Dating Midlife Demons: A Humorous Paranormal Women’s Fiction (Adept At Fifty Book 4) by Heloise Hull

Author:Heloise Hull [Hull, Heloise]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Henwin Press LTD
Published: 2023-06-30T16:00:00+00:00

13

Nefertiti, Queen of Egypt

Luxor, Egypt. 1323 BCE.

For seven years, Egypt had to learn to live without the most beautiful woman in the world. Their people must mourn and try to remember what it was like to live near such bewitching beauty, to have walked as close to perfection as possible. Denied their precious queen, they survived as best they could.

Except, Nefertiti wasn’t dead. She died when her heretic husband died, but unlike him, she was reborn as a pharaoh, rising up from the ashes of his failures. Her death was easily faked, hidden by those loyal to her, above all, by her six beloved daughters. At all costs, the boy Tutankhamen could not be allowed to simply take the throne of Egypt. He was not worthy. He was not of Nefertiti’s own blood. A stepson was so useless when her daughters were virile and strong, like her. What was the point of that boy?

Honestly? What was the point?

At first, she thought marrying him to one of her daughters would be enough to control the sickly child. She would keep him a puppet for the optics of a male on the throne. But lately, he had proven difficult, surly, even… disobedient. He kept other wives, although how he pleasured them was beyond her comprehension. He also spent hours in Karnak, away from Luxor, which didn’t suit at all. Whispers of rumors still told the stories of the cure for immortality buried deep in the sands there, a mirror of a realm of the dead from where their own gods had descended.

Then, she met a woman who claimed to make pharaohs of women. The stranger claimed to have created Hatshepsut and claimed she could do it again, better this time.

“Better?” Nefertiti had scoffed, her swan neck even longer and more elegant than this foreigner. “No one remembers these old queens' names. Anyone else would be better. Why, the moment Hatshepsut died, the next pharaoh struck her name and face from every monument he could.”

The light-skinned woman with ancient eyes sneered. “Your gods roam the realms, sowing and harvesting havoc among others. Your stepson, while you’ve kept him at bay, plots against you. Worse, what he does plots against me.”

“And who are you?” Nefertiti challenged, used to being hard, to being granite, to being the statue they made of her.

“Immortal, which is all that matters to you. Take the belt I offer. Go to war.”

Of course Nefertiti did. She wasn’t one to give up power, not even when people died. She still lived, obviously. That was power.

“When will I be immortal?” she asked the foreigner, over and over again.

“When Tut is dead and all of his sparks of discontent snuffed out. They are leading to fires everywhere.”

There was only one thing to do. Kill Tut. Unexpectedly. Quickly. Preferably horribly.

The festival lasted for three days and nights. Clouds of incense and bursts of cinnamon radiated the air, servants led gold-shod elephants down the streets laden with wine and food to be distributed to the people.

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