She was incomparable, his little queen. Perched in the shadows aloft, he watched her tirelessly. The column of her neck was finest alabaster, made starker by the defiant curls that eschewed the confines of her golden diadem. Yet she possessed not the face of Hellenistic beauty—for it conformed not to the aesthetic ideals that might have launched a navy to Troy—but was instead the sui generis grace of a goddess, perhaps even the winged goddess, Isis, herself.

Kassiel alighted from the shoulder of Horus, whose keen stone gaze was lowered over his young wards, thence to walk among the scurrying servants, the bejeweled nobles, and the gluttonous priests. To them he paid no heed—nor they to him, for he walked in their world and not they in his—it was only the queen who intrigued him. For millennia he had beheld the earth with dysphoric eyes, watching as one eon slipped invariably into another. Thus had it been from the time when the oceans were naught but scoria and the mountains raged with fire. From time to time, as was his wont, he had soared down from his empyrean seat in the northern sky but only, he prided himself, to look a little closer and to wonder at these strange creatures and their peculiar habits. Perhaps, he thought with dread, he had been too long among them, as his brother had warned him so long ago, for by and by he found that his heart, if such he possessed, had been unexpectedly and unthinkably moved to beat a mortal and seductive tempo. An earthly affliction with grave and everlasting consequences. Nevertheless, here he stood at her side once more, tempted again to step closer and touch her. All he allowed himself, however, was only to look at what he must never have.

Her nose favored the length and crook of a fine young eagle—which was apt in light of her noble Ptolemaic progenitors—and he recognized in its profile a shrewdness that transcended her youth. To the gaze of a plebeian it might not have inspired esteem or renown, but to him, it was in nowise a diminution of her beauty; on the contrary, he regarded it highly. The eyes too were not that of an earthbound creature. They were sunlit gold and imbued with a falcon-like keenness that was wholly without need of the kohl and malachite that adorned her lids. In the petal-like curvature of her mouth, no one could find fault, for it was generous and alluring, her voice rich with feminine authority. In fine, there was nothing of docility nor of conformity in either Cleopatra's accents or her strange beauty and as such he never tired of watching, nor indeed listening to, her.

In truth, he'd forsaken all else and all others to watch her with a nascent and forbidden love that he took pains to hide from the Great Eye of Heaven—Ra as He was known here. So to the shadows Kassiel cleaved and over her old and wizened body he would someday weep in secret, for what was her life but a ripple on the Nile that would vanish in a mortal instant. And mortals, such as she was, whose passions rivaled even the sun, were never long destined to scatter their light like stars upon those vast and winding waters. Her star would be snuffed far sooner, he feared, by which time she, like her father's fresh corpse, would be spread atop cold stone like a salted cod. What remained of the pharaoh now lay still atop the embalmers' slab deep within his tomb, invested in linen tresses, his painted sarcophagus gaping and hollow-bellied. His daughter, now the basileia, had only this morning pressed her deep ochre lips to his waxen brow for the last time. The lamentations and orisons—even those feigned tears defrayed with drachmas—had not yet dried up from the streets.

Cleopatra, the seventh of her name, was sure her father would be well pleased with his funereal valediction and could no doubt hear the mourners even from the Hall of Osiris. The young queen had earlier whispered her thoughts to the four winds without the smallest notion that her unseen guardian had plucked them from the north wind and was, even now, standing beside her.

Unbeknownst to her, the seraph watched as she sipped her wine in the banquet hall, the funereal feast, for tonight at least, drawing to a close. Only the cheese and honeyed figs and dates had yet to be served. Cleopatra, in turn, studied her young husband—eight years her junior— where he sat between the dour commander Achillas and the rodent-faced regent, Potheinos. Her brother. Her consort. Her thorn.

Or, thought Kassiel, was she his thorn? Was not her beauty dangerous...even to himself? Were not her petals safeguarded by keen thorns? The watcher could feel how her heart constricted with suspicion as that hateful eunuch whispered long and sibilantly into the boy king's ear. Her hate, in turn, became Kassiel's, though he'd fought it at first. The more he watched and was fascinated by her, however, the further he strayed from Heaven's light. Kassiel heard each murmurous polemic from Potheinos's tongue like a sharp lash across the character of his love.

In that uneasy and conjoined reign only ill-feeling flourished thereafter—for months it spilled athwart the starved banks of their beloved Nile, and seemed to cloak their valley not in lush greens but with the bleak shade of famine. Whatever small fondness there had existed between them was finally reduced to dust and ash, and talk of exile.

"She cannot be controlled," said Potheinos to the commander one night. "She has grown too bold."

Kassiel watched as the upper lip of Achillas curled in distaste, his eyes narrowing over an official correspondence in which Cleopatra's royal cypher appeared without that of the co-ruling Ptolemy. "Then we must clip her wings," said he at last.

Having heard quite enough, Kassiel leapt into the night on broad star-lit wings, soaring over the streets of Alexandria till he spied the noble columns of the royal library. It was within the reading room that he knew he would find his Cleopatra at her solitude. He moved through the silent hypostyle, the brands wavering with fright as he passed, the firelight alone aware that some unearthly creature moved within the darkened halls. He cast no shadow upon the sunken reliefs and inscriptions that overlaid the pillars, the hieroglyphs depicting ancient battles and godly triumphs, for he was not one among the living.

The bewitching scent of rose, frankincense, and papyrus nudged playfully at the side of his mouth, drawing him closer to his heart's desire—an unmistakable ambrosial blend of honey and spice that was hers alone and more alluring than the rarest and most costly kyphi.

Studying by lamplight, he found her stretched across her chaise like a feline in her private rooms, her leathern sandals doffed, her head against a blue silken pillow. The diaphanous white linen of her dress parted across her thigh where she had bent her knee in repose. Her hair appeared like ochre in the flame light, a dark rich red that was near as dark as kohl. Her heartbeats had lowered to a soporific rhythm and her lids were growing heavy. In another moment, he was sure, the papyrus scroll would find its way from her lap to the polished marble floor. She was yet unaware that she was not alone, but the same could not be said of her stygian companion. The cat that had been curled beside her pretty ankle gave a sudden black hiss and bounded from the room in fright, startling its mistress from the polyglot scroll.

"Who is there?" said she.

Ah! Not in a thousand years would he ever tire of listening to that honeyed voice. Kassiel had only to step from the shadows, just one step, to make his form known to her, yet he hesitated. What he was about to do would, if he was watched, surely lower the brow of the All-Seeing Eye, if not worse. He was right to dither in the shadows, for he had no business meddling in the affairs of queens. The murmured caveat of his conscious was far too reminiscent of his brother in the west, but Gadriel's censure could no more reach him here than a mortal's touch—for the earthbound, unlike himself, could not pass from their realm into his. Kassiel might well have been exhorted to keep his footing in the realm of shadows had the welkin in the west not lain silent and untenanted; had Gadriel not, long ago, been ousted from the supernal fold on the tail of his besotted sister; had Sariel not fallen through that one-way abyss. Even now the shock of their expulsion reverberated through the heavens.

"I demand you show yourself." By now Cleopatra had unfolded herself from the pillows and was standing like a general, peering into the shadows, her scroll forgotten at her bare feet.

She could feel his presence, he knew it by the racing of her heart, yet her voice remained steady and sure. Perhaps if she had not spoken he might have held himself back; perhaps if his eyes had not whetted themselves on the curve of her hips, and those long milky thighs, he might have had the strength to leave her to her precious scrolls; leave her to her doom in favor of avoiding his own. Yet she had spoken and he had looked and his need was such that he could not withstand the call of her fragrant skin and could not resist the chance to have her eyes, at last, rest upon his. So, erelong, he tucked his wings beneath his flesh and emerged into the light to answer her summons.

He knew that, though his ivory wings were hidden, he could no more pass for a mortal than she could be mistaken for her craven cat. He was nigh as tall as a pillar and his flesh just as white, and not a little nacreous besides. His bones and sinews, leastways in this realm, somewhat resembled a man's, so she was not immediately struck dead with fright upon seeing him.

However, she did drop instantly to the floor with a soft gasp—on any other maid it might have been a whimper—and pressed her proud nose and luxuriant curls to the cold marble. "It is thee!" Her heart was slamming against her breast in a ferocious tempo. "Mighty Osiris."

His lips twitched. She had addressed him neither in Latin, nor in Greek, but in the tongue of her people. He, however, preferred best to hear those dulcet female accents spoken in the Alexandrian dialect of poets and scholars. "Wherefore call me by that name, my queen?"

She thought to hazard a glance up at him, her wheat-gold eyes flaring wider as he approached her with a silent tread that belied his colossal form. "Are not you he?"

He felt the brush of her eyes atop his golden head before she dragged them down his frame and then, finally, back to meet his gaze. His own eyes were neither blue nor green but something in-between, yet too light to be anything but otherworldly. "You think me the life-giver? The Lord of the under realm?" The god of no phallus, he chuckled to himself.

"Aye, lord." Her breath hitched with wonderment. "Indeed."

"Do I affright thee."

"No."

"Then—" he took her arm and pulled her gently from the floor so that she was standing before him "—kneel not before me, my queen. Art thou not my consort? My queen? My sister?" He knelt beside her and lowered his head so that he could press his lips to her brow. "Is thy name not Isis?" Then he dropped his mouth a little lower to fall lightly against hers. And in that moment he knew he was lost to her. The black abyss loomed closer.

"As you say, lord." The warmth of her whispered words fluttered across his lips with the redolence of figs and dates—forbidden fruits. "What seeketh thou here tonight? Just a kiss?"

"An earthly hour," he replied.

"And how may a queen of Egypt serve you in that blessed hour?" The petals of her mouth curled delicately, knowingly.

"For tonight I wish only to council if you will hear me."

"I will hear you, Lord of Love."

"Then I will make you a queen of kings."

Exciting things are happening for me. In just a week I'll be publishing Thorne Bay and getting back to actively writing (or rather continuing with) Lair Of Beasts and Winterly again. Publishing for the first time involves a steep learning curve, so I apologize for neglecting my writing. For those of you who don't know, I have a website now (still very raw) that will be undergoing some facelifts and changes shortly: jeaninecroft.com (link in my profile). If you sign up for my mailing list I promise never to bombard you with spam or nonsense. Only extras like chapter POVs that won't appear on Wattpad (namely Winterly and Lucian), sneak previews, cover reveals, publishing news and promotions. If you'd like your free copy of Thorne Bay please do sign up. Ciao for now and have a wonderful weekend.