Chapter 2: Daughters of the Sun: The Morning of the Crown

The sun woke us as usual, dancing across the marble floor in our chambers. The scents of rose, incense, and papyrus were already in the air when the maidservants entered, like shadows, carrying water, linen clothes, and jewelry boxes.

Their dresses were translucent, layered for modesty but still light and cool against the breathless heat of the palace. As they moved around me, tending to the folds of linen and the weight of my jewelry, my gaze drifted to one of the black maidservants, a woman whose skin was dark and smooth as polished ebony. Beneath the gossamer-thin linen of her dress, I could see the gentle swell of her breast, firm and high, the curve of it almost sculptural in its perfection. The faint outline of her nipple showed through the fabric, a dusky shadow against the pale cloth, made no less dignified by its visibility, for her bearing was proud and steady. She moved without shame, accustomed to such exposure, her body as much a part of her service as her hands or her voice.
I was already awake. As the firstborn daughter of the Pharaoh, I was expected to be ready before the others. While my body was being washed with warm water and honey oil, Nefertiti was still sitting and yawning by her bed, her hair in a messy braid.

“You should wake up earlier,” Isis gently told me, but with the tender sharpness of sisters.

“You sound like a nursemaid,” I muttered, but smiled anyway.

Isis, my younger sister, stood already dressed beside the tall mirror, her reflection shimmering in the soft morning light. She lifted a necklace, an intricate chain of gold and colored stones, and held it against her slender neck.

“Will this suit on your wedding day?” she asked, her voice light but curious.

I shook my head gently. “Too much color,” I said, my eyes narrowing.
“Choose the blue collar instead, something more fitting for the ceremony.”

My maidservants then began dressing me in the first garment of the day: a delicate linen robe, soft and sheer, with finely woven side panels that fluttered like wings when I moved. The robe was carefully fastened over my shoulders with golden pins shaped like lotus flowers. Around my waist, they wrapped a narrow belt, gleaming with garnets and lapis lazuli, each stone catching the light like drops of royal blood and deep twilight.

As they adorned me with broad gold bracelets, heavy yet smooth, the artisans traced my eyes with thick strokes of black kohl, their hands steady and practiced. The dark lines framed my gaze like the wings of a falcon, sharp and commanding, a queen in the making.

Nefertiti, my youngest sister, picked a more youthful dress of patterned fabric with a shorter hem. She was always the most vain among us. Isis preferred comfort over fashion, selecting a simple yet elegant white linen dress and wearing only a single turquoise necklace.

“We should all appear as daughters of a God,” I said, not as a command, merely as a reminder.

We spent the morning in the palace’s inner garden, where papyrus and blue lotus swayed in the breeze. It was our time to be sisters, not princesses.

We sat together beneath a fig tree. I embroidered a piece of cloth with a scene of a falcon hunting, a gift for our father, the Pharaoh. Isis practiced the harp, and Nefertiti tried to read aloud from a papyrus scroll telling the story of the Goddess Bastet.

“You skip words,” I said.

“I improvise,” she replied, with a laugh that made the maidservants glance up, surprised. We were royal, yet still only girls.

At midday, we changed clothes for the temple visit and the ceremony.
They gathered around me, their movements quiet and reverent, like priests preparing a sacred altar. The soft rustle of fine linen filled the chamber as the maidservants carefully lifted the first garment over my shoulders, a robe woven from the purest flax, its threads shimmering faintly like desert sands kissed by moonlight. The fabric was cool and light, flowing over my skin like a gentle breeze, yet it held the weight of centuries, a mantle woven from the hopes and prayers of queens before me.

Their slender fingers fastened the robe with golden pins shaped like blooming lotuses, symbols of rebirth and purity, cold and heavy against my collarbone, anchoring me to my fate. A narrow belt, adorned with garnets as red as the sun’s first flame and lapis lazuli deep as the night sky, was wrapped tightly around my waist. The stones sparkled with a quiet fire, and I felt their ancient power pulse beneath my touch, binding me to the throne I was destined to claim.

The black maid before me, dipping her brush into the black galena paste, lined my eyes with a fierce, winged stroke that seemed to pierce through the veil of the world itself. The mark of Horus, she called it power, protection, clarity.

The air was thick with the heavy sweetness of myrrh and frankincense, swirling around me like the arms of a lover. She was from the Land of Punt (today’s Somalia, her skin so dark it was almost blue-black, polished to a glow under the flickering oil lamps.