Winterly (Dark Creatures Book 1), стр. 94

What remained of the last pharaoh now lay still atop the embalmers’ slab deep within his tomb, invested in linen tresses, his painted sarcophagus gaping and hollow-bellied. His daughter had only this morning pressed her carmine lips to his waxen brow for the last time.

Unbeknownst to her, the seraph watched as the little queen sipped her wine in the banquet hall, the funereal feast, for tonight at least, drawing to a close. Only the cheese and honeyed figs and dates had yet to be served. Cleopatra, in turn, studied her young husband—eight years her junior—where he sat between the dour commander and the rodent-faced regent. Her brother. Her consort. Her thorn.

Death could feel how her heart constricted with suspicion as the hateful eunuch whispered long and sibilantly into the boy king’s ear. Her hate, in turn, became the watcher’s, though he’d fought it at first. The more he watched and was fascinated by her, however, the further he strayed from Heaven’s light. He heard each murmurous polemic from the eunuch’s tongue like a sharp lash across the character of his love.

In that uneasy and conjoined reign only ill-feeling flourished thereafter—for months it spilled athwart the starved banks of their beloved Nile, and seemed to cloak their valley not in lush greens but with the bleak shade of famine. Whatever small fondness there had existed between the young royals was finally reduced to dust and ash; and talk of exile.

It was late now and all had retired except the stars, and thieves, and palace guards…and the two conspirators. “She cannot be controlled,” said the sexless regent. “She has grown too bold.”

Death watched as the upper lip of the commander curled in distaste, his eyes narrowing over an official correspondence in which Cleopatra’s royal cypher appeared without that of the co-ruling Ptolemy. “Then we must clip her wings,” said the commander at last.

Death had heard enough. He leapt into the night on broad star-lit wings, soaring over the streets of Alexandria till he spied the noble columns of the royal library. It was within the reading room that he knew he would find his Cleopatra at her solitude. All was enveloped in the hush of the dark hours. He moved with unearthly stillness through the gloom of the hypostyle, the brands wavering with fright as he passed. He cast no shadow upon the sunken reliefs and inscriptions that overlaid the pillars, the hieroglyphs depicting ancient battles and godly triumphs, for he was not one amongst the living.

The bewitching scent of rose, beeswax, and honey nudged playfully at the side of his mouth, drawing him closer to his heart’s desire—an unmistakable ambrosial blend that was hers alone and more alluring than the rarest and most costly kyphi.

Studying by lamplight, he found her stretched across her chaise like a feline in her private rooms, her leathern sandals doffed, her head against a blue silken pillow. The diaphanous white linen of her dress parted across her thigh where she bent her knee in repose. Her hair appeared like ochre in the flame light, a dark rich red that was near as dark as kohl. Her heartbeats had lowered to a soporific rhythm and her lids were growing heavy. In another moment, he was sure, the papyrus scroll would find its way from her soft lap to the polished marble floor.

She was unaware that she was not alone, but the same could not be said of her companion. The cat that had been curled beside her pretty ankle gave a sudden black hiss and bounded from the room in fright, startling its mistress from the polyglot scroll.

“Who is there?” she asked.

Ah! Not in a thousand years would he ever tire of listening to that honeyed voice. He had only to step from the shadows, just one step, to make his form known to her, yet he hesitated. What he was about to do would lower the brow of the All-Seeing Eye, if not worse. He was right to dither in the shadows, for he had no business meddling in the affairs of queens. He might end up like the others, fallen through that one-way abyss. Even now the shock of their expulsion reverberated through the heavens.

“I demand you show yourself.” By now, Cleopatra had unfolded herself from the pillows and was standing like a general, peering into the shadows, her scroll forgotten at her bare feet.

She could feel his presence, he knew it by the racing of her heart, yet her voice remained steady and sure. He wanted her to feel him. To know. Perhaps if she had not spoken he might have held himself back; perhaps if his eyes had not whetted themselves on the curve of her hips and those long, sun kissed thighs, he might have had the strength to leave her to her precious scrolls, leave her to her doom in favor of avoiding his own. Yet she had spoken and he had looked; and coveted. His need was such that he could not withstand the call of her fragrant skin and could not resist the chance to have her eyes, at last, rest upon his.

He tucked his wings beneath his flesh and emerged into the light to answer her summons. He knew that, though his ivory wings were hidden, he could no more pass for a mortal than she could be mistaken for anything but a queen. He was nigh as tall as a pillar and his flesh just as white, and not a little nacreous besides. His bones and sinews, leastways in this realm, somewhat resembled a man’s. A god’s perhaps.

Cleopatra dropped instantly to the floor with a soft gasp and pressed her proud nose and luxuriant curls to the cold marble. “It is thee!” Her heart was slamming against her breast in a ferocious tempo. “Mighty Osiris.”

His lips twitched. She had addressed him neither in Latin, nor in Greek, but in the tongue