Seth crouched down, his eyes burning with intensity as he channeled the stolen energies of thousands of living creatures that roiled in his frame. “You stupid, stubborn immortal. Perhaps if you had known that I would grow to have more power than all of you, you might have treated me better. You’re finally getting what you deserve.”
Leaning closer so that only Osiris could hear him, Seth whispered, “Isis will be mine. I will take her to the desert where your forest once stood. There she will vow to belong to me and me alone. You will be nothing more to her then than these grains of sand to be cast beneath her feet.”
“No!” Isis cried. “Nephthys, help me!”
“There’s nothing I can do!” Nephthys said as tears fell heavily onto her cheeks.
Osiris’s arm began to melt away, and then his chest caved in as more grains of sand lifted from his body and fell into the golden box. Quickly, Osiris spun toward his wife. “Isis,” he pleaded. “Remember, I love you.”
“Osiris!” Isis knelt down, encircling her husband in her arms as if she could hold him together by will alone. He pressed his lips to hers in a final kiss, but all she felt was the sting of sand as he dissolved in front of her eyes. The remnants of his being floated into the box and settled.
Crying out, Isis took hold of the golden box and began chanting a spell, but no matter how she tried to weave the words together, her power seemed to elude her. She needed time. Grabbing a fistful of sand, she staggered to her feet. Nephthys took her arm to support her. “You’re a monster,” Isis spat at the gloating man standing before her.
Seth smiled coolly. “A monster of your making, my dear. You should have said yes when I asked you to choose me. Now you’ll end up with nothing unless you do exactly as I say.”
Isis wove a spell to incapacitate him, channeling as much power as she could muster, but Seth just laughed and tugged at his shirt to show her a gleaming red stone hanging around his neck.
“Your spells, as much as I appreciate them, cannot affect me when I wear the celestial bloodstone.”
“Where did you get that?” Isis demanded. There was only one living person left in all of the cosmos who would know what could bind Isis’s power. Isis prayed she was wrong.
“Why, your lovely sister, of course,” he said, and Isis closed her eyes, wishing she could unhear his response. Seth went on, “She knew you’d want revenge for the loss of Osiris. It’s only right that she’d want to protect her new husband.”
Isis wrenched her arm away from Nephthys, her eyes stinging with betrayal and loss. How could this be possible? To lose my beloved and my sister all in one day?
Nephthys tried to speak, but Isis held up her hand. “No. Don’t you dare say a word.”
Seth clucked his tongue. “Poor Isis. It would seem that despite his immortal nature, your new husband has been visited by death. How distressing. How . . . impossible. And yet here I am, recently invigorated by the remains of your former husband’s life energy, and fortunately for you, still eager to embrace you as a wife. Of course, now you’ll be relegated to the status of second wife, but I promise to give you an equal amount of attention.”
“You’re sick,” Isis hissed. “I’ll never accept you!”
His smile disappeared and he took a threatening step forward, all the darkness inside him apparent in his demeanor. “And you’re foolish if you think to thwart me again.” Seth grabbed Isis’s wrist, painfully jerking her toward him, and whispered in her ear. “Think about what else you have to lose,” he threatened cunningly.
Tears streaming down her face, Isis looked at her sister and then at Baniti, who stood at the edge of the room, her eyes wide in terror as she pressed her hands to her mouth. Isis did think about what else she had to lose, but in that moment nothing was as important as the grains of sand trickling between her clenched fingers. Eyes bright with determination, she took a deep breath and whispered a spell. Her spells might have had no effect on Seth, but they still worked on her.
A ray of moonlight stole through the window, the light bending until it fell upon Isis. Reaching out, she took hold of the light and used its power to shift her form until her body appeared almost ghostlike and she was able to slip from Seth’s grasp. Alarmed, he tried to take hold of her again, but his hands passed through her as if she were no longer corporeal.
Clutching the sand that was once her husband, Isis leapt upon the moonbeam and it sped her far, far away from Heliopolis. But despite the moonlight that bore her up to the stars, the heaviness of her sorrow reminded her that the distance between her and her beloved now was something even the stars couldn’t breach.
Chapter 7
Uprooted
Isis didn’t know how long she floated there, alone, mourning the love she’d only just won. Her tears flowed freely, her great sorrow provoking the stars to weep as well. The drops fell to the mortal realm and caused the already swollen Nile to rise higher than it ever had before, flooding the countryside so that all who lived within its bounds knew that something terrible must have happened to prevent Osiris from protecting them as he usually did.
She heard the flap of wings and felt the brush of air against her skin. It was Nephthys. Isis’s sorrow turned to rage. “Leave me!” she demanded. “Go back to your husband. The two of you deserve each other.”
“I will not abandon you,” Nephthys replied coolly.
Isis gaped at her incredulously. “Abandon me? You’ve already abandoned me. Betrayed me for one who has done the unthinkable! How could you support such a thing? Tell me you didn’t see this in a vision. Tell me I’m wrong. Tell me you could have done nothing to prevent it.”
Not until that moment did Isis truly understand the depths of Nephthys’s deception. It was written all over her face. Regret and sorrow swam in Nephthys’s eyes, confirming her suspicions. Her sister had seen this play out in a vision. Had seen it and had done nothing to prevent it. “I cannot abide to look at you,” Isis said as she turned away.
“Isis, stop.” Nephthys put a hand on her sister’s shoulder. “I know there is much damage I must repair between us, but there is too much to be done and there isn’t enough time for me to explain. Just know that all of these things, including the death of your husband, had to come to pass for the cosmos to be in balance.”
Despite her need to leave, Isis paused to ask one final question. “How can anything ever be in balance again if Osiris is gone?”
“He’s not gone, sister.”
“What?” Isis spun around. “What do you mean?”
Nephthys blew out a breath. “He’s still here. Can’t you feel him?”
“Feel him? How?”
“It was your spell. You are still connected. Even now. If you want to bring him back, we must hurry.”
“But Seth . . .”
“Forget about Seth for the time being. Do you want your husband back or don’t you?”
Isis blinked, and the air stirred by Nephthys’s wings dried the tears that stung her eyes. “Of course I want him back,” she murmured, confusion obvious on her face.