The priestess led her from the sanctuary and into an open area. In any other temple, there would have been soft carpets, goblets of wine. Here, there was only the darkness and the chill of the marble floor. A tiny animal, some rodent or lizard, skittered across the stones and was gone. Cleopatra felt her head snapping to the side, following its progress into the night. Her tongue rasped against her teeth.

“I have been waiting for you,” said the priestess. “I felt it when you joined her. The earth shook, the animals fled, and I knew one would come. What is it you seek?”

“Knowledge,” Cleopatra managed through the hunger that had overtaken her.

“What knowledge? Two have become one,” said the priestess. “You share your soul with the goddess I serve. Though I am certain you know that already.”

“I do not know enough. You will tell me what you know of her,” Cleopatra said. “Where she came from. What she desires. I came only as a courtesy.”

“You came to learn how best to kill those who have offended you. You know already what kind of deity the Scarlet Lady is, or I mistake you,” the rekhet said.

“Tell me,” Cleopatra insisted, and the priestess relented, speaking slowly and deliberately, as though she’d long ago memorized the narrative.

“Sekhmet was born out of Ra’s divine eye, a messenger sent to light up the waters of chaos and to find lost things. Her first task was to locate Ra’s two disloyal children, Tefnut and Shu, who’d abandoned their father. The tears Ra cried upon being reunited with them created humanity, but Ra cried no tears of gratitude to Sekhmet. Instead, he created a new eye to replace her, and placed her in his crown as a cobra spitting fire. The humans created of Ra’s tears prospered, filling the earth with their lovemaking and children, with their eating and singing. The gods prospered, filling the firmament with their lovemaking and children, with their sacrifices and their magic, with their rituals and with the singing of their acolytes. Sekhmet was left spitting fire from Ra’s crown, the only one defending her father from his enemies, the only loyal child.

When Ra was old and weak, and humans began to rise up against him, he sent Sekhmet to the desert as a lioness to slaughter the traitors. That day, she created pain and death, which had not existed in the world before. She killed everything she saw, drinking the blood of the world indiscriminately. Ra changed his mind in the middle of her massacre, taking pity on his dying human children. He tricked Sekhmet by mixing the Nile with drugged pomegranate juice. She saw its color and thought it was blood. When she staggered and fell to her knees, when she slid beneath the Nile’s waters, crying as she fell, Ra threw her back into the heavens, and there she stayed. Until you brought her to earth again.

“I am the last of my line,” the rekhet continued, looking out into the darkness beyond the temple. “Here, we have honored Ra and pacified the Lady of Slaughter with sacrifices. We’ve worked for centuries to keep humankind safe from her fury. The believers have become few, and the land changes around us. The Roman gods have come to our land. You know this much. Were you not once a queen?”