Page 70

I snapped my attention back to the body beneath me, but Osiris hadn’t moved. He remained folded there, still taking my thrusts with increasing rapture in his expression. But when I looked up again, he was also behind Nakht, and I knew from the added ecstasy blossoming on Nakht’s face that somehow the Osiris there was entering him.

I looked down. Looked up again. There were two of him, with the one in the reflection fucking Nakht to continue our chain.

My own startled cry tore from my throat. I didn’t know if Osiris was truly doubled because of my wish to see him and Nakht together, or simply that, having been dismembered before, his parts could be wherever he wished, even at the same time.

We were a rising tide of interconnected bodies, and Osiris’s miracles were far from over. Regardless of where my eyes landed, mostly watching our reflections now, I could see and feel Osiris in other places too. Somehow between Nakht and I, sucking on my neck as I had his. Fondling my sac beneath where I entered him, but while that would have been possible with where the original Osiris’s hands were, I also felt hismouthsucking there too.

“Mer…” Nakht gasped, no doubt feeling similar things as he hugged me closer.

Our movements were becoming more feverish. It was dizzying, disorienting, to see Osiris in so many places while also feeling him where no one should be able to reach. I kept my sanity by locking eyes with Nakht.

Nakht.

“Nakht!” I cried aloud.

Dawn to my dusk.

The love in his eyes as he held my gaze in kind beat out every sensation compounding between us. Where he held me amidst the rocking of our bodies, I also felt the entwining of Osiris’s arms—around me, around Nakht, around both of us together—like an echo of our love cocooning us and keeping us safe from whatever came next.

“Nakht!”

“Meryt!”

And came we did, with such voluminous crescendo, it felt as though wekeptcoming, over and over again. I knew Osiris had finished as well, onto his own chest, inside Nakht, and who knew where else, covering all in a glaze of gold until dawn and dusk were nothing but the dark, for we could handle no more and succumbed to an almost instant sleep in the afterglow.

Never before had I been so exhausted, and yet, at the same time, so content.

I roused slowly, greeted by the same sight of Osiris’s bedchamber ceiling as when I had drifted off to sleep. Had I been looking at the ceiling when I drifted? I vaguely remembered so, but it was all a haze now, that final bliss having faded into comforting sleep.

What mattered was that there were no surprises. No Apophis to snap its fangs at us the way Nakht had experienced. No separation, for the pleasant aches in my body were soothed by the weight and warmth of my beloved stirring beside me.

There was one surprise, I realized, for while Nakht was cradled serenely in my arms, Osiris was gone.

As I noticed this, jostling Nakht when I tried to look around, he roused more fully with the same adorable grumble and whine as any morning that I had known in his company.

“Well met.” I kissed Nakht’s smooth cheek. “And only us met, it seems. We are alone.”

As I gazed at Nakht’s stunning visage, I could see the wonder dancing in his eyes, like he almost didn’t believe I was real. “Funny,” he said, “it certainly feels like something else is with us.” He nudged my partial hardness.

It was to be expected of a new day!

Was it a new day?

Had any days passed, or merely moments, like I had wondered before?

I supposed it didn’t matter in the end, for right now the only thing I cared about was never letting Nakht go.

I bucked into his teasing touch and kissed him like I might devour him for my morning meal. I wasn’t hungry though. I hadn’t been hungry all this time. Had I even really been tired, or merely put to sleep by the gods’ powers? I was dead, after all, and this wasn’t even my body I existed in.

“Hey…” Nakht clung tighter to me where we lay upon the pillows. The sheets covered us, but our dancer’s belts and loincloths remained elsewhere. We both still had gold smudged on our skin, but it wasn’t Osirispaintthat Nakht brushed from my cheek. He wiped away tears.

“Sorry. I guess I hadn’t yet cried enough at getting to see you and touch you and be with you again. I missed you, even when I didn’t feel or grasp the concept of time passing. You did all this for me. And while, yes, I am still jealous of your trials—”

Nakht snorted.

“—I am also so,sofull of love for you that I think I might burst.”

Even as Nakht’s smile remained, his eyes grew damp with ready tears too. He wiped at more of mine, and though one did slip free from his right eye to trail down his cheek, the rest seemed to clear away.