Behind me, the door closes. Luke turns one lock. He sees me eyeing the array of other locks. "In case ye didnae ken, we're on the top floor o' the most secure and expensive building in Knightsbridge. One lock is enough." As he gestures to follow him, he winks at me as if I am a common tavern girl. Furious, I storm after him.
"I am—" I begin again.
"Shhh," he says, and puts his finger on my lips to silence me. "Tea first."
"How dare you touch me," I say, shoving his finger away. "I am not some common whore."
He blinks. "My apologies," he says and looks at me properly for the first time. "No, I'd say ye're anything but that. That's some getup ye got on. Where'd ye rent it?"
"Rent it?" I cry. "All I wear belongs to me."
He nods, slow. "Aha. I get it. Ye're a cosplayer. Aye, ye're good. This looks absolutely authentic. Must have taken a long time to make all this, hen."
Then he walks away, says hello to Oliver, and asks if Avril has something called Earl Grey and milk that's actually in date.
And all I can think is he just called me a hen. I am the princess of Egypt. My mother intends for me to be the next Pharaoh, not her stepson, my half-brother Prince Menkheperre, whom I must marry to secure my place on the throne. Yet this man who can use his body as a weapon has dared to call me one of the lowliest creatures in our empire. When I get my soul back, I will ensure that he suffers the worst of all tortures and is tossed into the scorpion cell where I will witness his excruciating death with pleasure. No one calls me a hen. Not even handsome men whose laughter and winks make me feel things I've never felt before. Yes, he will die. I am a Pharaoh-in-waiting, and he is no one.
And then he laughs, and the sound of it flows over me like water, smoothing the hard edges of my heart honed in a world where nothing is given freely. It makes me feel warm, safe, and content, a feeling I haven't had since before my father went to the gods. When he would laugh with my mother at his favourite tale about the donkey and the oarsman. I feel a smile warm my lips and decide I won't kill him. Torture it is.
I go into the room with the black mirror and the heaps of material piled on every possible surface. Avril hands Luke - who's miraculously found space to sit on the divan - something steaming hot in a cup with a handle and a plate with hard, flat things the colour of milk. He takes them with a smile into his well-shaped hands that would suit scarab rings and says, "Thanks, hen." He balances the plate on his dark-blue clad thigh, and sips from the cup, making a soft slurping noise.
"What is this word – hen?" I ask.
He looks up and cocks an eyebrow at me, which makes me reconsider his sentence of torture.
"Ye donnae ken what a hen is?" he asks before biting into one of the hard, flat things and crunching his way through it.
"Oh, give me a break," Avril says with a roll of her eyes, "just quit with the method acting, will you. We're way beyond that."
"Method acting?" I repeat.
"Ugh!" Avril mutters and plops herself onto the divan on top of a pile of material. Once again, Oliver turns up from out of nowhere, this time from behind the divan, and rubs his body against her shin.
"Hen is a word of endearment where I come from," says Luke.
"You come from a farm?" I ask.
"Very funny," he says with a wry smile. "No. Glasgow."
"I have never heard of this place. In what empire is it?"
"In Scotland," he says, polishing off the hard, flat thing and reaching for another. "And it's not an empire, but a country."
YOU ARE READING
Hathor's Mirror
RomanceNerys Whitaker has it all - a cushy column at History Lives!, a gorgeous flat in a Grade II listed building in a leafy part of London, and a relationship that's lasted more than a year. But in just one day, she loses her job to AI, finds an eviction...
