Chapter 38
Sita
The staff’s beam of protective light was halfway across the room when the mace connected with Kenna’s skull. It didn’t reach him in time.
Blood spattered Mery’s bare chest as Kenna jerked with the impact of the blow. His eyes, which had been focused on Sita, rolled up into his head and he slumped to the floor.
“No!” Sita screamed, running to him. She dropped the staff and fell to her knees beside her fallen brother, heedless of the sibling who loomed over them both.
“Kenna, please! Stay with me, please!” she cried, gathering him into her arms. Blood leaked onto her dress as she put pressure on his wound, her fingers slipping in the wet tangle of his hair.
Behind her, Nefermaat released a choked sob, and Sita fought back her own tears as she looked down at Kenna’s face. It was slack and gray.
“No.”
We were finally together again. We’d finally put the past behind us, and now, and now…
The pain in her heart was too much. She held his thin body to her chest and began to rock back and forth, weeping.
She was so deep in her sorrow that it barely registered when Mery spoke.
“Do not grieve for him, sister,” he said. “I’ve given him what he’s always longed for: A journey west. Our brother has been fixated on death since the moment he was born.”
“How could you do this?” Sita whispered, not looking at Mery.
“I can feel it already,” Mery went on. “The blood magic doing its work, draining the strength from my enemies and siphoning it into me. Kenna’s life wasn’t worth much, but his death is priceless.”
Sita gently laid Kenna’s body on the floor and brushed the blood-drenched locks from his face. Trembling, she stood to confront the king.
“I’m going to kill you, Mery.”
There was silence, then Mery laughed with delight. “Oh, Sitamun,” he said, his smile dazzling. “You don’t have it in you.”
Sita flinched. They’d dispatched Mery’s guards, and the priest Herihor looked like he was on the verge of flight. There was no one to protect her brother, but could she really do it? For all her fury at the horrible things Mery had done, could she really take his life with her own hands?
Suddenly, a deep sense of calm filled her.
“You’re right,” she said evenly.
Mery’s brows furrowed. This was a move he wasn’t expecting.
Sita went on. “I am a betrayer, and a coward, and a fool. But I’m not a killer. Not like you.” The serpent staff glowed faintly. “You don’t need to die for me to ensure you never hurt anyone else, ever again.”
Mery scoffed. “Don’t be silly. As long as I’m alive, I will find you and I will break you, that’s a promise.”
Another figure moved out of the shadows, looking almost like a shadow herself, the amethyst-studded wings of her favorite vulture collar sparkling in the pale light.
Made to honor the goddess Nekhbet, Sita thought.
Mother of Mothers.
Mother Night.
Mery noticed the new direction of Sita’s gaze and turned to Queen Bintanath.
“Mother? What are you doing here?” Mery asked with an almost imperceptible note of alarm.
Queen Bintanath said nothing, her attention on the body of her youngest son. “You killed him, Mery,” she said, her tone and expression unreadable.
The bloody mace still hung loosely from Mery’s right hand. “He betrayed me, Mother. He and the little priestess. Sita too. They all betrayed me.” There was a hint of childishness in his voice. “They’re all trying to prevent me from what I was born to do: return Khetara to glory!”
The queen did not respond.
“You understand, don’t you, Mother? You know what it takes to rule.
I watched you grit your teeth while Father let the kingdom fall to ruin, watched you hold your tongue a thousand times when all the while it was you who put him on the throne in the first place, you who were the clever one, the one with an ear to the ground, the one who knew everybody’s secrets.
You always told me that I would put things right.
That one day, a thousand years from now, our descendants would tell stories about a great prosperity, about how Khetara’s finest days were those under my reign. ”
Still, Queen Bintanath was silent.
“I did what needed to be done!” Mery suddenly raged. “There are traitors behind every door! Don’t you see that? In Tash, in Sakesh, in my own house! The gods placed a serpent upon my brow and divine power in my blood. Why would they give me such gifts if they didn’t mean for me to use them?”
The queen looked at Mery with a sorrow that did not sit comfortably upon her severe, imperious face. Walking up behind Mery, she wrapped one arm around his chest and held him close, her chin resting on his shoulder.
“My boy,” she said softly. “My beautiful, brilliant boy.”
Mery relaxed in her arms.
“The gods didn’t give you that crown. You took it when you killed your father.”
The king’s eyes widened.
“Did you really think I wouldn’t find out?” the queen asked. “I might have forgiven you for that, you know. Perhaps. With time. But I can’t forgive you for Kenna.”
In a blur of movement, the queen’s other arm wrapped around her son’s body and pulled him into a sudden, tight embrace.
Mery’s handsome face opened wide with shock, and he coughed. A glut of blood poured from his lips and down his chin. He looked at his chest as Queen Bintanath released him, at the hilt of the dagger she’d buried there.
Sita gasped in horror.
“Mother?” Mery said, the word wet and choked. He stumbled back, tripping over the voluminous folds of his cape, and collapsed into the wooden throne.
As he fell, the double crown slipped from his brow and tumbled down, breaking in two when it hit the ground. The crimson-gold circlet rolled along the stone floor, coming to rest near Sita’s feet.
Time stopped.
Sita’s heartbeat seemed to vibrate the floor beneath her, the walls, the ceiling high above. She watched Mery’s blood pulse in his throat.
Once.
Twice.
No more.
The room was still.
Finally, Sita let out a sob that was part anguish, part relief. She looked to her mother.
The queen’s face was a ruin. In an instant, she had aged a hundred years.
Herihor the priest took one look at the scene in front of him and ran from the room.
Queen Bintanath fiddled in the folds of her dress, as if searching for something. She turned to Sita, Kenna’s body between them on the floor.
“I see it all clearly now,” she said quietly. “I tried to give you the best of everything, and I failed to give you the very things you needed most.”
Sita regarded her, tears streaming down her face, unable to respond.
The queen went on. “I know it’s too late to fix what I’ve broken. But at least…at least I could do this.” Her gaze fell on Mery. “So you don’t have to.”
She pulled a small clay pot from the folds of her dress and flicked the stopper open with her thumb.
Sita didn’t need to ask what it was. Nebet’s offhand comment about the queen’s activities came rushing back to her, heavy with newfound significance—
She’s been spending a great deal of time alone in the pleasure garden. According to the gardeners, she has developed a keen interest in plants…
“Mother, no!”
The queen’s smile bore the pain and enormity of maternal love. “You know the punishment for killing a king, Sitamun.” She raised the pot to her lips and drank.
Sita stepped over Kenna to dash the pot from her mother’s hand. It shattered on the stone floor—empty.
“Mother!”
Karim ran to her side, looking between the two women helplessly.
With no one to stand in her way, Neff ran to Kenna, her hands roving over his face and chest, begging him not to be dead. Raetawy stood at a distance, solemn and silent.
The queen’s skin began to turn an odd shade of purple as she coughed convulsively.
“What was it?” Sita demanded. “Hemlock? We can find an antidote if we hurry! We can stop it!” She shook her mother by the shoulders. “What was it?”
The queen only stared at her, foam gathering at the corners of her mouth.
I’m going to be alone, Sita thought, her grief sudden and crushing. They’re all gone. Father, Mery, Mother, and—
There was a sudden cry behind her, and Sita whirled to find Neff holding Kenna, radiating unimaginable joy. “He’s alive!” she wailed. “He’s breathing! He’s alive!”
“What?” Leaving Karim to support her mother, Sita dashed toward them and knelt on Kenna’s other side.
Her brother blinked up at her through a curtain of blood. “Sitamun?” he whispered, his voice hoarse.
Sita laughed, overwhelmed, hysterical. “It’s a miracle!” she said through tears.
Neff collapsed onto the prince, wrapping her arms around him as she sobbed.
Kenna patted the girl. “There, there,” he said awkwardly, seemingly uncertain how to react to such an outpouring of love. He peered around the room in growing dismay. “What happened?” he asked Sita.
“Mother thought Mery killed you, so she…” Sita couldn’t finish the words. “He’s gone,” she said instead. “And now she’s taken some kind of poison. She’s dying, Kenna.”
Kenna’s brow furrowed, shock driving the fog from his eyes. She felt his muscles constrict as he tried to rise.
“What are you doing? Your head! You’re bleeding!”
Kenna ignored her, straining to move despite his injury.
Seeing that he would not be dissuaded. Sita helped move him closer to their mother. Karim had laid the queen on the floor in front of the throne. Her breathing was shallow, her eyes closed.
“Mother,” Kenna said.
The queen’s eyes opened and focused on the prince’s face, bloody but very much alive.
“Bakenamun?” Her voice was feathery and barely audible.
“Mother,” Kenna repeated. Like Mery, he seemed to be reduced to a child before her. “You didn’t need to do this… Why did you do this?”
The queen reached for him, her hand trembling, and caressed his cheek. “My boy. You never asked for anything. Never caused me any pain—even at your birth.”
Kenna’s face was awash with grief.
The queen coughed again, each word a struggle. “Yet I caused you...so much. Made you feel that you were not enough.”
“Mother…”
“I should have loved you better.”
“Please, don’t—”
The queen’s face, which had always been so stern and full of tension, relaxed.
Sita clapped a hand over her mouth and cried.
Kenna bowed his head as they knelt together beside the dead queen, silently honoring her final bloody gift.
Then they stood, Sita helping her injured brother to his feet and slipping an arm around his shoulder.
She looked at Mery, seated in the wooden throne.
Only a little blood dripped from the knife wound down his chest, staining his fine green schenti.
His head was tilted to the side, exposing his chiseled jawline, and he’d thrown one of his hands over the arm of the chair, as if he were holding a cup of wine in it.
Even in death, he was the picture of elegance.
Bitterly, Sita said, “All he ever wanted was to save the kingdom. How could he go so wrong?”
“Mery never cared about the kingdom, Sitamun,” Kenna replied. “He only cared about the crown.”
The double crown of Khetara lay at Sita’s feet, broken, no longer dazzling, and with no head to bear it.
Sita clung to Kenna as the enormity of what faced them fell upon her. “You’re all I have left,” she said through her tears.
Kenna scanned the room, his gaze pausing on the thief, the rebel, and the little priestess. He said, “Oh, I don’t know about that.”