The urgency of an invasive desire stifled their conversation. Hotep turned toward the source, even as Aelia moved toward it. He started to follow, then... Something inside clenched tightly. An overused muscle, a practiced self-restraint that refused to allow him good things as often as bad. Large ears folded back, and eyes narrowed.

A priest should know a curse when it was cast upon him. He had left that calling behind, but not the wisdom it blessed him with. This was no gentle offering from Uraeus serpents, of that he now felt certain. So the snakebite could belong only to an agent of Apep. A destroyer. A being of chaos. The enemy of Ra, who must know Setemhotep served the creator being — loyaly.

Suspicious gaze flicked to the one from Elysium. He was loathe to insult a priestess, or the child of one. It was not lost on him, the failure to stand on ceremony, but he felt no time to waste, relegated as he was to the work of a sesh, without spells of his own to invoke in counter!

Stop! He commanded, lunging forward to stand between her and the tainted meat. Sun-gilded eyes met the moon-silver of hers in open challenge, though if she were determined to cross him, he misliked his odds of forcing her compliance.