The Pharaoh’s Favorite novel Chapter 28

A warm breeze curled through the balcony, lifting the edges of my linen robe, sending a shiver across my skin despite the heat.

Nebetta sat beside me, her small frame curled against the stone railing, her hands wrapped around her knees as she gazed at the stars.

I had expected her to be timid, hesitant—but as the night stretched on, she surprised me. She spoke in a hushed voice, careful but certain, as if sharing the secrets of the heavens themselves.

I had not expected to trust her so quickly. Yet here we were, alone in the quiet night, and I found myself hanging onto her every word.

“It happens under the full moon,” Nebetta said, her voice barely more than a whisper. “The first ritual.”

I stiffened at the words. She didn’t need to explain what she meant.

Heket’s warning.

My unanswered questions.

The truth that Amen had refused to tell me.

I swallowed, my throat dry. “And what does the ritual do?”

Nebetta turned her head toward me, her dark eyes gleaming in the moonlight. There was something haunted in her expression, something I recognized from the shadows in my own heart.

“It reveals, searching between gods’ marks.” she murmured. “It takes and takes and takes until nothing is left except the truth. Until it finds Isis’s.”

I shivered.

Nebetta exhaled, glancing down at her hands, tracing invisible patterns against the fabric of her robe.

“It drains you. It steals the strength from your bones, leaves you weak, cold—” she hesitated, gripping her wrist. “Like something is being pulled from your soul.”

The pit in my stomach deepened.

“How long?” I asked, my voice barely steady.

“A night,” she answered, then hesitated. “But the worst is what comes after.”

I didn’t dare interrupt.

“The dreams,” she whispered. “The nightmares. If the ritual rejects you, the souls of Duat will not leave you in peace. They linger. They haunt. You will see them in the corners of your room, hear them whisper in your sleep.” She swallowed. “They do not forget.”

I couldn’t breathe.

I had felt something similar before—the shadows in my visions, the voices lingering at the edges of my dreams. But what Nebetta was describing was something else. Something worse.

“And if you succeed?” I asked, my voice hollow.

Nebetta’s lips curled into something too small to be called a smile. “Then you are bound to him forever.”

I forced myself to ask the next question, though I already feared the answer. “What happens to those who fail?”