“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?”
