The Pharaoh's Curse by Kyro Dean

There was a reason the assassins always won in the end. Why her family always died. He was smarter than her, whoever he was. More prepared. A mongoose to her cobra. And it didn’t matter how hard she fought back, how hard she bit. In the end, he’d eat her up. Zarina Nefartari is the last descendant of the ancient queens. As novel and grand as a royal heritage sounds, descending from a line of queens has only ever brought her trouble. She is, after all, a descendant of the sun god who can’t bear to see its light without getting migraines and who needs colored lenses just to stand in its rays. The laughing gods were cruel like that. Not to mention the assassin that has been hunting her family for millennia. The begrudging family of killers has been the end of every one of her female ancestors since the great queen herself--and they're coming for her next. To make matters worse, her god-appointed bodyguard since birth, Farak, does not reciprocate her growing feelings. Too bound to his godly oath, he has committed to forsaking love and protecting her at all costs. Unsatisfied with the lot the fates have dealt her, Zarina wants more than anything to free them both from the curse of an early death. She leaves her life of hiding to solve the mystery that has shaded her family for two-thousand years, hoping that if she takes fate into her own hands and fights back against the assassin, Farak's allegiance will change. The problem? Lord Richard DeClare: an over-excited Brittanian Aegyptologist who finds her absolutely mesmerizing--and who reveals her identity to all of Aegyptus. With the mysterious assassin hot on her newly-announced trail, a street lord who wants her dead so he can steal her family's treasure, and that pesky Britannian who happens to possess the resources she needs, Zarina is thrown into a foray of chaos that threatens to kill her at every turn. Now, she must use her colored lenses to solve the clues in the tunnels and tombs of her family's legacy to figure out who the assassin is and why they've wanted her family dead since Queen Nefertari's reign over two millennia ago. Deep in the heart of an alternate-history Egypt, Zarina must learn what matters more--family or fate--and how much control she has over a life ruled by the gods.

Adult • Mystery, Thriller, and Suspense/Spies and Politics • Fantasy/Historical • Fantasy/Alternate History • Mystery, Thriller, and Suspense/Historical • Science Fiction/Romance