Page 20 of The Secret Shape of Worship
“Oh my god, yes.”
“Who is your god, boy?” Hot breath dampened Mina’s neck.
“You are, Anubis. You’re my god.”
“And what does the son of man want from his god?”
“Devour me.”
And so Anubis did.
The fire ragedfor hours as the pair explored every corner and crevice of each other’s bodies in a tangle of sweating limbs and heavy breath.
Eventually, they tired.
Eventually, Mina slept, curled and wrapped protectively in Anubis's arms as they lay together on the couch.
Anubis stared into the fire and tried to douse the flame of truth flickering to life inside him. The truth contained in a single tear, the first in maybe thousands of years, burning in his eye.
This was not supposed to happen.
This was not how this was supposed to go.
He stroked the disheveled curls on Mina’s head.
The boy with the malachite eyes.
The boy with the beauty of the afterlife in his marble skin.
The softness of this human’s still-healing heart, like a sweet, ripe fruit in his hands.
Never before had Anubis encountered a soul so delicious. Flesh so intoxicating. A yearning so deep. A soul so desperate to be seen and loved for all of its innate goodness and beauty. The thought of any other resting in those green eyes. Satisfying the yearning. Basking in the honey sweetness of his scent, the golden glow of his goodness—it made a growl quiver at the back of the god’s throat.
Anubis had shepherded countless souls over the millennia, and it always went the same. Terror. Then awe. Then pleas for salvation. For a pleasure-filled afterlife. When past souls had realized the extent of Anubis’s power—the manipulation of time, the ability to save them from a dark and abysmal eternity—they had latched onto him like a lifeboat. A savior. They obeyed him with abject devotion because they believed Anubis could save them.
But none had been like Mina.
None had hearts so pure.
And none had ever challenged Anubis so bravely.
Even in the face of the god’s immense power, Mina’s heart had peered into Anubis’s and declared:I refuse to trust another false god.
Anubis found himself wanting to be worthy of this human. Of his trust.
None had looked at Anubis like this boy had, as another broken soul.
You deserve a choice.
The great stone god felt himself crack under the weight of those simple words. Anubis had never chosen anything in his existence. So then why, for this human, had he chosen to defy his duty? To deceive his father? To prolong their time together? But he knew why, even as he chastised himself for it. For all of hisexistence, Anubis had dealt in fates, in justice, in endings. But Mina was not an ending. He was a beginning.
The god had sensed the thing growing in Mina’s heart, because it was the same thing growing in his own.
Beneath the lust.
Beneath the worship.
Love. A small, tender, fragile thing still, but it would grow. And then, Anubis knew, he would have to watch it die.
