Sethi leaned against the wall and folded his bloodstained arms over his chest, eyeing Perev's intruder from under his brow. Marduk had worked over—with methodical, cold, mercilessness—the one who claimed to have been the husband of Ninsunu when they had still been mortal and lived in another world. Yet despite the one who called himself Ahmen suffering the most exquisite of agonies, he remained silent, stubborn, defiant.

Marduk turned, the dagger in his grip grisly with blood and gore, and cast a baleful look at Sethi. The muscles on his jaw spasmed, once, twice, three times. Sethi knew that tell. Despite his outward appearance of cool, Marduk was furious. Sethi pushed himself free of the wall and picked Ahmen up by his blood-soaked throat, holding him dangling, choking, mid-air. He flung him across the room. Ahmen slammed against the opposite wall and slid to the floor, leaving a thick smear of blood in his wake. He gasped for air, an ugly gurgle.

Sethi sank into a crouch and leaned toward the broken, flayed face of the one who held the answer he sought. "Where is Istara?" he asked, conversational.

Ahmen glared at him, mutinous, burning with hate, the whites of his eyes brilliant against his exposed facial muscles gelatinous with congealed blood. He spat. A tooth bounced off Sethi's cheek. It skidded across the floor, trailing slimy tendrils of bloody tissue.

Sethi cut a look over his shoulder at Marduk. "Let me use the jihn on him. That will make him talk."

Marduk's lips thinned. "Not yet." He turned and headed for the door, still holding the blood-soaked dagger. "You may do as you please with him. When you are done, put him in the device. Once he is rejuvenated, he will tell us what we want to know, whether he wishes to or not." He lifted the door's handle and glanced back, fury sheathing him. "After that, you may feed him to the jihn."

Sethi nodded, satisfaction oozing from him. He turned back to his latest amusement. "So, what do you want to do?" he asked, casual, as the door closed behind Marduk, its quiet click promising this wasn't over—far from it. In the ensuing silence, the ragged, wet breathing of Perev's stubborn prisoner ricocheted against the chamber's raw, bleak walls.

"Sethi," Ahmen rasped, his face ugly, contorting as his muscles moved, no longer contained within their cocoon of skin. "How can you not remember me?"

Sethi eyed the mess before him. "Why would I remember you? I am a god. You are no one."

"You were not always a god," Ahmen answered, defiant. "Before you came to Elati, you were the commander of Egypt's armies. You were mortal, and my friend." He clenched his jaw, suppressing a spasm of agony. His gaze fell to Sethi's fractals, stuttering through their rotations. "You may be a god, but this is not who you were meant to be."

Disturbed, Sethi sank into a crouch. Though he knew he hid it well, doubts had begun to plague him. At times, dreams of a life not his own, overlapped and confused him—revealing a world of men where he had lived, fought, and caroused. At night he would wake, to stare at his gold-painted ceiling, to pick over the details of his dreams: fragments of battles, visceral, real; memories emblazoned upon his flesh, savage with loss, pain, and blood. Even more unsettling, there were other dreams of Istara, of her having lived with him in a white-washed mortal dwelling, a dog sleeping by her feet, her glorious hair piled up on her head as she plied her needle against a piece of linen—her immortal skin bare of her cascade of stars.

Sethi narrowed his eyes at Ahmen. "I was never mortal. Gods cannot be mortal."

"I saw your transformation," Ahmen whispered, wincing as he leaned back against the wall. Fresh blood oozed from the exposed muscles of his brutalized chest and arms. "In Babylon. You saved Istara from a falling pillar and fell in her stead. Horus, the god of war you worshiped, sacrificed the last of his light to bring you back. Though it nearly killed us all, you rose again, the god of war in a world where gods can no longer exist. Marduk kept you alive long enough to reach Elati, your presence during the crossing granting him his immortality. You might be a god, but whatever Marduk has turned you into is not the Sethi I knew, who was honorable, just, and noble; who loved Istara beyond reason." He looked at the door. A sheen of tears glinted in his eyes, reflecting the cold, sterile light of the regeneration device. "He has remade you into everything you are not. And now, he has Meresamun, just as enslaved to his darkness as you."

Sethi rubbed his hand over his jaw. The coherency of suffering man's words clung to him. The one called Ahmen—whose preposterous claim to have once been his mortal friend troubled him more than he cared to admit. Perev's intruder slumped against the wall, the last of his fight leaving him. He gazed at the closed door, anguished, broken, defeated, tears slid into the ravaged troughs of his muscles, staining his grief red.

Sethi rose and put his back to the macabre thing seeping blood onto the floor, the grisly pool of flesh, blood, flayed muscle, and viscera beneath Ahmen spreading away as his life diminished with each heartbeat. Marduk had been thorough, his cruelty exquisite. He knew how to make a man suffer. Even Sethi had had to look away at times. It was one thing to torture a man, another to enjoy it with a cold, sadistic relish. And yet, Ahmen had given nothing. Others would have relented long before having the skin of their face flayed. Marduk had taken his time with that, ensuring each incision dealt more pain than the previous. And yet, Ahmen had not cried out. Not once. He had endured his torture in stoic silence. Sethi crossed his arms over his chest. He turned back to Ahmen, abrupt.

"Why will you not tell him where Istara is?"

Ahmen flicked a look at Sethi, numb with despair. "Because," he said, "if you find her, you will destroy her with that hateful weapon of yours, and once you realize what you have done, you will destroy yourself as well."

"And why would you care what happens to me?" Sethi demanded, intrigued despite himself. "I am your enemy."

"No. Marduk is the enemy." Ahmen swallowed. The muscles of his neck moved. Beads of blood eased out from the valleys between his tendons, viscous, near-black in the pale light. "Horus and Baalat—gods—extinguished themselves so you and Istara could rise again in their place. I would not be the cause of their sacrifice being for nothing." He shifted his weight, grimacing with pain. Fresh tears leaked from his eyes. He cut a harsh look at Sethi, riven with defeat and hope. "Fight. Free yourself of Marduk's grip. Return to your consort. She grieves hard for what you have become."

A shear of annoyance slid through Sethi. He was wasting his time listening to this fool. "Istara was unfaithful to me." He stood, longing to leave, thinking to find a willing serving woman whose attention might silence the escalating dissonance of Ahmen's words. "I would never return to her."

"Unfaithful to you?" Ahmen repeated, his incredulity causing him to choke on his words. Gobbets of bloody saliva trailed from his lips. He didn't wipe them away. "When you were given the responsibility of protecting her after the battle at Kadesh, she belonged to Urhi-Teshub, the king of Hatti," he continued, his words wet, ugly, damning. "She was unfaithful to him with you. Despite the political chaos she caused, even after the regent queen of Hatti came to Egypt to persuade her to return, she refused to take her throne—" he glared at Sethi, "—for you."

Silence swept into Sethi, deafening, crushing. A shimmer rippled through him, heralding the approach of the awakening he dreaded, hated. He turned, seeking a window to divine the hour. He cursed. There was none.

"Dawn comes," he panted, pacing away from Ahmen, nausea taking its familiar hold. "I sense it."

"And?" Ahmen rasped. He slid sideways against the wall, leaving ragged smears of himself along the ashlars.

"And something happens. Something unpleasant." He went to the regeneration device and activated it. The lid lifted with a soft hiss. "Get in," he said, as another brutal wave of nausea shoved its way through him. "Hurry."

Ahmen shifted, slow. Sethi bore down on him, grabbed his arm and hauled him up. Sections of Ahmen's muscles loosened in his grip, slick, sticky. Another onslaught of nausea assaulted Sethi, stronger than the first. He cursed again. Not long now. His heart turned, as it always did. Nausea pounded through him, rough, hissing with intent. Istara.

"Get in." He thrust Ahmen toward the device, desperate to escape before he said, or did anything he would regret. Ahmen slammed against the device's side with a dull smack. A sickly imprint of his life stuck to its pristine surface, speckling it with pieces of flayed flesh. Bile touched Sethi's throat. Ahmen slid along the device, and sank once more to his knees. Sethi grabbed the back of Ahmen's belt and hauled him over the rim of the device, throwing him in face-first.

He went to the control panel. It was a simple code. Marduk had shown him once, in case Ninsunu would ever need to be regenerated when Marduk could not attend her. Sethi punched in the memorized code, the symbols meaningless to him.

"Sethi, I beg you," Ahmen said, struggling to turn himself over, smearing the interior with the stain of his existence. "For the commander you once were, you must fight what Marduk has done to you before it is too late. Istara loves you. You love her."

It came then. A tsunami of horror, of the wrongness of his path, of the woman he loved—who loved him—whom he was determined to destroy. Ahmen's version of the past tore through him, hot, scathing, reawakening forgotten dreams: of an enormous pillar falling on him in a luxurious, underground suite, the pain excruciating, his last thought of Istara as he hurtled toward the light.

Sethi grabbed hold of the rim of the device, his knuckles white as the agony of his crimes seared his soul. He looked up. Ahmen reached out to him, a bloody wreck, his friend. Memories of a past he had lived and forgotten coursed through him. Of dusty campaigns and perfumed courtesans, of his scarab ring of command; his horses, villas, gardens. Images washed through him, relentless. A queen, Nefertari, and her king, Ramesses, upon their thrones, regal, imperious. Edarru, his once-favored lover, her green eyes wet with tears, imploring him to stay. A bolt shot through him. He had a son. Nesu. He staggered. He was a father. Istara. Realization slammed into him. Ahmen had spoken the truth. Istara had never been unfaithful to him. That injustice belonged to her husband. The lie of his existence melted away. Another memory slammed into him. Of waking in a dark tent, a shivering, jewel-clad woman beside him. A shaft of moonlight slid over her face. It was her, the woman he had dreamed of for thirteen years. The woman he was destined to raise the jihn against and annihilate.

"No!" he bellowed. He took Ahmen's outstretched hand, slippery with blood. "Help me," he panted. "It's in my head. Get it out." He felt the spot. There, at the base of his skull, that was where Marduk had implanted the hateful device. "Here, it's here."

Ahmen rose, unsteady, quaking from the effort. "Tell me what to do."

"A blade," Sethi turned, searching. Of course, there was none. Marduk had taken it. He roared, his soul sundered by torment. Soon it would end, and he would be tainted anew. It was torture, endless, brutal anguish.

"He will use a device on you just as he has done to me," Sethi said, grunting with the effort to fight the tide as he felt it turn, veering back to the darkness, pouring into the abyss of hate. "You must leave before he returns and forces the truth from you. I must not find Istara." He shuddered, the thought of capturing her pinioning him, of what he knew he was capable of, of how much he could make her suffer. "Ahmen, do not fail me."

He pressed the last symbols of the code, and the lid lowered, slow. Ahmen sank inside the chamber, stricken, powerless. "Sethi, you can overcome this," he said. "You defied death twice and have become the god of war. You are the most powerful man I know."

Sethi said nothing. His internal battle consumed all his restraint. At the last heartbeat he jammed the barrel of one of his weapons between the rim of the lid and body of the device, preventing the device from locking Ahmen in. He had no idea if the device would still function or not. He didn't have the time to care, the rest was up to Ahmen now.

He bolted from the chamber and hastened to the warship, desperate to put as much distance between himself and the one who had opened the door to his past before what Marduk had turned him into sheathed him anew. His hands shaking, he fired the ship's engines, his final thoughts clinging to Istara, of her in his arms the final time he had made love to her, locked in the Etemen'anki, her mouth against his, their love desperate, endless, even as her husband pounded against the door, vowing to kill him.

The ship lifted from the terrace in a torrent of heat and flame. He punched panel. The thrusters ignited with a deafening roar. He tore away from the citadel, his brief transition into his true self slipping away, ephemeral as a forgotten dream. He veered over the mountains, reckless, flying too low. In his wake: trees erupted into flame, leaving a fiery trail of destruction, bleeding gouts of black smoke.

The mountain range fell away and the undulating forests of Kium's rugged wilds spread into the distance. Further south—the sea, and his palace, perched high up on the cliffs of Kium's southern boundary. He set course for the golden walls of his residence as the sun shot up into the sky, drenching the world in color. His memory of Istara vanished, replaced by thoughts of sending for one of his courtesans to bathe him. He recalled one of the women from Ikalur had caught his eye, the dark-haired one who had been wearing nothing more than a golden undergarment underneath a transparent violent gown. Despite her tears, her exotic beauty had been beyond compare. Anticipation touched him. His search for the jihn had left him no time to send for her. Now he had found it, he would show her she had no reason to grieve. She would be loved by a god, and perhaps, if she pleased him well enough, he might even make her his consort. His lips turned downward at the thought of his once-consort Istara, who continued to elude him. He should have replaced her long ago, it was a sign of weakness he hadn't. Every god deserved a consort.

He eyed the terrain spreading away into the distance, impatience taunting him. He sought calm. Before too long, Marduk would have the answer from Perev's intruder. For once, Sethi had time. He would spend the day in pleasure and return tomorrow to learn where he must go to find Istara, his thoughts turning, insidious, to the jihn, and of the one he would feed to it, relishing the thought of her suffering before he did—of breaking her heart as she had broken his.

From within the ship, the weapon's malevolent presence called to him. He left the flight deck and went to it, to trail his fingers over its blades, flickering with its insatiable hunger, longing for the pure light of the gods.

"Soon," he whispered. It shimmered in response, drawing him to it, sultry, a lover. He picked it up, and let its presence saturate him, falling with it into the blackened, poisoned corridors of its promise, where he witnessed a world without the light of the gods—a world without Istara.