Later, when the world expected her to be composed—when she stood draped in gold beside Seti, or walked barefoot through the temple with nobles watching her every breath—Bina would remember this.

Not the crowning. Not the whispered vows or the politics.

But this.

The rooftop. The rain.  
And the pomegranate.

They had fled the court like thieves—laughing, damp with sweat and rebellion. She led him up the service stairs behind the Queen’s Fountain, barefoot, breathless, her shift already clinging to her from the storm that had rolled in like a dare. The sandstone tiles were warm beneath her feet despite the drizzle. Ra followed, amused, unhurried, golden even beneath the grey clouds.

She turned when they reached the top, holding the fruit between them like a chalice.

“Ever tasted one in the rain?” she asked, tilting her head.

He raised a brow. “Pomegranates are forbidden to gods.”

She smirked. “Then let it be blasphemy.”

She broke it open with her fingers—red bursting across the white pith—and handed him a dripping section. Juice ran over his wrists, down the curve of his forearms. He bit into it with a groan, eyes locked on hers as the seeds burst in his mouth.

And then she was on her back.

Rain fell harder, slapping the stone, pooling beneath her. Her thighs were slick with water and arousal, and the sticky trail of the fruit where he’d set it down—only to follow it with his mouth.

She wasn’t sure when he moved—just that he knelt, kissed her inner thigh, and tasted her like he was still starving. The pomegranate had stained her skin, and he chased it with his tongue, low and slow, until she gasped.

His mouth found her with reverence. With need.

He licked her like she was the fruit. Like she held something secret inside her. Something forbidden and bursting and bright.

And maybe she did.

Maybe the pomegranate wasn’t just a fruit. Maybe it was knowing. The kind that changed you. That stained you, even when you thought you’d washed it away.

She moaned as his mouth moved over her, steady and sure, like he wasn’t afraid of the mess. As if he craved the mess. The juice. The slick of her. The way she writhed and cursed and clutched the edge of the rooftop like she might fall off the earth.

She came hard, spine arching, cry swallowed by thunder. The smashed half of the fruit rolled beside her head. She reached for it, fingers trembling, and took a seed into her mouth.

It was tart. Sweet. Alive.

When she looked down, he was watching her. Lips stained red. Eyes gold and wrecked with awe.

“You taste like prophecy,” he whispered.

“And you,” she said, breathless, “taste like the end of it.”

She straddled him then, pushed him flat against the warm, rain-soaked stone. His cock was already hard—thick and glistening, curved like something sacred, rooted in a body too perfect to belong to any man. She didn’t worship it. She rode it.

Claimed it.

Took her pleasure on top of him, one hand pressed to his chest, the other tangled in his hair.

And when he entered her, he gasped—deep and guttural, as if her body had pulled something from him he hadn’t known was trapped. His hands flexed on her hips, fingers digging in with reverent desperation. Not to guide her—but to ground himself. As though her heat, her slick, the impossibly tight welcome of her, was an agony he’d waited millennia to feel.

His eyes fluttered shut for half a breath—then opened, blazing.

He looked like a god undone.

That’s when they were caught.

Two acolytes on a lower rooftop. Mouths open. Water jug shattering on the tiles.

Still joined, Bina didn’t flinch. She tilted her chin, breath still ragged, and met their gaze.

Let them watch.

Let them see a god kneel. Let them see a woman take her pleasure, uncowed and crowned in rain.

Because she wasn’t a bride that night.

She wasn’t a healer. Or a priestess.

She was the altar.  
And the offering.  
And the flame.