In the House of Bastet, hidden deep in the labyrinth of Memphis, only those marked by the goddess herself were allowed entry.
Neferu was one of them — a priestess cloaked in linen so sheer it barely veiled her golden skin, a servant of beauty, pleasure, and sacred secrets.
She had been trained to dance until men wept and queens grew jealous.
But tonight was not for performance.
Tonight was for offering.
The Midnight Feast came once a year, on the night when the moon turned red over the Nile and Bastet, the Lady of the Perfumed Breast, demanded tribute not in blood — but in ecstasy.
Neferu was led into the Great Hall — barefoot, bells on her ankles, skin dusted in powdered gold. The walls dripped with murals of feline-eyed gods and writhing bodies. The air was thick with incense, heavy as a lover's sigh.
At the center of the hall, lounging on a throne of obsidian and ivory, sat the high priest — or perhaps he was a god wearing human form for a night. His body was sleek as a panther's, wrapped in nothing but a pleated loincloth and heavy necklaces of lapis and turquoise.
His eyes, black as the void before creation, fixed on her.
Neferu approached, her hips swaying, each step a prayer and a promise.
"Come," he said, voice curling around her like smoke.
"Feed the hunger of the goddess."
Before the watching eyes of the sacred court — nobles, slaves, dancers, even the veiled statues — she knelt and let the linen fall from her shoulders. The priest reached out, running one hand slowly, reverently, from her throat to the valley between her breasts, then lower, tracing the sacred path of life itself.
Their mouths met with a violence disguised as worship.
He lifted her onto his lap, her thighs straddling his powerful hips, and she felt the hard, eager proof of his desire pressing against her. She ground down, shameless, as he tugged the last of her clothing away, exposing her to the feasting eyes of gods and mortals alike.
"Do you yield to the goddess?" he whispered into her ear, his tongue flicking over her earring.
"Yes," Neferu gasped, nails biting into his shoulders.
And then he was inside her — filling her so deeply she cried out, the sound echoing like a prayer against the high temple walls.
They moved together in a slow, grinding rhythm, sweat glistening on their skin, muscles trembling. Around them, the feast erupted — dancers locked together, nobles moaning into each other's mouths, slaves offered wine and flesh without shame.
It was not sin.
It was not pleasure.
It was sacrifice — a drowning in the divine river of sensation that Bastet demanded once a year, to keep the world fertile and the Nile faithful.
When Neferu climaxed, it was not alone: he shuddered with her, their cries rising together, shaking the temple to its foundations.
Afterward, the priest — or the god — placed a collar of silver and lion's teeth around her neck.
"You are no longer mortal," he said, voice hoarse with something too old to name. "You are of Bastet now."
And Neferu smiled — a slow, dangerous smile — and licked the taste of eternity from her lips.