Birth and rebirth.

Chaos and order.

Life and death.

Balance.

TIME SLIPS FROM ITS STEADY, ETERNAL STREAM, slowing down like the whoosh, whoosh, whoosh of my heart.

A snake so venomous it can kill a god has its jaws wrapped around my wrist. Why doesn’t it hurt? It really should hurt.

Which is when I realize that its fangs aren’t piercing my skin—one fang is jammed into the jade scarab beetle on my bracelet, stuck there, the broad gold of the bracelet keeping the free fang from my skin. I’m not going to die! I’m not going to die!

The snake writhes, its coiled and scaled body whipping through the air as it tries to free its fang.

“Isadora!” my mother screams. Oh, right. Get the snake off the wrist. I shake my arm wildly around, and the snake loses its grip, sailing through the air and landing with a thud on the floor at the foot of the bed.

It rises, hissing, mouth open impossibly wide. It seems to grow even as I watch, uncoiling and stretching until I’m sure it will grow past the entire room and swallow us all. I have no way to fight this, no way to protect my mother. I reach out my hand and it finds hers.

My father slams his staff onto the snake’s tail. It freezes, drying into dust before my eyes, and then it’s gone.

Nephthys sinks to her knees, eyes glued to the place where the demon snake no longer exists. “No,” she whispers, trembling. “No.” She doesn’t look up, doesn’t look at any of us.

Ry slides in, glancing over his shoulder. “Anubis is out! I couldn’t hold the door anymore so I ran.”

He turns to see the state of the room. Nephthys cowering in the corner. My father with his black skin and mummy wrappings, standing impossibly tall, his staff rippling with power. And my mother in a decidedly awkward position on the bed.

“I’ll just wait in the other corner, then.” Ry sidles along the wall, staring at the floor.

“Isadora? Nephthys? What is going on?” Isis’s voice is strained, her face beaded with sweat. She looks awful, dark shadows under her eyes, her skin sallow beneath its normally rich color. Maybe Nephthys did a better job with the curses than she thought.

There’s a pendant around my mom’s neck. “Did Nephthys make that for you?” I ask. She nods, and I pull it off and throw it across the room. Grabbing one of the true protection amulets from my pocket, I slip it over her head, then, hesitating, I lean over and brush a kiss across her forehead like she used to do for me when I didn’t feel well.

She takes a deep breath, and her eyes sharpen as if the room has come back into focus, though her color is still way off. “Nephthys,” she says, no anger in her voice as she looks at her sister sobbing quietly in the corner. “Dear sister. I am sorry.”

“It was her,” I say. “All along. The dreams—everything—it’s always been her. She’s the black poison that’s been haunting us, threatening to destroy everything!”

“Little Heart.” She smiles at me, and the sun blossoms in my chest. “Thank you. I am so glad you’re here.”

“What about her?” I glare at my aunt. “What are you going to do to her?”

“Nothing.”

My jaw drops. “But—she—Mom, she tried to kill you! She tried to kill me, too!”

I tighten my fists. Nephthys deserves to die. No one as twisted and bitter as she is should have eternal life. It’s a waste, and it’s not fair.

For the briefest second I see black curling and pressing against the edge of my vision, but when I blink it’s gone. My rage dies like a smothered fire. I won’t feed that blackness. I wouldn’t let it have my mother’s soul; I won’t let it have mine, either.

My mother sighs, and she sounds sad. “We will do nothing. We will forget her name.”

“You can’t,” Nephthys says, crawling toward the bed. “You can’t!”

My father shifts slightly, blocking her way forward. If any of this has ruffled his calm, I certainly can’t tell. But something in his eyes when he looks at Nephthys tells me that in her grand plans she didn’t account for what his wrath would have been if she had succeeded.

“I treasured your name,” my mother says, looking at Nephthys and then deliberately looking away. “I wrote it on my heart. I will keep your name alive no longer.”

Silently weeping, Nephthys stands and stumbles from the room. She seems smaller, dimmer, already diminished. I wonder how long it will take her to fade now that she has lost my mother’s love and magic. My rage spent, I feel sorry for her, sorry for the unfathomable spans of time she had and wasted.

I turn to my mother, smooth back a stray lock of hair from her forehead.

She smiles at me, lips dry and pulled tight over her teeth. “My brave, clever girl. As soon as I’m well, we’ll go for a picnic on the Nile.”

“I’d like that.” I would. I’m ready to get to know her without the poison I let destroy our relationship, without the strain of misunderstanding between us. I’m actually excited about spending time together.

“And darling?”

“Yes?”

“What in the three kingdoms have you done to your hair? You’re grounded.”

Okay, new plan. Back to San Diego and getting to know her through the phone and email, instead.

“Oh! Osiris! It’s time. Get the birthing stool.” She smiles, then grimaces, and puts a hand over her stomach. Floods, that time. “Isadora, you’ve made this all possible. I would like you to deliver the baby.”