It was very hot, as it always was in Buhen. Hatshepsut wiped her brow with one of her fine lace handkerchiefs. And jumped slightly as her sister, Hetepet, tapped her on the shoulder. "What are you doing?" Hatshepsut gestured with her arm out in the open landscape. "Just observing." Hetepet smirked, "At what the workers?" The younger girl smiled, her ebony hair fluttering around her face. "Now that you mention it I have had my eye on the new one father has working on the fish traps." "Don't you dare demean yourself like that. Talking to lower class."
The older sister said it with a disgusted sneer on her face. "What would be so wrong with it?" Hetepet stared at her sister in disbelief. "You've bedded him haven't you?" Hatshepsut looked at the ground confirming her sister's accusations. "Put an end to it immediately. Tuthmosis has already been talking to father about a betrothal to you, and you are not going to mess it up." "I'm not going to marry him Hetepet. I don't love him. I'd rather be a peasant girl with the one I love instead of with cold, stern Tuthmosis." "Are you insane? This is a chance of a lifetime."
"So is finding your true love." Hatshepsut motioned to go down to the river, and Hetepet blocked her path. "If you go down there I will tell." "Why? Why is what I do so damn upsetting to you." "Because it is not decent." "That's your opinion." And she pushed her sister away to go to the dock.
Later that night:
"Would you run away with me?" Ramses looked up at her, "What for?" "So we could wed." He smiled, his hazel eyes full of mischief. "Would you really want to marry someone like me." She groped for him in the semidarkness. "Yes, I wan tonly you for the rest of my eternity." His eyes softened as he kissed her tenderly. A harsh knock came at the door, as Hatshepsut lounged pathetically on the bed. She heard a thud, and thought Ramses brother was fighting with him, as he always did when he lost himself and got drunk. But to her dismay, she saw Tuthmosis standing over her love's corpse with a bloody dagger. "Why?" Her voice was a whisper. "I was going to give you everything. The world was at your feet, and you betrayed me with this…this peasant boy." "I never agreed to anything with you, my father did that." The man's eyes danced cruelly, and he yanked her by her hair. "I'll give you want last chance to redeem yourself. You will wash yourself clean of him, and devote yourself to me in this life and the next." The blade that still had her lover's blood on the shaft was at her throat cutting deeper with each second she hesitated. She knew her answer and she didn't regret it. "Never." And with her last breathe, she waited for her love.