The news arrived with morning bread and watered wine, delivered by Merit with eyes that wouldn't meet mine. She set the tray down with unusual care, her movements deliberate as temple ritual.
"What is it?" I asked, though something cold was already unfurling in my chest.
"The Nubian girl," Merit whispered, her voice barely disturbing the air. "She... she won't be returning to the harem."
Merit fled before I could ask more, but she'd already told me everything. Sadeh was gone. Not sent home, not elevated to temple service or anything. Gone in the way that left empty chambers and questions no one dared voice aloud.
The bread turned to ash in my mouth. My hands began to tremble, then my shoulders, then something deeper. Sadeh, who had combed my hair with gentle fingers. Sadeh, who had created distractions when merchants leered.
Sadeh, my only friend in this golden prison.
Dead. Another sacrifice to maintain a god's deteriorating existence.
The rage that erupted within me wasn't the strange, divine fire from the banquet. This was entirely mortal, entirely mine—raw and devastating.
I rose from my cosmetics table with such violence that the tray crashed to the floor, wine spreading across marble like spilled blood. I moved through the palace corridors with a purpose that made servants scatter.
Their hushed protests followed me—reminders of my place, warnings about protocol, pleas to not forget myself. I didn't care. What was the worst they could do? Kill me? After what I'd learned, death seemed almost merciful.
The doors to the royal chambers weren't barred. Perhaps Seth expected me, perhaps he wanted this confrontation.
I burst through them with enough force to make them crash against the walls, my grief and fury ready to pour out in accusations that would strip away any pretense between us.
But the man who turned from the window wore amber eyes, not crimson. Ram stood before me, and the expression on his face—exhaustion so deep it seemed carved into bone—stopped my rage cold.
"He can't come to you now," Ram said quietly, almost sympathetically.
"You," I breathed, the word carrying equal parts accusation and confusion. "You're here. You're actually here."
"For now." Ram moved carefully, as if sudden movements might shatter something fragile between us. "Though the distinctions grow less clear each day."
My fury, deprived of its intended target, collapsed inward. The tears came suddenly, violently, and I found myself sinking to my knees on the cold marble, Sadeh's name a broken sound in my throat.
She'd been innocent. She'd been kind. She'd been my friend.
Ram crossed to me without hesitation, dropping to his own knees, gathering me against him with movements that spoke of genuine rather than calculated comfort. The solid warmth of him, the steady beat of a mortal heart, anchored me in my grief.
"I'm sorry," he murmured against my hair. "I'm so terribly sorry."
"You didn't do it," I managed between sobs.
"No. But I didn't stop it either.” His voice carried its own weight of sorrow. "That's our curse, Enet. We share everything—body, consequences, guilt—but not control."
I pulled back enough to see his face, searching those amber eyes for deception. "You knew what he was doing?"
"I know everything he does. Feel everything, see everything, trapped behind eyes I can't close."
Ram's expression held a horror I hadn't expected. "Do you understand what that means? I watch him kill, feel the life leave their bodies, carry their last breaths in the lungs we share. And I can do nothing but scream in a voice he doesn't have to hear."
The revelation shifted something in my understanding. I'd thought of Ram as the innocent victim, Seth as the monster. But the truth was more complex—they were both victims and victimizers, trapped in a prison of flesh that corrupted them both.
"Why Sadeh?" My voice broke on her name. "Of all the women here, why her?"
Ram's face creased with genuine sorrow. "That answer must come from him. I can tell you she wasn't random, wasn't casual cruelty. But the specifics..." He shook his head. "I'm powerless here, Enet."
We sat on the floor like children, all pretense of royal dignity abandoned. Ram held me as I grieved, his hands stroking my hair with the same gentleness I remembered from our garden encounters. But something had shifted in how I received that gentleness.
"He regrets it," Ram said suddenly, the words seeming to surprise him. "I don't believe I'm saying this, but he regrets it. I can feel his remorse like it's my own—or perhaps it is my own. The boundaries between us blur more each day."
"What do you mean?"
Ram pulled back slightly, meeting my eyes with disturbing directness. "We're merging, Seth and I. It used to be clearer—his thoughts, my thoughts, his desires, mine. But now?"
He touched his temple with fingers that trembled slightly. "I don't know where he ends and I begin. Sometimes I think his thoughts. Sometimes he speaks with my conscience. We're becoming something neither of us intended."
"The rituals were supposed to prevent that," I said, remembering Seth's desperate explanation.
"They did, for a time. But their effectiveness wanes. Each sacrifice buys less separation, less time." Ram's laugh held no humor. "We're dying, Enet. Either we merge completely into something new, or we fragment into nothing. Ram and Seth as separate beings won't survive much longer."
The implications staggered me. The man I'd grown to care for and the god who'd claimed me were disappearing into each other, creating something unprecedented.
"I know about your connection with him," Ram continued, his voice gentle but direct. "What you shared last night. What you've been sharing in dreams for months."
Heat flooded my cheeks, but Ram raised a hand before I could speak. "I don't judge you. I feel what he feels when he touches you. Experience his desire as if it were my own."
He smiled sadly. "I thought I cared for you romantically, you know. But sitting here now, I understand it differently. His obsession colored my affection, made me believe I felt things that weren't entirely mine."
"And now?"
"Now I see clearly." Ram touched my face with brotherly tenderness. "I care for you deeply, but as a friend, an ally, someone who understands this impossible situation we're trapped in. The romantic longing, the desperate need—that's his. It always was."
The truth of it resonated through me. What I'd felt for Ram was real but not romantic—the affection for someone who'd shown me kindness when I'd expected cruelty.
Ram was safety, gentleness, everything I should want. But my heart had already chosen the darker path, pulled toward Seth with an intensity that defied logic or morality.
"He killed my friend," I whispered, testing the words, trying to make them change what I felt.
"Yes," Ram agreed simply. "And you still need to face him about it. Still need him despite it. I can feel that truth in you as clearly as he can."
“What should I do now?..”
“First, grieve. Allow yourself this weakness before becoming strong again, Enet.”
And I listened to him. We stayed there on the marble floor, Ram held me, offering the uncomplicated comfort I'd once thought I wanted. But even in his arms, even grateful for his steadiness, I knew he was right.