His body was burning. His world was on fire. The gods pointed their fingers at him and laughed at his futile attempts to keep the scales in balance. Assou could hear their voice across the desert and yet there were no faces he could recognise. His every step was lost in the face of a journey he couldn’t fathom. It simply drove him onwards. Slowly and steadily, further away from the laughing shadows that unhurriedly warped and flowed in their form. If he’d had a rush, it might have been possible to blur them.

The breath on his lips dried his skin, was so unusually heavy and hot he thought he had swallowed the land itself. The scratching in his throat made him gulp several times. The weakness of his limbs became more present with each breath, and it took little more than the blink of an eye before his world lay in darkness. His fingers groped ahead and still couldn’t find a foothold. The only thing Assou could feel was the cold ground beneath him. Perhaps it was a wall. It could be anything as long as nothing could be recognised.

He didn’t know whether he had closed his eyes or not, but a part of him felt the urge to see. A throbbing behind his temples, however, dissuaded him from doing so. His senses found no unity and yet they waited, waited for a decision he didn’t want to make because no option was tempting enough.

When he let the world shatter into darkness, there was the soft scent of warm milk combined with sweet dates. Moisture on his forehead. Lovely humming, so soft and caressing he felt like he was being cradled in a woman’s arms. It was a pleasant warmth that, despite everything, nestled coldly against him and hardly promised security when he tilted his head to the side.

He only realised with difficulty that his head had been laid on something like a high pillow. It disappeared behind his slowly returning senses, which made it clear to him he had fallen asleep. His body offered resistance. His bones weighed more than twenty stone slabs and his perception clung to the darkness in which this lovely melody came over him like a blessing. The only thing Assou could filter out of the soft humming was the vague memory of a nursery rhyme he had once heard from his mother when he was young. It reminded him of her sweet smile and her ever-whispering voice when she told him how precious he was. Behind it were the kind eyes of a woman who had left him far too soon.

For a moment, Assou thought he remembered her scent. The nostalgia of when she had taken him in her arms and he had deeply absorbed her scent. A tiny fragment of lived days he held tightly in his hands and yet had to let go when the stabbing pain in his head brought something else in between. Fatrada. The knowledge that Maathorneferure had found pleasure in making a fool of him and putting the love of his life in chains. She hadn’t hesitated to prove she was nothing more than a snake in the shape of a woman. Almost as if Am-hehu had sent her.

Yet there was uncertainty in her expression. Almost as if she hadn’t planned to go this far. As if she had been pursuing another goal that had gone completely off the tracks. Thousands of fantasies he couldn’t follow because none of them looked clever enough to do justice to Maathorneferure’s secrets.

In the end, Assou clung to his body, attached to the numb feeling on his back and the pain in his legs. The smell of dates grew stronger, the humming louder. Both brought him back to consciousness until his eyelids fluttered open and faint candlelight provided illumination.

The shadows on the walls held him spellbound for a moment before his gaze wandered a little to the side. Dinem’s upper body came to the fore; her soft breasts, which seemed terribly close to him, and her skilful fingers, which moistened his forehead with a cloth. In the flickering light of the candle, her otherwise black hair shimmered dark brown. Her catlike eyes had turned somewhere in the distance and her humming remained unchanged to this childlike melody.

Assou didn’t dare to move. Instead, he followed her upper body and tilted his head a little in her direction so the moisture reached his temples. Simultaneously, he realised his head was resting on her lap; on thighs that could be mistaken for a pillow and yet could hardly have less in common with the straw-filled linen.

“You are awake,” was the first thing that left Dinem’s lips when she realised he was moving. The silence that followed, making him look up at her, was endless. His mouth was dry as dust and it took him a few tries of licking his lips before he found a few words.

“What... are you doing here?” The scratching in his throat made him cough.

“I came to let you know what happened during the day, because you weren’t sighted after last evening,” Dinem replied. “I found you on the ground, plagued by more heat than the sun thirsts our land. You seem to have had a vivid dream.”

“I’m afraid not.” Anything that could have been a dream was real, he knew. Fatrada’s punishment was as real as the fact that Maathorneferure wasn’t at the end of her planning. There was still much more she could do, and Assou never doubted for a moment she would realise the next step of her plan soon.

His hands struggled to lift himself off the ground as he sat up. Dinem grabbed his shoulders immediately, giving him support. She made him weaker than he was and yet he couldn’t help but let out a quiet “thank you”. He was at the end of his strength.

“You should rest.” Her soft voice nestled against his senses.

The breath on his lips was still hot and when he turned to Dinem, nothing but understanding and acceptance answered him. She was ready to put his every word into action, even if it meant hurting himself. She had already pushed herself halfway to her feet so she could jump up if he demanded anything. The concern she had for him was the same as he knew from his mother. The same affection, the same love he couldn’t return.

The inside of his chest felt no palpitations when he looked into her slightly round face. Her lead-rimmed, artfully decorated eyes pierced him and gave him the same watchful protection that Amenti carried in her gaze. Only the brown colour of her irises made her expression softer than that of a cat. Her almost shoulder-length, straight hair still shimmered and although he couldn’t deny that she was a beautiful woman, his heart yearned for Fatrada.

His thoughts hardly wanted to think of anything but her fate. Had she already been made to realise her worth? Was she suffering? There were endless questions that he couldn’t get answers to and yet they wouldn’t go away until he received an answer.

“Assou?” Dinem leant towards him a little, putting a hum into his name that made him look up. For a brief blink, emptiness returned to him. Almost as if Dinem could smother all the questions in his head with his name. Shortly afterwards, a memory followed, a completely different thought he had almost forgotten.

She desired him. The heart in her chest felt for him exactly what he felt for Fatrada.

Her grip on his shoulders tightened as she crept around him in tiny steps and settled in front of him. Her lap invited sleep, a cosy rest that held his attention longer than necessary. The simple Kalasiris didn’t do her body justice, making her look like a grey mouse with so much more glamour behind her than anyone wanted to admit. A burn on the inside of her upper arm – the Eye of Horus – betrayed her position as a slave.

A soundless laugh escaped his lips. He didn’t love her, but in those seconds, she was the most beautiful woman in the palace. Her full lips puckered, the worry in her gaze never faded, and Assou couldn’t help but put a hand to her cheek. She should have no hopes, no dreams in which they would ever have a happy ending together. He didn’t want to put new wishes in her head he couldn’t fulfil when his heart belonged to someone else. But Dinem was there. She had accepted his rejection and cared for him as if it were perfectly natural. Her desire had never diminished. It was still there, still nestling against his senses, inviting him to rest with her a little longer.

She was inviting him to forget.

“Assou...,” Dinem tried again as her head followed his touch. “You don’t seem to be in your right mind.”

“Oh, yes, I am,” he returned. “And the bad thing is my head is so full of worries and thoughts I can’t get away from that I don’t know how to sleep... Or how to fulfil your wish for me to rest.” He lowered his hand to just look at her. He wouldn’t hesitate. If she opened her arms to him, he would hug oblivion tightly and push everything else away.

Fatrada would understand.

Would she?

He shook off the thought. Dinem’s eyes were still on him and whatever his body craved in those seconds shouldn’t matter to his head.

“You crave something to ease your mind, if only for a moment, don’t you?” She moved closer to place her lips on his cheek. “You may not give me your heart, but that doesn’t mean I desire you even a little less than I did before.” Her lips rested on his forehead. “If I can help you forget, then feel free to fall into the abyss with me until the day dawns and the depths disappear.”

It was exactly what he had hoped for. An offer to tear away all the problems that were engulfing him. Maathorneferure would no longer matter. Fatrada would be alone for a moment and the world would stand still; in his heart, his head, his perception melting like honey as the heat overcame his body.

All the strength in his flesh was drained and yet his muscles seemed to want to follow the desire. It wanted to move forward, to banish this sickness within him and welcome the new day that would soon follow with open arms. His impulse was the confirmation Dinem had been waiting for. Assou could barely move as she gently pushed him backwards with her hands so he wouldn’t even think of getting up. She came over him like a gentle breeze, opening the hem of his shendyt and pulling the fabric down far enough to expose him.

Her fingers gripped his cock, massaging it with her thumb in slow up and down movements. Strange pressure that relaxed the tjati as he leaned further back and propped himself up on his elbows. Hot blood travelled through his body, tingling under his skin and pooling between his legs. He could see his penis becoming firmer between her fingers, growing in size and gently urging her to give him a little more pleasure.

Dinem obeyed his unspoken will, leant forward and brushed a few strands of her hair behind her ear at the same time. Then she opened her mouth and enveloped him in moist warmth, which sucked at him barely a moment later.