To Save Our Kingdom, I Performed a Forbidden Ritual With My Brother the King

The polished obsidian floor of the divine court reflected the endless cosmos above, a constant reminder of the order I was sworn to protect. From my throne, I watched the pantheon bicker. The air, usually humming with the quiet power of creation, was thick with tension, a sour note played by my brother, Set. He stood before the assembled gods, his skin flushed the color of the angry desert sunset, his voice a grating force that scraped at the foundations of Ma'at itself.

His proposal was, as always, born of pure, unadulterated ambition. He wanted to divert the celestial rivers, the very arteries of the heavens, to feed a barren nebula he claimed as his own. He spoke of power, of expansion, of a new era of divine might, but all I heard was the echo of chaos. To disrupt the celestial flow was to invite imbalance on a scale that could unravel reality. The other gods shifted, some swayed by his promises of power, others cowed by the raw, untamed energy that rolled off him in waves.

My jaw was tight. I was ready to intervene, to put my foot down and end this charade with the absolute authority of my station. But then, she moved.

Isis.

She rose from her seat, a vision in shimmering silver linen that fell around her like moonlight. She didn't raise her voice. She didn't need to. Where Set was a raging fire, she was the deep, unyielding cold of space.

“Brother,” she began, her voice calm and clear, cutting through Set’s blustering. “Your plan is flawed not in its ambition, but in its ignorance.”

I leaned forward slightly, my hands gripping the arms of my throne. I’d seen her dismantle arguments before, but today felt different. I watched the way she held her head, the focused intensity in her dark eyes as she met Set’s furious gaze without flinching.

She didn't appeal to emotion or fear. She used logic, pure and sharp as an obsidian blade. She laid out the consequences, mapping the celestial currents with elegant gestures of her hands, showing the precise points where his proposed diversion would cause entire star systems to collapse. She spoke of the delicate balance of life and death, of creation and destruction, with an intimacy that no one else in this hall, not even I, truly possessed. She unraveled his proposal thread by thread until it was nothing but a pile of frayed, selfish desires.

The court was silent, mesmerized. Set sputtered, his arguments turning to little more than childish insults. But he was defeated. He knew it.

And as I watched Isis return to her seat, her expression serene, a feeling stirred in my chest that had nothing to do with my duty as king or my respect for a sibling. It was a hot, sharp pull of admiration that was intensely personal. I wasn't just proud of my sister; I was captivated by the woman. By the quiet strength that dwarfed all the noise in the universe, by the mind that held galaxies in its grasp. And in the silent, sacred hall of cosmic law, I felt the first, terrifying tremor of a desire that was fundamentally, eternally, forbidden.

I left the court as soon as I could, the echo of Set’s fury and Isis’s quiet victory ringing in my ears. The admiration I felt for her was a dangerous current pulling me under, and I needed air. I needed solitude. I found it in the celestial gardens, a place where the light of distant galaxies dripped through the leaves of silver-barked trees and the air smelled of night-blooming jasmine and eternity.

But peace wouldn't come. Hours earlier, Thoth, the vizier of the gods, had brought me a new prophecy, his ibis eyes dark with concern. From ambition, betrayal will be born. The hand that seeks to rise will strike you down.

Ambition. It was Set’s entire existence. But the prophecy was vague, a poison that seeped into my thoughts, making me look over my shoulder. It could be anyone. Nephthys, my gentle sister, married to the very embodiment of chaos. Even Isis. Her intelligence, her power… it was a form of ambition, wasn't it? The thought was a shard of ice in my gut. My admiration for her in the throne room now felt like a weakness, a blind spot the prophecy warned me against.

I leaned against a cool stone balustrade overlooking a nebula that swirled like violet ink. I was so lost in the mire of suspicion that I didn't hear her approach until she was beside me.

“The mortal province of Abydos is drying out,” Isis said, her voice soft, not demanding my attention but simply joining my silence. “The canals we designed are failing. The mortals pray, but the soil cracks.”

I kept my gaze on the stars, my posture rigid. Duty. I could handle duty. “I will look into it. I will command the waters to return.”

“You’ve tried,” she stated, not as an accusation, but as a fact. “I felt your power brush against the region. It didn't hold.” She paused, and when she spoke again, her voice was even softer. “The weight of all those prayers must be heavy. But that isn't what's crushing you right now.”

I turned my head to look at her. Her dark hair was unbound, catching the starlight. Her eyes, the color of the fertile earth we were meant to protect, were fixed on my face, searching. She saw too much. She always did.

“Set’s theatrics are tiresome,” I deflected, my voice flat.

“It’s not Set,” she said, dismissing the most obvious answer. She took a small step closer, her presence a warmth against the cold of the cosmos. “I saw your face after he was dismissed. You looked right through him. You are afraid of something else.”

My defenses crumbled. It was useless to pretend with her. She didn’t just listen to words; she heard the truths hidden behind them. To be seen so completely by her was both a relief and a terror. It disarmed me, stripping away the crown and the divine authority until I was just a man, burdened by a secret I couldn’t share. My throat felt tight. I was supposed to be wary of her, of the ambition she might harbor, but in her perceptive gaze, all I found was a connection that felt more real than any prophecy, a dangerous comfort I was beginning to crave more than solitude itself.

Before I could form a response, a low, violent shudder ran through the very stone beneath our feet. The garden trembled, and the distant nebulae seemed to smear across the sky for a sickening moment. Set. His petulance was shaking the foundations of our world. I braced myself against the balustrade, my knuckles white, my jaw set in fury.

But it wasn’t the tremor that stole the air from my lungs.

It was Isis.

In the instant the palace shook, she reached out, not to steady herself, but to steady me. Her hand, warm and alive, landed directly on top of mine. Her slender fingers wrapped over my own, her palm pressing against the back of my hand with an instinctual, protective pressure.

The universe went silent.

The cold, eternal stone beneath my hand vanished. The rumbling of Set’s magic faded into nothing. All that existed was the point of contact. A jolt, sharp and clean, shot up my arm, bypassing my mind and striking directly into my chest. It was a current of pure, impossible heat, a kind of life I hadn’t felt in millennia. My entire existence had been one of cool, measured control, of divine duty and cosmic balance. Her touch was chaos. It was a supernova detonating in the space between our skin.

My breath caught. My heart, a steady, timeless rhythm, hammered against my ribs with a frantic, mortal beat. Heat flooded my entire body, pooling low in my belly and sending a thick, heavy pulse straight to my groin. I was instantly hard, a raw, physical reaction that was so immediate and undeniable it shocked me. For a god who commanded the very forces of life, I had never felt so intensely, physically alive. It was humiliating. It was exhilarating.

The tremor passed as quickly as it had come. The garden settled back into its serene silence. And just as suddenly, her hand was gone.

Isis pulled back as if burned, her eyes wide. A faint flush colored her cheeks, visible even in the ethereal light. She wouldn't meet my gaze. She looked down at her own hand, then back toward the shimmering spires of the palace, anywhere but at me.

“I should… I must see to the archives,” she murmured, her voice strained, the easy confidence she’d possessed moments ago completely gone. “The vibrations may have damaged the scrolls.”

She turned and walked away, her steps quick and measured, leaving me alone at the balustrade. But I wasn't alone. The ghost of her touch remained, a searing brand on my skin. I could still feel the exact shape of her palm, the light pressure of her fingers. I looked down at my own hand, half-expecting it to be glowing.

The prophecy warned of betrayal born from ambition. But as I stood there, my body still thrumming with a forbidden, undeniable ache, I knew I was facing a far more intimate danger. It wasn't a threat to my throne I feared in that moment. It was a threat to my soul. The line I had drawn between duty and desire, between brother and sister, had just been crossed by a simple touch, and I had the horrifying feeling that I would never be able to find my way back.