“He isn’t?” I sputtered when Seth released my chin.
“How simplistic you mortals are with family and relations. The gods are all kin in a way, but not in the same sense that you could have a brother or nephew.”
“I suppose that makes sense.”
“Horus was never a child either. None of us were. He was inexperienced when we met but still a man. And whatfirehe had.” Seth’s eyes danced with remembrance. “What drive, intenton bringing order to my chaos at all costs. Shall I tell you what really happened between us?”
Seth reached for me again, this time to stroke my hair, and as he did, I caught a glint of something catching the light.
His nails were longer than they had been a moment ago, like claws.
“I tried to seduce Horus to spite Osiris,” Seth said, running his new claws through the unbraided sections of my hair, occasionally stopping to stroke the plaits and adornments woven into them. “To spite all who thought me unworthy of the throne, not out of any true want at first, yet in my cruel self-serving seduction…” He drifted off, his words and his gaze, as if seeing the past replay in his mind the same way Meryt was experiencing memories.
There was longing in his eyes and all the sorrow I had felt when looking upon his solitary home for the first time.
I knew that loss, for I had worn the same expression not long ago.
“You fell in love with him.”
Seth’s eyes snapped to mine, and the hold he had on my hair became twisted and tight. “My intentions were impure, regardless of the outcome. My atonement is to all creation, to ensure the next day always comes until Apophis no longer rises anew.”
“But the beast regenerates,” I said, careful to hold still while he had such a brutal grip on me. “Will there ever be such a day?”
Seth didn’t answer, and something else caught my attention from beneath his tunic.
A tail was slithering out of it, but not from any animal I had ever seen before. It was forked like a barbed whip more than any usual appendage, and it undulated like a snake as it neared me.
I looked back at Seth’s face with a spike of fear, only for another spike to pierce me, for the rest of him had changed aswell now. I didn’t have to look back at his headdress to know it remained on the wall, yet he looked once again as if he wore it, only it was part of him now, his actual face, antelope-like, skull-like, with tall horns and eye hollows glowing red.
Seth twisted my hair tighter around his clawed fingers, forcing me to lean forward with my chin practically in his lap. “Every day, I must prove worthy. How lovely finally to have someone who must prove such a thing to me. Do you think you can, Nakht?” His growl was so similar to Apophis’s roar that I started to shake. “Can you submit to what your god asks of you and still resist when I make my final offer?”
Frightened though I was, I had no other answer. “Yes. I bested four gods before you, and I will best the four remaining, starting with you.”
“A bold statement.” His red eyes flashed brighter.
“Then ask what you will of me and let me prove it.”
Seth pulled me the smallest bit closer, leaving my scalp close to stinging, and said, “Tell me I’m beautiful.”
I blinked, surprised at first, but how could someone lost for so long in solitude not need reassurance. “You are very beautiful, my lord,” I spoke honestly, for I had seen so many godly faces of varying design and knew well how beautiful the strangest of them could be, “as much like this as with your human features.”
He leaned closer still, and though I felt the sharpness of his forked tail touch my shoulder, I dared not look away from his face. “Tell me I am desirable.”
The tail started wrapping around my bicep. “Y-you are infinitely desirable, Lord Seth.”
“Tell me… you like the way this feels.”
I hissed as the tail wound tighter and tighter and its sharp ends slipped beneath my dancer’s top and sliced across my nipple. “Ah!” Ithurtand yet sent a shiver through me thatinstantly made my cock twitch. “I-I… like the way that feels, but—”
“But?” Seth snapped his skull-like teeth at me, and though it otherwise looked like that of an antelope, I saw that he also had fangs.
The tail forks slid back along my wounded nipple, which was wet now, I could feel it, dribbling a bit of blood. The way the tail soothed where it had sliced further hardened my cock. That was his game then, one I had rarely played, the balance between pleasure and pain.
So be that too. I only hoped any tilt in that balance was more toward pleasure so I could give my Meryt a show he would enjoy.
“Ilikethe way that feels,” I said again, and left it at that.
Seth’s tail pulled out from beneath my top and unwound from my arm, but my relief was short-lived, for the tail immediately moved to the edge of my loincloth.
