Although the sun was already climbing in the sky and warming all it touched, the palace remained quiet. Attendants and servants stealthily moved through its vast network of corridors, but they, like Iset, seemed reluctant to break the silence that had fallen over it like a blanket.

Iset had woken early. In fact, she had hardly slept at all. Over the last few days, fear had been her constant companion. The pharaoh was dead. That in itself did not terrify her. What did was the fact that she had borne the pharaoh his only son. His heir.

Iset had been young and naïve when she had arrived at the palace to become another minor wife for the pharaoh, Thutmose II. It was a great honour, she had been repeatedly told by her family. And yet, being sent away from all she knew and loved, all that was familiar to her, felt more like a punishment than a reward. From the moment she had arrived, she had been looked upon with suspicion by the other wives. That was except for one. The Great Royal Wife had smiled sadly at her and taken her under her wing.

'This wasn't how you expected it to be,' she had said quietly to her, brushing her tears gently away. 'They fear you. That is why they are mean.'

'Fear me?' Iset had questioned, incomprehension furrowing her brow. 'But why? I am nothing.'

Taking Iset by the chin, she raised the girl's face to the light so that she could see her profile clearly. 'They fear you because you are young and beautiful, and many of them are not. And where there is youth and beauty, one often finds the heir to the Two Lands.'

It took a moment for realisation to dawn on Iset. 'They are worried I will have a child?'

'They are worried you will have a son.'

And have a son, she did.

It didn't seem to bother Queen Hatshepsut. But then the Great Royal Wife was more pharaoh than the pharaoh had been. She ran the palace. She ran Thebes. She ran Egypt. Although Thutmose II was kind and gentle, his half sister was made of sterner stuff and was far more astute.

Iset had always blessed the day the queen had taken her to one side. She trusted Hatshepsut. She was her one and only true friend in the palace.

But even that knowledge did nothing to quiet the trepidation in her heart. The pharaoh was dead, and his only heir, her son, was a child of two. And Iset knew what that meant. Soon both she and her son would be dead too.