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On the dusk to my dawn and his proud smile.

“We will weather those changes together,” I said, conquering Ra at last, for his heat and frost were spreading into each other now, soothing my skin and leaving it glistening and wet. “That is all I can promise… but I wouldnevertrade Meryt for an eternal crown… even if that risks him growing beyond me.

“I choose him,” I asserted, and did not stop reclaiming the power Ra had stolen from me until he cried out and spilled over my fingers, and I felt a flood of wetness from his other entrance too. “Always.”

I closed my eyes as I pumped through my own release within the glorious god of the sunlit sky, and when I looked again to the boat’s deck, Meryt was gone, but I could have sworn he had ended half the distance from me than where he’d started.

I hoped so.

As soon as I disentangled from the cosmic Amun-Ra, I felt the energy I had been gifted from tasting his sunlight drain out of me. Ra turned, still in his combined majesty, and helped to lay me down upon the bed. With him hovering over me, I could have been looking at an actual eclipse with how his eyes glowed in that mesmerizing darkness.

Ra brushed some of the hair from my face, and I felt the familiar tingle of this strange form of his, both hot and cold on the edge of too much. My tiredness seemed to increase at his touch, but so too did I feel myself cleansed. My skin was taut and dry, rejuvenated from its purge in fire and ice.

“Rest,” he said, “more than you did after Geb. When you wake, you will meet your next trial. Unless you have changed your mind?”

I smiled. His malleableness, ever-changing, did make him tempting, and not only for the added promise of power, but I shook my head. “I choose him,” I said again.

Ra nodded.

“My lord?” I had to ask, for with success came clarity, and being ageless and untouched by disease did not mean I couldn’t be killed. “Would I truly have reigned forever as Pharaoh, or only until someone thought it time to lead a coup against me like what led to Meryt’s death?”

Ra didn’t answer directly but granted me a grin.

Tired as I was, I thought it would be impossible to heed his request—to rest, sleep—when I was only halfway through my trials? But as I lounged and Ra got up, still remaining a celestial phantom like the night sky formed into a horned and featheredman—or ratherhuman, since he was man and woman both—I found my eyes growing heavier, and they closed as if a spell had been cast upon me.

If Pasht returned to brush her fur against my skin, I did not notice, other than perhaps the faintest sound of purring.

Or was that a distant roar again?

Regardless, I fell into the deepest sleep I had ever known. In the mortal realm, we had to sleep lightly, for Pharaoh or others might call upon us at a moment’s notice, but the gods had granted me true sleep with the comfort and promise that I was safe.

I awoke feeling refreshed and gave a great stretch when I opened my eyes to see if Ra remained with me.

A giant snake’s maw as large as my entire body, with fangs the size of my forearms, was lunging down to devour me in a bite!

I rolled, just narrowly escaping that perilous end, as the snake’s fangs sank into the daybed. Apophis, that was whose roar I had been hearing, the snake that would eat the sun if not defeated each morning.

For now, Ra had said when saying nothing could harm me here, and he was nowhere to be seen.

The following chapter contains:

Praise Kink, Tail Play, Pain & (minor) Blood Play, Contortionism, Brief Dubious Consent, Safe Word Use, and Monster/Beast Sex.

Chapter five

The Warrior

MERYT

Nakht.

Nakht…

Nakht!

“I’m right here, silly.”

I startled as if I had been dreaming.