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“You're not allowed to leave my bed again. I forbid it.”
Maha'ad stretches out and feels his spine crackle. “You don't even have the crown on your head yet and you're becoming insufferable,” he comments. Next to him, Atem's grin is brilliant in the moonlight filtering through the windows.
“What good is a crown if I can't keep you with me?”
Maha'ad drops a kiss on Atem's forehead. “Someone has to make sure there's a you to keep me with.”
Atem makes a few grumbling noises and rolls over. Maha'ad wraps an arm around his waist.
“Don't be upset with me, sweet one,” he says. “Work calls at all hours for me the same as it does you.”
“Well, it oughtn't.” Atem hunches his shoulders in. “Not tonight.”
Maha'ad debates the wisdom of indulging Atem's fit of pique. Then he rubs a soothing hand between Atem's shoulders, heel of his hand between the wings of Atem's shoulderblades and fingers running through his braids. “Nothing is going to change.”
“Everything is going to change.”
There's an annoyed sound, not exactly a snore, from the other half of the bed. “And I'll finally be able to get a full night's sleep.”
“Nobody is detaining you, Set,” Maha'ad comments. “By all means, return to your own room and get your full night of sleep.”
Set lets out a dissatisfied grunt. There's a pause, and then Maha'ad pulls away from Atem, gently, gently—just enough to let another pair of long brown arms slide around Atem's waist. He frowns in the dark. Set isn't the normally the lie-quietly-and-hold-each-other type, and Atem must have a similar thought, because he squirms away at once.
“You will come back, won't you?” he asks, and Maha'ad's frown deepens. Atem doesn't sound like a pharaoh being crowned on the morrow; he doesn't even sound like a prince regent. What he sounds like is a child far too young to have a pair of men in his bed, wheedling for sweets or toys. Set huffs.
“As if I'd leave.” He props himself up on one elbow, chest bare in the moonlight. There's a dark mark on his collarbone, courtesy of Atem. “Why do you act like it's such an ordeal?”
And there it is, the question Maha'ad would never ask and Set can't keep himself from. Only one of them is in the habit of questioning Atem, and it isn't Maha'ad. It certainly wouldn't be Maha'ad on a night when Atem is so restless.
“I don't want everything to change.”
“Oh,” Set says. “If that's all, I'm going back to sleep.”
Maha'ad stares at him. “Set!”
Set isn't moved. “What? He doesn't want things to change. He'll be pharaoh on the morrow. His word is law. He can order things not to change.”
“Si'amun said I have to produce an heir.”
Maha'ad sits up and wraps his arms around Atem's shoulders, pulls him backward, and rests his face in the hollow of Atem's neck. There's a sharp pain over his heart, and he bites his tongue before he can betray it. This, not some far-off bride Atem may take, is his own worry; the Ring required a physical trial, the Rod a mental one, and Si'amun won't talk about what taking the Pyramid entailed. On entering the throne room in the morning, they'll all find out, publicly, and whether or not there's a coronation in the afternoon will depend entirely on whether Atem is still alive—and sane. Maha'ad traces a path over Atem's heart that mirrors the scarred one on his own chest, a round swirl for a circular wound and a single jagged line where the spike of the Ring dragged through flesh and muscle on its way back out, and turns his head to speak over Atem's shoulder.
“You don't 'have' to do anything,” Maha'ad tells him. “You can, of course. Make an alliance, produce an heir, especially with the political situation to the south it's not a bad idea. But nothing prevents you from doing so and continuing to have a lover. Or from simply naming an heir. Si'amun is a traditionalist, nothing more. The gods didn't put you on this earth to suffer eternally in the name of Khemet.”
Atem sinks back into Maha'ad's arms, and in the moonlight through the high window Maha'ad can see Atem's hand joined with Set's, sitting clasped on top of the light cover. They'll be lucky to get him back to sleep by dawn. And Maha'ad thought, earlier tonight, they'd worn him out. He should have known better. He runs a hand down Atem's arm and rests it on top of the clasped pair. Atem lays his head against Maha'ad's chest, and Maha'ad sees the sliver of a smile.
Oh no.
“Is this to be my future?” he asks, and shifts more comfortably in Maha'ad's arms. “Discussing our alliances while lying naked between my advisors?”
“I hope your future is sleeping, while I sleep,” Set grumbles, and Atem breaks into cheerful laughter, morose mood forgotten as he leans forward to put a kiss on Set's collarbone over the mark he left earlier in the night.
“You'll find a place in legends,” Atem says. “The mad king's lover who never woke.”
“You're not mad,” Maha'ad tells him. Set snorts.
“If you think not, then you must be,” Set retorts. “He's utterly mad. He enjoys being mad. If any of us finds a place in legend it'll be him, the king so mad he put on the Pyramid and frightened it into pieces.”
Atem laughs again. It's softer now, and he lays his head against Maha'ad's shoulder with a minimum of protest when Maha'ad tries to urge him back down onto the bed. At last he snuggles into the blanket, and Maha'ad kisses his forehead.
“I'll be back,” he says. “I want to check with the guard one last time.”
He's most of the way down the hall when there's a thin hand on his wrist, and he stops moving. Set is the only person who's ever actually managed to break his bones in training.
“Why did you tell him that?”
“What?” Maha'ad turns, but only halfway; he keeps his face in shadow. Set isn't impressed.
“About having a lover, and not needing to make an alliance—you know it's nonsense, Maha'ad. You lied to him.”
Maha'ad turns away again. “It doesn't matter.”
Set grabs his shoulder so tightly Maha'ad can feel fingernails digging into his skin. “What the hell do you mean, 'it doesn't matter'? The entire fate of the country rests on his shoulders tomorrow, Maha'ad, you're going to send him to be crowned pharaoh and—”
“He's not going to be crowned pharaoh.”
The silence is long, and ringing, and when Set speaks again Maha'ad can hear steel and anger buried under a calm as deadly as the deep pools of the Nile.
“What do you mean, he's not going to be crowned as pharaoh?”
“The Ring sent me a vision,” Maha'ad tells him. “It can be changed. I know it can. But I don't know how, Set, I've barely slept in two days and there isn't enough time.”
Set lets go of his shoulders. “What did you see?”
“A great darkness,” Maha'ad tells him. “Blood. Screams in the night. Nothing useful, no clues on how to stop it.”
“And you believe it's inevitable?”
Maha'ad takes a deep breath. “Not inevitable . . . . necessarily. But if I can't divine what it means, then yes. There will be no coronation.”
“How do you expect to divine without concentration?” Set crosses his arms. “You'll while the night away with your mind spinning and be no closer to answers in the morning. Sleep now, rise early. The answer will come to you.” He looks momentarily bitter. “Something always does.”
Maha'ad sweeps Set into a single-armed hug. Atem, with his mischievous smile and sweet personality, is easy to love; Set is the ocean tempest to Atem's unshakable optimism, his affections not so simple, and he shows it by struggling against Maha'ad's arm until he determines he's going to be detained whether he likes it or not.
“Don't think yourself so short shrift,” Maha'ad tells him. “I think very few would call the sight more of a blessing than a curse.”
Set rests a hand on Maha'ad's shoulder. “If you can find the answer to this vision,” he says, “then you think his coronation will proceed.”
“Yes.”
“Then you did lie to him.”
“What would you have me do, send him fatigued and anxious to the Ordeal because he stayed up half the night in fear of what's to come?”
“He'll hate you for it.”
Maha'ad takes a deep breath. “My duty isn't to be liked. It's to protect him.” He glances at Set, sidelong, not straight on. “And you told him the same lie.”
Set's hand drops. “Go back to bed.”
“After I see the guard. It won't be long.”
“Maha'ad.”
“I mean it, Set, not half an hour.”
Set stares after him far longer than he'd like; Set's not going to bed, and Maha'ad knows it, and Set knows he knows, and Maha'ad knows that Set knows he knows. Set, in fact, is going to sit awake for far too long, musing on Maha'ad's words, and Maha'ad pulls the Ring over his head as he heads for the palace roof, letting it swing from one hand. Si'amun would doubtless be horrified to see it, but he was in bed with the setting of the sun, and he's never known the burden of the Ring—to be carried everywhere, but constantly whispering in a dark back corner of his mind, horrifying seductive thoughts about murder and misery and bloodshed. Little wonder his predecessor went mad before the night he took a knife to his own—
So that's it, then?
Well done, Priest, a soft and malicious feeling almost like words, and Maha'ad rests his arms on the wall around the palace roof in a sudden slump of relief. The coronation will go on. It will come with sacrifice, of course, and Atem will curse him for it, but he's young—young—and Set, of course, will remain with him. But—
Not now. Not tonight. Tomorrow. I'll slip away during the banquet.
That wordless feeling, like a sadistic giggle. As you say.
Tomorrow, then. After the coronation.
But tonight . . . tonight he'll spend one last night with Atem in his arms, head against Set's shoulder, and he heads back to the royal bedchamber with a heart that feels deceptively light.
If Set, half-asleep with Atem's head on his chest, notices anything amiss—he doesn't say. He simply stretches out a single languid hand to pull Maha'ad close, and Maha'ad settles in, circling Atem from behind and locking him securely in between two sets of arms. Atem lets out a soft sigh and snuggles more closely between them, and Maha'ad feels a pang, but Atem will sleep—sleep, and face the Ordeal, and succeed—and Maha'ad will ensure he keeps his throne.
Nothing else matters.