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The desert is cold.
A cool, clean cloth passed over Seth’s feet. Then his calves. Then his knees. The stranger was washing him, clearing his body of sand, soot, and sweat.
What a filthy business, living as a lowly human. What a filthy, hideous, business.
Seth tipped his head back against his chair, staring up at the canvas roof of his tent. Above his head, the shadows seemed to overlap; to intermingle, interweave, like strands of flax-string in a fisherman’s net. He supposed that made him the prey.
The day’s events wore heavily on his mind; in particular, that repulsive bit of business with the High Priestess of Isis. His followers — that band of craven, dirty sycophants — had carted her fresh corpse across the desert and laid it as his feet. An offering, they said. A gift worthy of his return.
Don’t worry, my lord. Her ib should still be fresh.
Seth’s stomach twisted at the memory.
His new weakness revolted him. He loathed it — loathed the hunger that clawed at his belly, the exhaustion that burrowed down into his body, the thirst that crackled his lips and bloodied his throat. And now, he recoiled at the sight of a single corpse. He shrank. He cowered.
What shambles.
His mind drifted, wandered. Unease was the unifying thread. The dead priestess. Isis. Nepthys. Osiris. Anubis. A man with flames for eyes. And, of course, the newborn god with the black cowl. The one he’d met out in the desert the other night. Here, Seth’s train of thought tangled. That godling. His spear stance. Could that truly have been Anubis — ?
There was the soft shushing of a sirocco breeze. The ripple of canvas. The striduation of black beetles, high and reedy and distant. And nearer, much nearer, there was the stranger, gently wringing excess oils from his cloth. Cool, fragrant liquid traveled down his dark fingers.
No, Seth decided at last. No, surely not. So what if that strange godling had carried himself Seth’s spear stance, the one he had taught Anubis so long ago? Seth had all but invented Egyptian spearfighting. That damned stance was likely imitated by every able-bodied fighter in Egypt, god or not.
And Anubis — his own son — would never address his own father so coldly, so blankly, without even the barest trace of affection —
Seth shivered.
The desert is so cold.
He tried to clear his mind. To submit himself to the simple, elemental pleasure of being washed. The stranger’s cloth traveled up his body, foot to thigh. The material of it couldn’t be called soft; rather, the cotton was rough, grainy, textured. It scoured his body, stripping dust from him with a rasp that bordered uneasily between pleasure and pain.
The cloth passed over Seth’s legs. His waist, torso. And then Seth felt its cool pressure against the side of his face: the clean scent of fresh water and cedarwood oil suffused him, like a salve.
He cracked an eye open, lazy. Observed the stranger. Brown-skinned, dark-haired, bearded. Wearing the expression of a grateful servant.
Privately, Seth supposed he was beautiful. But it was strange and savage beauty; an un-Egyptian beauty. Egyptian aesthetics were controlled, manicured: the stranger looked wild, coarse. His dark beard instantly marked him as an outlander, an exile, a lowborn barbarian. A beast from a land of beasts.
But Seth did not hate it. He did not hate beasts. Nor did he hate outsiders, not as a rule. They could be interesting people, even formidable. By many Egyptians, he was even believed to be the patron god of foreigners.
But I suppose they believe that, Seth realized, because foreigners are frightening and fearsome, and I am an evil god.
An unhappy thought. So he banished it from his mind. Of course, the thoughts that came to replace it were no more pleasant; he began thinking once again of the High Priestess of Isis, the innocent woman his followers had butchered and then expected him to desecrate .
For a moment, back there in the canyon — a brief, wild, absurd moment — he could’ve sworn it was her. Isis. His sister, dark and lovely. Lying dead.
And he had been frightened. Actually frightened.
Seth exhaled, the tension draining from his body as the stranger washed his face.
What a sick joke. Him, worrying about a goddess — and Isis of all people. Ruinous, poisonous Isis. What a fucking riot.
“It comes off?”
Seth frowned, “What?”
“Why on Earth,” the stranger said, his rich voice carrying a note of gentle bewilderment, “would you draw pictures on your eyes?”
“Pictures?” Seth echoed, not quite following his train of thought. “Wha —”
The stranger, impudent as ever, grabbed the sides of Seth’s face.
“This looks so much better,” he insisted.
Not pleased about being grabbed so casually, Seth angled himself away.
“What looks better?”
“This! Look!”
The stranger made a grab for Seth’s hand mirror and held it up — and Seth blinked to find his own face staring back at him. Lunar pale, naked, unmade. Lips parted into a dull, slack little o of surprise.
It was a deeply, deeply jarring sight.
Seth could not remember the last time he’d seen his own face unmade. Never, perhaps. As a god, he’d never needed to apply either kohl or ochre. Rather, elegant designs of his own choosing were embedded in his skin: he could change the color and style with a thought, as effortless as breathing…
Those markings were the sacred birthright of divinity.
Seth gazed into the mirror. Unpainted, he looked hideously common. Hideously ordinary. Unlined by black galina, his eyes looked unnervingly small; his features plain, his countenance robbed of its aristocracy.
Save for his hair and eyes, he truly looked the part. Mortal.
Obviously, this was absolutely unacceptable. So he cussed the stranger out, hit him upside the jaw, hissed and spit — foreign fucking moron, can’t do anything fucking right, always fucking ruining shit, too fucking brainless to live — “Don’t you know how hard it is to draw that on?”
Not keen on being torn limb from limb, the stranger rushed to appease him.
“I prefer you this way!”
“I don’t care what you prefer! Idiot!”
“Can’t you just — not draw it on?”
Seth launched the tapestried divan at him, furious.
“Shut up!”
Both the stranger and the divan landed against the carpet with a clatter. Quite hastily, Seth turned to the side table where both his hand-mirror and his cosmetics were stored. He lifted his kohl pen and began swiftly relining his eyes, black kohl gliding seamlessly over moon-pale skin. It was a delicate business: first the waterlines, then the curl, then the undereye ochre, and then a lower lip accent —
Behind, he could hear the stranger stirring.
“You draw that on every day?”
His voice was remarkably nonplussed for someone who has just been attacked with a piece of heavy furniture. How very irritating.
“No, you fool,” Seth scoffed, dabbing at his eyelids, trying to restore that perfect smoky eye. “I trace over it again and again to make it last as long as possible.”
“Why do it at all?”
Why indeed.
“That’s a very stupid question,” Seth said in lieu of answering.
“It just seems very time-consuming,” the stranger reflected. “But I suppose shaving one’s face and body on a regular basis is equally time-consuming, hm?”
“Would you prefer I ran about with hairy legs like some sort of animal?”
“Not particularly,” the stranger said quite amicably. “But I must say — the gods here live very inconvenient lives.”
Seth pulled tentatively at his eyelid, his mood cooling.
“... Gods don’t normally need to draw it on,” he said detachedly, prodding at his handiwork. “Makeup, I mean. Their skin color changes when they’re born. I suppose you could call it a marker of divinity. I also used to…”
He trailed off, his brain finally coming around to fully absorb the stranger’s offhand remark. The gods here live very inconvenient lives. The gods here. There was something quite odd about that little statement. Something quite odd indeed — an implication. And come to think of it, it wasn’t the first such implication the stranger had made. Seth’s mind drifted back to that night out in the desert, the night he’d fought that black-cowled god and broken his ribs.
I don’t know why the gods here are so terribly violent. That’s what the stranger had said, carefree as an errant schoolboy.
What did this foreigner know of other gods? Was it possible that he ranked among them? There was certainly something very unusual about his temperament. Seth would grant him that. He didn’t carry himself like most mortals.
How galling, that a single god may occupy this tent — and that god is not me. How infuriating.
Seth touched a finger to his lashes, studying the faint stripe of red ochre banked beneath his waterline. He was not used to feeling curious about other people. The sensation was altogether unpleasant, and he rather wished it would go away.
“You keep getting on my nerves,” he said, still studying himself in the mirror quite resolutely. “I should just kill you.”
“I’d prefer that you didn’t.”
A rather feeble reaction to being threatened by the almighty god of war. Perhaps he really was some sort of deity.
Perhaps he was simply a fool.
(Perhaps he was both.)
Seth hoped that observation would answer the question, as he refused to pose it. To ask would to betray interest, and Seth refused to be interested in some backwater-bred, caravan-chasing wretch.
He heard the faint rasp of the Stranger moving peaceably across the carpet, drawing himself up on his knees.
“The more I learn about Egyptian tastes,” the stranger sighed, “the less I understand. Painting stripes on your face like a cheetah…”
“Spare me. A furry beast like you has no right to talk about taste.”
“A furry beast? Are you referring to my beard?”
“What else?” Seth said, throwing a withering glance over his shoulder. The stranger looked quite hurt.
“This is not fur,” he insisted, stroking the coarse, dark, carefully-sculpted beard at his chin. “This is the symbol of a man.”
“More like the symbol of a savage,” Seth scoffed. At last satisfied with his own handiwork, he flopped down onto the carpet.
“A sav…”
The stranger shook his head, apparently quite shocked. Seth shrugged, rolled over to recline on his side, cheek braced against the palm of his hand.
“You must come from a very primitive land,” he said, more to himself than anything.
“Why, Seth. I do believe this is the first time I’ve seen you express any interest in my homeland whatsoever.”
“Interest? What interest?” Seth’s gaze slid down the carpet below, the fiber and weave of the shuttled wool. “I’m merely stating a fact.”
“Right.”
“I care not for the petty lands of mortal barbarians.”
“Is that all I am to you, Seth? A mortal barbarian?”
And Seth thought: A barbarian, certainly — but whether or not you are a mortal one remains to be seen.
Aloud, he said, “Don’t speak my name so casually, beast.”
The stranger mock-sighed.
“I’m wounded, Seth. I’m really wounded. And here I thought we had something special.”
“Your glib tongue does you no credit, foreigner.”
“You like it.”
“What?”
“My glib tongue,” the stranger grinned; handsome, elliptical, wildly frustrating. “Or why else would you be blushing, hm?”
“I am not blushing!” Except he absolutely was: even worse, he could feel his blush darkening. Obviously, there could be no greater humiliation; so Seth reached once again for the nearest throwable object. The object in question ended up being his little scallop-shaped hand mirror, which he hurled straight at the stranger’s stupid fucking face. Only this time, the blasted man had the foresight to dodge — and the mirror landed against the shuttle-woven carpet with a soft, unthreatening bounce. “Get out! Useless beast!”
The stranger backed up towards the exit. He lifted the canvas flap above his head, letting in a jagged stripe of Arabian moonlight — and he ducked out, laughing as he went. Seth braced both hands against the carpet, flushed with fury.
The sound of the stranger’s laugh lingered in his ears for a very long time. It intermingled with the singing of the insects, the whistling of wind, the hiss-hiss-rasp of sand. It was like the desert itself was the one laughing; Seth had missed the punchline.
Dusk turned to twilight, and twilight to dawn. An ax called sunlight swung its blade, sharp and shiny, and decapitated the darkness.
The stranger returned with a small morning meal of emmer loaf and dry-salted fish; Seth asked for it to be left on the side for him. Though he had come (rather reluctantly) to acknowledge the necessity of eating food, he still hated being observed in the act.
In the meantime, he ordered the stranger to comb his hair. The maybe-god acquiesced, positioning himself behind Seth.
“Your hair is fantastic,” he said, partitioning Seth’s hair into two sections with large, gentle hands. “I’ve never seen such a vivid red.”
“Hm,” Seth said, closing his eyes. The comb threaded through his hair, ivory teeth scraping lightly against the tender flesh of his scalp and nape; the sensation was distinctly pleasurable, like a massage, and Seth found himself near to shivering.
“You know what it reminds me of?”
“Blood?” Seth murmured. It was a common comparison, and an apt one: he was, after all, the god of war.
But the stranger chuckled, a low roll of thunder, and he said, “No. Actually, I was going to say that it reminds me of the juice of a pomegranate.”
“Oh.”
“Do you have pomegranates here in Egypt?”
“We do,” Seth said.
“They leave terrible stains, don’t they?”
Sticky red fingers, sticky red lips. Seth remembered — with a pang of staggering heartache — wiping the juice from little Anubis’ mouth while he squirmed and giggled.
“They do,” Seth said. “Not unlike blood.”
“I suppose that’s true,” the stranger said casually. There was a beat. The stranger paused to oil his comb, then went to work unsnarling a nasty tangle. He was surprisingly methodical in this. Then, to fill the air, he said, “My brother grows them in a private arbor.”
“What?”
“Pomegranates, I mean.”
“A private arbor? Is he rich?”
The stranger laughed again. He seemed to find Seth's bluntness to be charming.
“You could say that, yes.”
Brother. Seth turned the word over in his mind, found it bitter and dark.
“Do you and your brother get along?”
“Furies, no. Not at all. He’s so — serious, you know? Ugh.”
“And you are so distinctly unserious,” Seth said drily.
“Yes, exactly!” The stranger agreed, not seeming to realize he was being insulted. “So, no. We aren’t exactly friends.” He paused, then amended himself by saying, “But we aren’t enemies, either.”
“I see,” Seth said. “Must be nice.”
“Yes, I suppose it is.”
The comb slipped through the curtain of his hair, from the crown of his head to the slope of his shoulder. This time, Seth could not suppress a shudder; warmth spread through his empty belly, debilitating him. Sweet undoing.
The stranger picked up on it immediately, and in a tone of immense self-satisfaction, he said, “Feels nice, right?”
“Shut up,” Seth said, but his words came through without rancor. He too relaxed to be properly irate. “Just keep going.”
The touch of the stranger’s fingers on the back of his neck were hot like shame — but also like sunlight.
Seth often wondered if he still loved his wife.
In his mind’s eye, he could still see Nepthys as she once was: hair yellow like citronskin, body full and warm, pink lips softly pursed around a term of endearment. Hale and whole and sweet; acquiescent and mild where Seth was brash and stubborn.
The woman he’d trusted. The woman he’d admired. The woman he’d walked with, smiled with, slept with, raised a child with.
The woman that made him feel like a man.
He had thought, once — that marriage was something he excelled at, that the role of a husband was one that suited him perfectly, like a well-made garment fitted to his precise measurements.
Now, he wasn’t so certain. When he reached inside himself, Seth could quite easily conjure the memory of loving her: the feeling of plenitude and peace and self-assurance. But the love itself proved difficult to locate.
But hurt, betrayal, frustration, guilt, rage — self-loathing —
These things came readily. Unbidden.
“Foreigner,” he asked when the stranger arrived with a large fan and the evening meal. “Are you married?”
“Sure,” he said, setting out Seth’s tray. “Got a wife back home.”
Back in his barbarian homeland, he meant.
“You ran out on her?”
“Me? Run out? ‘Course not. You really think that little of me?”
“I don’t think of you at all,” Seth said tartly. “I only recognize that you are here and she is not.”
“I travel often,” the stranger said. “Incurable wanderlust. Can’t be helped. Ah, but she knows I’ll be back eventually. When the fancy strikes.”
“When the fancy strikes,” Seth repeated scornfully. “I pity the woman. I can’t imagine you’ve been a particularly faithful husband — chasing after your insipid fancies while your wife minds the house alone.”
“What can I say? I’m a man of many appetites,” the stranger grinned.
“You take many lovers, I gather.”
“More than I care to count.”
“Men and women?”
“Men and women, princesses and whores, poets and soldiers, nymphs and naiads, great beauties and great intellects —”
“Enough,” Seth said, nostrils flaring in disgust. He rested his chin against the palm of his hand, eyeing the stranger with open disdain as he bent low to fill his cup. “I see my initial misgivings were entirely correct. You really are a beast. A dog in heat, to be precise — humping away at the first warm leg that gives purchase.”
“I am a libidinous man,” the stranger agreed quite mildly. “I’m not even remotely ashamed of the fact. Everyone needs a little release from time to time. I am hardly unique in that regard.”
Release. Seth stared down into his goblet; cool, dark wine filled the faience vessel. The last time he had found release was in Horus’ bedroom — in an act of craven violence that had left him shaken for days. He did not want to think of that night. Did not want to remember it — the feeling of being violated by Osiris’ own blood, of being taken, of being made powerless, of — of being —
Seth raised his glass and took a deep, desperate drink. Pressed Bannati wine flooded his mouth; bloody and earthy, an idole siphoned straight from the earth. It hit his empty stomach with the strength of a sword-swallower’s blade, yet he found the sensation oddly fortifying. He drained his cup, then extended it expectantly towards the stranger. Ever eager to please, he refilled it.
“Does your wife know?” Seth asked, eyes glazing as he watched wine swirl around the lustrous brim of his goblet. “That you take lovers?”
A hint of mirth in the stranger’s eyes.
“She knows.”
“Does she — mind?”
“Mind? Oh, she hates it,” the stranger said with a big, boisterous laugh. “Or she at least pretends to hate it. It’s sort of like a game between us, my sweet Hera and I.”
“A game?”
“Uh-huh. I bed as many beauties as I can, and she plots my punishment — and the demise of my mistresses.”
“That doesn’t sound like much of a game at all,” Seth said, lip curling minutely.
“It doesn’t? Well, it’s quite fun, I assure you.”
“Don’t you love her?”
“Hera? Sure I do. But I’ve got a lot of love to go around. I’m a very loving person.”
“You’re horrible,” Seth said. He drained his cup again, replaced it on the table. “Absolutely repugnant.”
“Mm,” the stranger hummed, eyes hooded. “You sound just like her when you say that, you know.”
“Your wife?”
“Yeah.”
“Is that a turn-on?”
“Sort of.”
“I see,” Seth said. “Then I suppose you do love her. Despite everything.”
“And she loves me in return. Despite everything.”
“It seems a terrible fate,” Seth said as the wine turned in his belly, leaving him warm and pliant and faintly reckless. “To love a man like you.”
The stranger set the jar of wine down against the tray, where it touched down with a sort of gentle clatter.
Seth curled up in his hair, lifting his chin to say, “If I were to — submit to your clumsy, hamfisted attempts at seduction, would that vengeful wife of yours attempt to engineer my demise?”
“She could try,” the stranger said. “But I expect even she would find you a difficult target.”
He reached forwards, touched the skin of Seth’s thigh. His hand was coarse and large and dark: it stood in sharp contrast to Seth’s own skin, which was as light as tusk ivory.
A vile and shocking act of disrespect. A presumption.
I should reach for my blade, Seth thought dizzily as the stranger’s hand traveled further, cupping the curve of his inner thigh. Sever his hand, cut his tongue, make him a eunuch. Teach him a lesson about touching that which he has no right to.
But as the left hand joined the right, sliding over the exposed planes of Seth’s belly, he found he didn’t much want to move at all. The rough texture of the stranger’s touch was somehow pleasant, like the washcloth had been.
“I have a wife,” Seth found himself saying, watching with a strange detachment as the stranger’s thumb hooked into his linens.
“Is that so,” the stranger said, pushing himself into the chair with Seth. Seth’s senses were filled with the scent of him: ozone, hot ash, clear water; the nervy, hopeful moments before a downpour. He had never known a man to carry such a fragrance. He couldn’t imagine it came from a bottle. “Do you love her, Seth?”
“I did. Once,” Seth said. “I loved her.”
“But not anymore?”
“I…”
“A question without an easy answer, I suspect,” the stranger hummed. “Well, that’s alright. I’m not in the business of easy answers. I don’t offer them, nor have I ever claimed to.”
“What do you offer, then?”
“A distraction.”
“Release,” Seth echoed. He turned his chin against his shoulder, feigned interest in the shuddering, sandy borders of his little canvas tent. “You’re impertinent beyond words. I really should just kill you.”
“Do you think you’d be capable of it?”
“How dare you,” Seth flushed in anger, turning his gaze on the stranger. “Of course, I —”
The words caught in his throat.
The stranger’s eyes burned liquid gold, incandescent, inhuman; wild heat, wild lightning.
A clap of thunder in a black cloud.
The stranger pushed his grin up against Seth’s throat, teeth bared — and Seth felt a splintering from deep within: first a crack, then a canyon. Something between fear and awe took root there. Perhaps it could be called desire.
Zeus asked him, “Well? Do you?”
Seth had done this before, but never by choice. Never willingly.
It was almost more daunting this way. Allowing for it. Asking for it. Begging for it, even. Perhaps he really had become a foolish, craven mortal; perhaps this was proof of just how far he’d fallen.
He had Zeus lay down on the cot, and then climbed up on top of him, bracketing his body between his thighs. Slowly, assertively, he guided Zeus’ hands to the cinch of his waist. To the curve of his hips, his ass. To the fastenings of his clothes, to the place of his desire.
Anxiety climbed in Seth’s belly, competing with his desire.
This is something shameful. This is something unnatural. This is evidence of my weakness, of my short-sightedness, of my failure as a man —
But when Zeus’ oil-slick hand closed around the shaft of his cock, all thoughts of wrongness fled: there was only pleasure, pressure, the promise of release.
Seth had been taken by a man before, yes. But he had never been taken correctly. As it turned out, there was a way of doing this — a proper way. A process that both Osiris and his bastard son had neglected in their blunt depredation.
The oil helped many things. So did time. Zeus was in no great rush, and took great delight in the process of things: probing, touching, coaxing, exploring. The kissing lasted ages — a sweet century, Seth thought, so long that he felt himself melt like butter beneath the midday sun…
By the time Zeus was fully sheathed inside of Seth, it didn’t hurt at all. It felt strange, of course — Zeus was a large man, and the deep pressure of his cock, in combination with the stretch, produced a sensation that was decidedly alien. But Seth did not hate it. And once Zeus began to move inside him, his passage aided by the slick, silken glide of warm oil, he found that he even liked it.
Wonder of all wonders.
He braced both palms against Zeus’ abdomen and pushed himself up and down, up and down, riding Zeus’ cock out, reveling in the sensation of being filled and then emptied. Zeu’; cock pulsated inside of him, thick and heavy and hard; there was something indescribably delicious about the way his cockhead pulled against Seth’s insides, a certain friction —
Seth moaned aloud, his face hot, his breaths labored. He rode a little faster, a little harder, chasing that feeling that came from deep within. It was wonderful to control the pace like this, even as the receptive partner. It came as something of a blessed relief.
Zeus groped Seth’s ass with one hand, kneading the pale flesh between his fingers. He let out a deep, sonorous hum of satisfaction.
“I’d love to give you a baby, Seth,” he said, his other hand coming around to rest on the flat little plain of Seth’s lower belly. “It’d be sexy, right? You, round with my baby… a little prince or princess of Olympus…”
“I’m a man,” Seth reminded Zeus, eyes screwed up tight, still pistoning his hips. “You, ahhhh... you fucking moron…”
“There are ways,” Zeus said.
“Shut the fuck up,” Seth moaned. “If you think — I’d be willing to carry, mngh — one of your Greek bastards, you need to get a clue — I’m not o-one of your whores…”
“Could’ve fooled me,” he said, and he lifted his hips and thrusted deep into Seth — leaving Seth gasping, shivering, overcome. Then he did it again. And again. Pleasure coursed through Seth like water through a river. It flooded him, deluged him; poured over him like a cloudburst.
Zeus leaned up, held Seth by the hips and railed into him. It was an almost unbearably thorough fucking; Seth could do little more than hold on for dear life, trying in vain to control the wild trembling of his legs. With each thrust, his cock bounced between them; rock hard, leaking, dripping all over Zeus’ belly, close, close…
Zeus nipped at Seth’s lips, murmured, “Has anybody ever given it to you like, this baby?”
“No.”
The word seemed to slip from Seth’s lips without his consent; he wrapped his arms around Zeus’ shoulders.
“Has anybody fucked you good like this? Deep like this?”:
“No, never like… like…”
“No?” Zeus said, low and dark. “That’s a shame. It feels good, doesn’t it?”
Seth twisted into Zeus’ arms, pressed his forehead against his pectoral. He kept his lips tightly shut, afraid the truth would come sluicing out of him once again: Yes, yes, it feels good, it feels so fucking good, fuck me more fuck me harder use me have me please please just turn me out —
“I bet it does,” Zeus laughed. “Fuck, I bet it does. You’re squeezing around me so tight, baby.”
He wrapped his hand around the head of Seth’s cock, and Seth felt a spark. A jolt. Raw magic, bright and staticky, lightning-tipped —
Seth’s mouth fell open; his mind went quiet. He tossed his head back. His red hair flew through the air like a vertical sail, wild and bright; blood and pomegranates, poppies and roses, death and sweetness, Duat and Hades, Arcadia suspended somewhere in-between —
He came, and came, and came.
Later, as Seth cleaned the mess from between his own thighs, a thought occurred to him: he had a Hera of his own. Of a sorts.
If Osiris learned he had lain with another man — and willingly, at that —
Well, Zeus would not be long for this world. Lord of Thunder or not. And surely Osiris would have his own twisted punishment in mind for Seth. He would want to remind Seth who he really belonged to. What his body was truly good for.
In other words, Osiris’ pleasure. Not his own.
Men are such animals.
Seth glanced back towards the cot where Zeus was slumbering. Unashamed of his body, he slept naked and sprawled; legs splayed, arms above his head. His large, dark cock was soft against his thigh, outlined by a thatch of thick hair.
Seth wondered if it would bother him. Zeus’ inevitable death by Osiris’ hands. He wondered whether it would hurt. But the longer he wondered, the more he came to realized this was yet another question without an easy answer.
Zeus was an animal, yes. An animal like all the others. But at least he was honest about it. He did not wear the false face of a gentleman; he did not once humiliate Seth by claiming to love him.
Seth — admired that, grudgingly. And Zeus was, in his own way, a very beautiful man… and he touched Seth with such moving worship, as though Seth were the godhead and Zeus the lowly exile…
A heady thought. Seth pushed it from his mind. He was still a wargod, no matter the indignities he had faced. Such swooning romanticism was beneath him. He forced himself to focus on the practical elements of their liaison instead. After all, having an Olympian paramour at his beck and call could prove highly instrumental in the coming days. Oh, Zeus was no end of trouble — there could be no doubting that — but Seth could think of worse allies than an almighty thundergod. Especially if said thundergod was hopelessly, recklessly besotted with him.
Lust was a blunt emotion, easy to manipulate; if Seth acted judiciously, he could wield it against the Ennead as deftly as a blade.
Seth pinched the candlewick, let the tent fill with shadows. He made his way back towards the cot and the warm body within it. In the dark, he could almost believe they were but two men. Two men like any other.
As he settled down against the bedlinens, he wondered if Egypt might see an early rain this year. A certain crashing in the heavens. A force majeure in his own name.