Chapter Nineteen

When Arsinoë opened her eyes, it was to a new world. She felt cold. Heavy. Coiled and waiting. She was lying on a bed of hard rock which might have been simply red, but it wasn't – it was red, ochre, orange, crimson, terracotta, saffron and silver, shimmering and glinting, individual grains of the sandstone rock as clear as if they had been under her nose instead of ten feet above her head.

"Arsinoë?"

She looked to her left, and saw Maahes. Saw him, as she had never seen him before – the faint creases around mouth, the pores of his skin, the faint pink tracing of veins, like spider webs, across his eyeballs. The flecks of chestnut brown in his otherwise copper hair.

"Try to stay calm," he said, in a voice that had more tones in it than it ever had before.

She watched it reverberate through the air to reach her ears. Her senses expanded, further out, to hear the songs of birds and the crack of branches being stepped on, the soft thuds of animal hooves. They sounded close.

She tried to open her mouth, to ask him how by the gods he expected her to stay calm when there were, all at once, a thousand new colours in the world. But she found her tongue too thick and swollen with thirst to speak. "Water," she croaked.

"Water won't help," came a voice like a silver fountain.

Arsinoë looked towards the mouth of the cave, but there was no one there. It took a moment to realise: the woman speaking was still some distance away. She heard her footsteps coming, muffled and almost silent over the grass. Along with something else. Heavier. Somewhat larger with a galloping heartbeat.

Elena, leading a horse by the bridle. Then Arsinoë understood exactly what would help. She was not aware of having moved, but she was aware of the rich, heavy, iron-wet tang in her mouth. The blood was satisfying on a visceral level, answering an animal need. Arsinoë, so famed for her composure, abandoned it completely, as she did her sense of self, to answer the call of a primal instinct. Within minutes, the horse was drained and empty.

She raised her bloodied mouth and said, "More."

Another horse was brought. After that was finished with too, Arsinoë curled up and fell asleep in the manner of a newborn. When she opened her eyes, the same appetite resumed, its edge unblunted.

"More."

A sheep.

"More."

Two goats. Between each meal, she slept deeply, her body attempting to grow into the newness of itself.

"More."

Finally, uncounted hours or days later, she stopped feeling thirsty. Enough of her self returned that she wished to be clean, to scrub the dry blood from her face and hands. She could hear the cacophonous noise of a stream, halfway down the mountain they were on. Without thinking, she headed towards the cave-mouth.

Maahes got in her way. "Too dangerous," he said. "If there are humans ..."

She wasn't listening. Too busy, once again, marvelling at a thing which should not have been novel and now was. In the past, he had always been other. Hard and cool as stone and just as yielding. Now she was touching him and feeling him to be exactly like she was.

"You're not cold," she observed, her hands making their way along his arms to cup his face.

A smile quirked his lips. "I haven't changed, amare."

She accepted that. It was very obvious she was the one changed here. "What did you do to me?"

"Turned you," Elena said.

"How?"

Elena extended her left arm, indicating a small, crescent-shaped scar the mirror of the one Arsinoë bore on her chest. "With my blood."

The former queen accepted that with a nod, then said with a little hesitation, "I … I've never had a mother before."

"And now you do." A simple reply, but one which held all the layers of such a relationship bound up within it.

"How long …"

"Two weeks."

Two weeks. She had been dead for two weeks. "I'll fetch water," Elena said.

She went down the hill, leaving Arsinoë alone with her lover. No. Not her lover. Her mate. "I'm like you now," she said.

"Yes."

It came to her mind to ask after Sabra, but she knew, she– remembered that Sabra was dead. Sabra was dead while she was alive – would stay alive for vast stretches of time to come.

Maahes' fingers were gentle at her hairline, lifting strands sticky with dried blood from her face. "Remember, but don't regret those you leave behind. There will be many more of them in times to come."

She nodded. "Thank you, Maahes."

He smiled. "It's probably time you use my name, amare. Or choose one of the goddesses for yourself, if you still think me a god."

Of course. She could be Arsinoë no longer. "No. But I will need a new name, I suppose. Have you any thoughts?"

"Alexandra?"

She rolled her eyes. "A little on the nose, don't you think?"

He laughed, and pulled her to the cave-mouth. It was darkening, the night rising up to claim the sky in a blush of violet. Before, no stars would have been visible yet. Now stars were all she could see. Some, so distant as to be no more than pinpricks of white light; others, like Mars, a red ball clearly distinct from the yellow Venus. She wondered if, when the moon came out, she might be tricked into thinking she could touch it.

"What about Cælestis?" he said.

"You think to call me heavenly?"

He stared at her in burgeoning starlight with an entirely unironic expression of love. Words were unnecessary to express how much he clearly did think that. "Choose another, if you dislike it."

She felt an unexpected sense of youth and uncertainty. She had known and been confident of them in humanity – being so very inhuman made her feel more vulnerable. "I don't mind what we call one another. So long as I call you mine."

He brought her palm up to rest over his slowly-beating heart. "That will be forever, now."

A slow, sweet smile broke over her face. "Lucius."

He bent to kiss her. "Cælestis."

FIN

There will be a sequel. It's going to take time to write. Thank you for reading this, I sincerely hope you have enjoyed it.