wrapped one hand around my shoulder, and I felt the faint weight of clothing before I saw it. I had been dressed in my red dancer attire like Meryt was wearing his blue, only the fabric was grander than back home, glittering as if dotted with red stars.
It also included the belt that a moment ago had been on its pedestal. It would accompany me, while the others items wereleft behind, though alsowith mein a way. Anubis had untangled my hair with my comb. Fed me chamomile from my cup. And the sight of Meryt witnessing us had sprung to mind my most important poem, housed in that scroll.
“You would indeed make an excellent consort,” Anubis said again as he looked me over, “but I am glad you have passed this trial.”
I heard the shifting of stone and looked to my right where a door had appeared in the chamber’s wall. Beyond it was as blinding as Amun-Ra’s risen sun.
I returned my attention to Anubis. He really was so strangely handsome.
“You can be a frightening figure, my lord,” I admitted, “but I think I always imagined you this way.”
“Oh?” He tilted his head, and I resisted the laugh that bubbled within me at how much he resembled a real jackal or domestic dog.
“Gentle, I mean. A true caregiver for the dead. Meryt knew your kindness too?”
“He did, though not in the same way as you. Many of us, he did not need to meet.”
“Because he skipped to the end,” I huffed in teasing awe of my beloved—the overachiever.
“Your next trial awaits. Go.” Anubis gestured me toward the brightly lit doorway. “And know that I wish only for your success.”
I looked at it again, wondering which god might be next. When I turned back to Anubis to thank him, I saw the smaller form of a true jackal running on all fours as it scampered away from me into a darkness that had begun to fill the chamber’s corners as it was when I’d arrived.
“Mrrow?”
I jerked my head to my feet, where I had felt the brush of fur, and after trying to follow the quickly moving blur of white, I at last settled on it, for it sat and waited for me beside the blinding archway. “Pasht?”
When I moved in that direction, the cat leapt up on all fours again, meowed at me as if in impatience, and hurried into the light.
Whether actually Pasht or some other emissary of the gods, there was nothing to do but follow.
The following chapter contains:
Toy Use (with Egyptian false beard), Breath Play, Exhibitionism, and Voyeurism.
Chapter two
The Maker
MERYT
“M-Meryt…?” Nakht asked, weak and pitiful sounding, which reminded me where I was.
