Let's check in with Atria and Akhel in B.C.... ;)

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Scene 3: Bad

2020 B.C. 

The sun smiled on the Nile as it rose, casting the riverside reeds in a warm, lustrous gold. And the Fate of death awoke from the most perfect sleep she'd ever known, entwined with a man who she wished was her own.

Though in a way she owned him, just as she owned every soul on earth, Atria mused as she stayed still and silent where she'd slept against his chest, his heartbeat drumming through the sun-bronzed skin to which her ear was pressed. For every soul was sure to meet its doom, whenever she cut short its path upon the Loom. All mortals, no matter how fearless or how strong they might appear, were fated to fall victim to her lethal shears. This was a sort of ownership, she knew, and yet she didn't own Akhel the way she wanted to.

But it was so damned wrong of her to want him in that way, or honestly in any way that lasted longer than a day. This was the second time in a row that she had chosen to wake up in the same place. Letting herself drift off into blissful slumber by his side last night, without questioning him about his morals and the motives behind some of the choices that he'd made, had been an unforgivable mistake.

Now of course she had to stay another day to learn the answers, to those questions that she'd failed to ask. For now, deciding whether or not Akhel deserved to die was her most important task.

She had fully intended to ask him about it last night, after kissing him just one more time, or maybe a few thousand more times as their raging hormones had demanded, and after letting herself feel some stupid shıt, because she stupidly enjoyed it. That was totally what she had intended. Needless to say, that wasn't how the night had ended.

Part of her blamed the human body's asinine design, which was obviously not her fault at all. But seriously, why the fυck were orgasms always followed by the two most seductive and counterproductive urges in the world: the desire to fall asleep in an exhausted heap, and — at least for Akhel and herself — the burning need to keep on fυcking more and more? It was such bullshıt, as if whatever evil idiot had come up with this design got a laugh out of watching people act like lazy asses and insatiable whores.

But part of her blamed herself, in full, and always would, because at this point she'd lost count of all her flaws and figured that whenever something shıtty happened, she was probably the cause.

"How long have you been awake?"

Atria stirred, startled by the sudden words, and also pissed off at herself for being so aroused at something as silly as the vibration of his vocal cords. She told him that she'd only just woken, wondering whether he would buy the lie. The knowing smirk that spread across his sinfully delicious lips suggested that she'd been stupid to try.

And then he shifted slightly where they lay among the reeds in dewy bliss, drawing her in toward him for a kiss, and it took every freaking ounce of strength that her immortal soul could summon to resist. Somehow she managed it, and the confused look on his flawless face was so goddamn adorable that she was almost glad she did.

She blinked softly up at him. "I wanted to ask you something."

He brushed his thumb slowly across her lower lip. "I don't think this pretty mouth was made for talking."

She pretended to be offended, fighting the urge to flick out her tongue and do all manner of depraved things to his fingers. "Oh, so you think it's only good for kissing? Sucking?"

Akhel smirked his cruelly sexy smirk again. "Among other things. Maybe even for talking, just not first thing in the fυcking morning."

Atria fully intended to continue resisting temptation, but then he shifted again, in such a way as to remind her that men often had... anatomical reasons for wanting to fυck in the morning. In Akhel's case, a very large reason that was extremely hard to disregard. And leaving him all high and dry like that while she insisted on asking him a string of boring questions just seemed downright mean, so she gave in and devoured him completely out of courtesy, honestly. Totally. And once again, part of her placed all of the blame on humanity's retarded physiology.

The sun was higher by a mile in the sky above the Nile when they were done with that; she wished feeling good didn't feel so damn bad.

"So," Atria sighed as they both recovered from the inevitable marathon of orgasms that had occurred. It was difficult to put words together when her mind, after being thoroughly blown so many times, was impossibly blurred. "I wanted... to ask..."

"Don't ask me to do the — uh, that thing again; I'm really spent—"

"No, not that, not yet — maybe in a few minutes — I wanted to ask if you, um... if you have... I don't know, any morals and stuff."

His breathing was still ravishingly ragged and rough. "Morals?"

"Yeah. Given that you're, uh, a criminal. Did you have, like, some secret noble motives or whatever? Or are you just... you know, bad."

"Well, I can be very bad, but I think you already know that..."

She was too exhausted to smile or laugh. And too full of dread at the notion, becoming more real by the second, that she might have to kill him. "So no secret noble motives, then?"

"Nothing secret. Everyone in Egypt knew why I did what I did. As for 'noble', I don't know," he replied impassively. "If you mean to ask why I robbed royal tombs, the answer is that I needed the money."

Oh fυck, she thought, he's just a greedy bastard, isn't he. But her heart was much too terrified and desperate to let him stop at that. "Needed it for what?"

He paused, golden-green gaze piercing beyond the cloudless sky, as if searching for a lost soul in the afterlife. "Someone whose death I'd rather not remember."

Atria's heavy heart sank; she remembered. "Your brother."

For a while, Akhel said nothing more, as silent as the sun tracing its path across the Nile. When he spoke, his gaze did not move from its place, adrift in distant space. "The fυcking merchants charged too much. Just like the government — consumed by greed, corrupt. Ranaan's illness was rare, and the medicine rarer; they knew they could demand any price, knowing that families like ours would be willing to pay. Whether or not we could. I tried my hand at every craft, at every trade — whatever price they charged, I paid — but in the end it did no good. They raised the cost with every passing day, higher than any honest work could pay, and so I got my damn hands on the money in the only way I could. It was the only fυcking way."

Atria watched him as he spoke, and though she never would've thought it possible till now, she knew right then that he was even more beautiful, in his dark and damaged godforsaken soul, than out.

"Maybe I should feel guilty, for stealing from corpses rotting in sarcophagi inlaid with fυcking stones worth plenty to feed the entire country. Corpses of kings who were monsters while alive, scum of the earth who proclaimed themselves gods even when they knew damn well that they would die. And die they did. Maybe I should feel bad for taking gold and jewels from sad, decaying fools, but I don't, and... after seeing my brother's dead body, knowing that even though my crimes were all to save him, still he died because of them, because of me... honestly, I don't feel a damn thing."

In the long, aching silence that followed his words, both of their hearts were crying, feeling nothing and everything, and all the while over the Nile, the sun was still rising.

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Any thoughts, feels for Akhel? :/

Next scene, we'll check in with the Campions in modern-day Greece...

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