Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

At first I could see nothing, the hot air escaping from the chamber causing the candle flame to flicker, but presently, as my eyes grew accustomed to the light, details of the room within emerged slowly from the mist, strange animals, statues, and gold—everywhere the glint of gold. —Howard Carter.

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The sands were awash with gold. Shifting, shimmering, sparkling – an endless abyssal ocean of molten gold, her body only the tiniest speck in the vast expanse of sand and sky. The sun beat down, so hot that even the flat-bellied lizards scurried away into their dens, but she did not cower. She had come far – so far – and no thirst or hunger or heat would drive her back.

A scorching wind picked up, whipping her hair into a frenzy around her face. Her vision stung and blurred as sand whirled around her, but still she stood fast. And when the wind died away, and the sands shifted…there it was. 

As pristine as it had been three thousand years before, columns of gleaming white and dazzling gold, brightly coloured friezes and hieroglyphic inscriptions coating every wall, the lost tomb of High Priest Menes burst into life in front of her. Capping its high roof, a curved swoop of gold, shaped like the letter C lying on its back, extended upwards like a cupped hand. And as the sun moved overhead – directly noon – it fit perfectly into that golden hand, sending rays shimmering out in a glorious, victorious burst of pure light. 

She fell to her knees on the hot dry sands, filled with the sacred knowledge. Her life’s work was complete. At long last, she had found it. She tipped her head back to the sky and screamed.

***

Alexandria, 1933. 

Elain awoke to a day already scorching. She had kicked off her sheet in the night, and now lay sweaty and naked in the middle of her cot, back aching from the hard mattress. 

For a moment, she let herself relish in the memory of the dream. Let it fill her, that sense of completion, of finally being one with the universe. It bubbled like sparkling wine inside her, quickly deflating as she opened her eyes in her small annex room in Al-Sarraj Antiquities & Egyptian Archives. 

“Elain!” Even from here, she could here Farrouk’s voice loud and clear. “El-ain!” 

“Coming!” she yelled back. She had overslept – brilliant. Just what she needed.

Quickly, she rose, battling her way out from under her mosquito net, washed, and dressed in a long linen skirt and loose shirt, securing her hair tightly behind her head. Downstairs, she found Farrouk Al-Sarraj – owner of the archives and her boss – tapping his fingers impatiently on the table. “Remind me what I hired you for?” he said in English. 

She tried not to roll her eyes. “To be your assistant, sir.”

“To be my assistant! Not to lie in bed dreaming the day away! Now I need coffee, and I need it now!” 

Make it yourself, Elain spat in her head. In real life, she obediently put water on to boil.

Ever since her crew had abandoned her, deeming her search for the lost tomb of Menes a waste of bloody time, she had fallen short of money. It turned out not many people wanted to sponsor a lady archaeologist – and not many people wanted to hire one, either. She was lucky that Farrouk Al-Sarraj had even taken her on in the first place, and even luckier that he let her use the archives for her own research whenever he wasn’t commanding her about the place as if she were a donkey. So, she would grit her teeth and make him coffee – and breakfast, and lunch, and dinner, and wash his clothes, and clean his house; even though the position had been for an academic assistant, evidently ladies weren’t good enough if they weren’t also being maids, and – yes. She would grit her teeth and get on with it. 

Her being half-English had worked surprisingly in her favour. Never mind that her mother had been a local and she’d lived in Alexandria since she was a teenager – and Luxor before that – and was as fluent in Arabic as she was English, Farrouk would never see her as anything but an Englishwoman. But he wanted to practise his use of her language, and she was more than happy to oblige. In the three years she’d worked for him, they’d barely ever spoken in anything but. 

“I have a meeting with the Department of Antiquities at eleven,” Farrouk informed her.

“Would you like me to attend?” she asked, pouring him his coffee – well-sugared, as he liked it.

“No, stay and mind the archives,” Farrouk said dismissively. “I won’t be more than two hours. Have food ready for when I return.”

“Yes, sir.” She bit down on the inside of her cheek.

After Farrouk had finished his coffee and trundled off, cane clutched in hand – he was approaching sixty years in age, and his legs ‘weren’t what they used to be’ – Elain made her way down to the front room of the building and unlocked the door, flipping the sign to Open. Al-Sarraj’s had two main rooms on the ground floor, the front being a small shop selling common curiosities and antique furniture, the back being much larger and the home of his archives. Stacks of books marched across the wooden floor, some modern and some positively ancient; around the edge of the room were a series of display cases, with various artefacts glittering behind dusty glass. In the centre of the room was a large table, strewn with papers and tools, illuminated by a flickering green-shaded desk lamp – electricity in the archives was rather temperamental. It was here that Farrouk did his most important work, the work Elain had hoped to be assisting him with – reconstruction of ancient papyri and similar artefacts on behalf of the Department of Antiquities and various museums across Egypt. 

She pulled a stack of books off one shelf – all on the Amarna period, all well read by her before, but maybe there was something in there she had missed. Carrying them out to the shop, she settled in behind the counter to read. 

She’d barely made it through a chapter when the little bell above the door tinkled, and an enormous dark-haired man came in. “Elain, habibti!” he said in way of greeting, coming over to kiss her on the cheek.

“Good morning, Cassian,” she said in Arabic, unable to hold back her smile as her brother-in-law greeted her. “How are you? How is Nesta?”

“Ah, same old, same old. You know what your sister is like.” Cassian looked to the sky dramatically, then smiled. “Though she is, of course, the love of my life, so I’m obliged to say that she is wonderful and excellent and all those kinds of things.”

Elain laughed. “Glad to hear it.” She set her book aside. “So, what brings you in today? Just saying hello, or can I interest you in anything?”

“No, no, quite the opposite.” His dark eyes took on a slightly terrifying gleam. “It is I who can interest you. Have a look at this.” From his bag, he withdrew a brown wooden box and set it on the counter. Immediately, Elain recognised it as the sort used to store brittle, ancient artefacts. 

“What…” She glanced up at Cassian, who nodded encouragingly. Slowly, she unclasped the lid and drew it open, trying her best not to expose the contents to sunlight or anything else damaging. 

She beheld what was inside – and gasped. An almost intact papyrus, just one single sheet, inked with hieroglyphics so vivid she imagined they hadn’t faded since the day they were made. But not just hieroglyphics – cuneiform, several lines of each language. Her heart leapt into her mouth as several signs jumped out at her: desert, Aten, Horizon of the Aten. Menes.

“This is…” Dizziness took hold of her, and she grasped at the edge of the desk, praying she wouldn’t faint. She couldn’t feel her fingers and toes, couldn’t move, couldn’t do anything except stare at the symbols. Her grasp on cuneiform was weaker than on hieroglyphics, but she could decipher both. It would take time to make a full translation, but snatches of it jumped out at her. Day of the long sun…knowledge…may his memory be forgotten…one hundred and fifty thousand paces into the sunrise…

“Elain?” Cassian’s voice sounded very far away, as if at the end of a long tunnel or wading through deep water. “Elain, are you alright? Are you going to faint? Elain? Elain!”

His hand cracked against her cheek – not hard enough to really hurt, but enough to snap her out of her trance. Sound rushed back to her, time returning to its normal pace, her dizziness fading. “Ow!” she complained, clutching her cheek.

“Sorry.” Cassian winced. “I didn’t know how to stop you from fainting, since I don’t exactly have any smelling salts.”

She had no time for jokes. Planting her hands on the edge of the desk, she leaned in towards him. “Have you shown this to anyone else?” she said, her voice trembling.

His eyes widened. “Well, there was one fellow at the Department of Antiquities. He wanted to take it, but I could tell from his reaction it was valuable, so I brought it here instead. Is that wrong? Elain?”

She had drifted away again, this time into anger, gripping the edge of the desk so tightly her knuckles turned white. “Who?” she bit out. Please not him. Anyone but him. Please not him. 

“A red-headed man. Dark-looking. Vanserra, I think his name was?”

If there hadn’t been a priceless artefact on the desk in front of her, Elain would have flipped it over in anger. “You showed this to Lucien Vanserra?” 

“I think so. Why does that matter? You have it now.”

“Cassian.” She gripped her brother-in-law by the arms – she couldn’t reach his shoulders – to try to impose on him how serious this was. “You know the place I have been looking for my entire professional life? The lost temple-tomb of Menes?”

“Yes, with the secret knowledge,” Cassian said, prising her fingers from his arm where she was squeezing him. “Does that have something to do with this paper?”

“This paper,” she said, breathing hard, “is the key to finding the tomb. I don’t know where you found this–”

“In the desert, about fifty miles east of Asyut,” he answered cheerfully. “It must have been four months or so ago, now. I was helping the crew dig to install water lines in, and we found this inside a box.” Cassian – once a soldier, now retired – built homes. 

“--but this is the most important find since Tutankhamun!” she finished. “I have spent years and years and hundreds of pounds trying to find this place, and you showed it to Lucien Vanserra? Did he make a copy?”

“He made some notes, yes,” Cassian said defensively. “I still don’t see why that matters.”

“Because he’s looking for it too!” she exclaimed. 

“And that’s a bad thing…why? Can’t the two of you work together or something?”

“No!” she all but shouted. “This is my life’s work. I should be the one to discover it.” And receive the secret knowledge. If Lucien gets there first…it will all be for nothing. 

Cassian pulled a face. “I’m sorry, El. I really didn’t know.”

She took a deep breath. “It’s fine. At least I have the original.” Gently, she closed the wooden box, protecting the treasure within. 

“So…are you going to try and find it?” Cassian’s brows pinched together as he folded his arms across his chest. “Because Nesta and I both remember what happened last time. And–”

“It won’t be like last time,” she said, her heart still pounding even as she tried to calm it. “This time I know where I’m going. I just have to get there before Lucien Vanserra.”

“So it’s a race?” Cassian said dubiously.

Elain smiled, though there was no humour in it. “It’s a race.” Then, “Promise you won’t tell anyone about this? Not even at the Department? Just for a little while, I promise.”

He shrugged. “No skin off my nose.” A second later, he made an oof sound – Elain had dashed around the desk to fling herself into his arms, squeezing him tightly.

“Thank you,” she whispered in his ear. “For finding this and bringing it to me. Thank you, Cass.”

He patted her stiffly on the back. “You’re welcome.”

By the time Farrouk returned, Cassian had already left, returning home to Nesta. The second the door swung closed behind him, Elain turned the sign to Closed and paced back and forwards for several minutes, hands tearing at her hair. 

At a young age, she had become fascinated by the Amarna period. How one pharaoh – Akhenaten – could uproot his entire culture, insisting upon a new city, a new god, new names… What was it about the Aten – the Sun Disk – that called to him so strongly he would do that? Accompanying her father on a dig when she was just twelve, she had learned of a story – a story of Akhenaten’s high priest, a man named Menes, who worshipped the Sun Disk so fervently he was filled with its light – a sacred knowledge, all the wisdom of the universe and the ancients. Supposedly, Menes was slain for coming too close to the god, a right reserved solely for the pharaoh. When he died, the knowledge died with him, hidden away in a temple-tomb long searched for but never found. 

Until now. 

With one artefact and a few words, Cassian had turned her entire life on its head. If this proved to be another dead end…she wouldn’t be able to bear it. That crushing of a disappointment would end everything for her. And God – Lucien Vanserra. He had always been a thorn in her side, turning up to spoil her digs and no doubt poach her knowledge. He had probably relished in learning her funding had been cut off; now, of course, he would be jumping for joy with a chance to one-up her. He would probably be assembling a team right now, ready to run off at first light…

But I have the original papyrus. Any secrets hidden on its papers will be mine to find, and mine alone. 

One thing at a time, Elain. 

Gathering up the box with the papyrus, she carried it into the back room. Glancing around to check Farrouk wasn’t going to jump out and shout at her, she set it down on his table and took a seat, pulling the lamp closer to her. Thankfully, the gods of electricity were on her side, and it didn’t go out, casting the box in a green-gold glow. Slowly, holding her breath, as if she expected it to have changed since she last looked, she opened the box. 

It was still there. Sighing out a long exhale, she grabbed a scrap of paper and a pen and began to translate.

On this day, we entombed Menes the All-Seeing – at least, she thought that symbol meant all-seeing, or something like it – in forgotten sands one hundred and fifty thousand paces into the sunrise from the Horizon of the Aten, to be visible only on the day of the long sun and never more. May his memory long turn to dust, his knowledge buried with him. May his ka forever wander; may Anubis condemn his soul to the Duat. Sealed by servants of Akhenaten I, year 13 of his reign.

“Elain? Where – what the – young lady, what are you doing?”

Elain looked up, eyes shining. She hadn’t even realised two hours had passed, but now Farrouk stood in the doorway to the archives, cane tapping furiously against the floor. “Oh, Mr. Al-Sarraj,” she whispered. “Oh, it’s wonderful!”

“And where, pray tell, is my meal?”

“Damn your meal!” she cursed, the old man’s cheeks flushing in anger. “Damn it all, Mr. Al-Sarraj! I have something much better!”

“What is that,” he said flatly, crossing the room to peer over her shoulder, scanning her translation. “Miss Archeron, please. More of this Temple of Menes codswallop?”

“Only it’s not,” she breathed. “It’s not codswallop. I’ve already dated the papyrus – three thousand years old! And look at this seal – the official seal of Akhenaten.  It’s instructions, Mr. Al-Sarraj – instructions on how to find the tomb! Starting from the Horizon of the Aten – Amarna!”

“It’s a whole lot of rubbish is what it is,” he said sternly. “No papyrus could have survived so long in such an intact condition, whatever your dating says. Whoever gave you this is pulling your leg.”

“He is not.” Elain gently closed the lid of the box, sealing the papyrus inside. “Mr. Al-Sarraj, please. I didn’t join you to make your tea and eggs and practice English with you. I joined you for this – forgotten knowledge, coming to life in my own hands like tulips blooming after a long winter. You must remember it, from when you were younger if nothing else – the allure of the sands, shimmering in gold, the ancient wisdom buried beneath…”

“What do you want, Elain?”

“Funding.”

“Absolutely not.” He started to move away, but Elain jumped up, grabbing him by the arm.

“Farrouk. Listen to me. I need enough to pay a small crew and passage down the Nile. Gear for a short dig. Knowledge isn’t the only thing in the Tomb of Menes – an unknown, uncovered tomb like that will be rich in treasure. Anything I find can come straight to the archives, rather than going through the Department of Antiquities first.”

At that, he paused. “You can’t possibly really believe this.”

“I don’t just believe it,” she urged, “I know it. This tomb is out there. Knowledge or no knowledge – there must be a tomb. After all, we have historical records of Menes, and say what you will – this papyrus is authentic. Look – the day of the long sun. It must mean the solstice. Which means we only have weeks before we’d have to wait a year to find it! I must go, Farrouk, I must!”

Farrouk huffed out a breath. “Who will make my coffee if you’re off in the desert?”

She sprang to her feet, flinging her arms around him. “Oh, thank you, Mr. Al-Sarraj, thank you, thank you! I promise you won’t regret this!”

“Hmph,” he muttered. “That remains to be seen. But know this, Elain – I only do this because your father was such a great archaeologist. I know that blood can’t have gone to nothing in you.”

“I’ll make him proud,” she whispered. “I promise.”

***

“Have you got any…sevens?”

“No.” Azriel regarded her moodily over the top of his hand of cards. “Go fish.”

She did so. A nine. “Have you got any sixes?” Azriel said.

“Yes. Damn you.” She handed him the three sixes she held, and he set down the stack of four triumphantly.

“I’m still winning,” she pointed out, gesturing to her four stacks as opposed to his two.

“Can’t we play poker instead?” he grumbled, sorting his cards.

“My poker face is terrible. Have you got any eights?”

“Go fish.”

“Oh, good. An eight. Have you got any fours?”

“God damn you, Elain,” he muttered, handing over his fours. “Are you sure we can’t play poker?”

“Why would I play a game I’m guaranteed to lose? Have you got any…”

He cut her off. “How much longer until we set sail?”

“Any minute now, I should think,” she said, checking her pocket-watch. “They’re probably just waiting for the last group of passengers to embark.”

“How hard is it to be on time?”

“Azriel.” She levelled a stare at him. “I’m paying you to dig, not complain.” God, it felt good to order someone about again – even if her crew this time around was just one person.

“You’re not paying me. Farrouk Al-Sarraj is. And he’s barely paying me anything, thanks to Cassian.” Indeed, Azriel was one of Cassian’s best friends – and thus already known to Elain for some years – and apparently owed him a favour. A favour big enough that being Elain’s one-man dig crew was enough to fulfil it.

Just then, she heard voices shouting and heavy footsteps. Peering out of the window of the main passenger cabin, perched on top of the deck of the river-barge, she saw the gangplank being raised. “We’re off!” she said happily, turning back to her game. “Now, have you got any…”

“Ask him if he’s got any threes,” came a clear, husky voice from behind their table.

Elain threw down her cards in anger, utterly ruining the game. “What are you doing here?”

“I could ask the same of you,” said her mortal enemy – well, alright, mortal rival – Lucien Vanserra, leaning back against the doorframe.

“We’re…taking a trip. Down the river.”

He laughed softly. “Of course you are. Getting off at Asyut, I would imagine?”

She crumpled a playing card in her fist. “Don’t play games with me, Vanserra. I know Cassian showed you the papyrus.”

He smiled widely. “Temple of Menes, sweetheart. Ah, I can almost taste that ancient wisdom… Funny. It tastes like gold.”

“Don’t be an ass, Vanserra,” she swore, crumpling the playing card further. “You know how much Menes means to me. You know how long I’ve been looking. Why are you ruining this for me?”

He shrugged. “Why are you ruining this for me?” His eyes darted to Azriel. “We haven’t been introduced. Mr…Archeron?”

Azriel pulled a face, which was only mildly insulting. “Mr. Singer. Azriel, to my friends. I’m working with Elain.”

“Dig crew, are you, Azriel?” Lucien raised an eyebrow, as if looking around for anyone else.

“Mr. Singer,” Azriel corrected firmly. “I said Azriel to my friends. You’re not my friend.”

Satisfaction seared through Elain, and she bumped Azriel’s ankle with her own under the table. Nice one. “I’m sure you have a massive crew,” she said haughtily.

He smirked. “Amongst other things.”

Her skin went hot all over, and she tried to take deep breaths, forcing herself to calm down. “It takes time to move a big crew. Especially a hundred miles over desert sands.”

“Sounds like it’s a race, then.”

“You’re on,” she practically spat, then studiously turned back to the game despite having lost all interest in it.

As soon as Lucien left, she let out a little growl, drumming her toes on the floor. “He’s so – frustrating!”

“Well, he’s certainly—”

“God, he just drives me crazy! With those stupid smirks and flowing hair and silly neckties – I mean, who wears a necktie in the middle of summer in Egypt!” She fanned herself vigorously with an un-crumpled playing card. “Just being around him, I come out in heat-rash from how – how cross he makes me. Argh!” She stamped her foot on the floor rather childishly.

“I can see that,” Azriel said, raising an eyebrow. “But we are going to be stuck on a boat with him for several weeks, you know.”

“Can’t we push him overboard?” she grumbled. Just then, the SS. Luxor began to move, heaving out of the harbour with a steady chug-chug, belching steam behind it.

Leaving Azriel to his brooding, Elain made her way to the prow of the barge as they inched their way out of Alexandria. Overhead, the sun lay hot and sticky, turning the Nile into a strip of golden ribbon, the sky an endless plain of flat dark blue. Ahead lay Egypt – Amarna and the Tomb of Menes and all that came with it. Finally, after so many years, her life’s goal was so close she could taste it.

***

“I am born of yesterday, and the gods have made me strong for my moment of…arrival.”

Tapping her fingertips against the rail of the barge’s top deck, Elain closed her eyes and sent a prayer to God or Allah or anyone who was listening to save her from idiotic male Egyptologists.

“Coming forth,” she snapped, unable to resist it. “My moment of coming forth. And it’s a child of yesterday, not born.”

Lucien set down the paper he had been reading, raising an eyebrow at Elain. “They’re the same thing, Archeron.”

“They are not the same thing, Vanserra. This is the Book of the Dead we’re talking about; spells couldn’t be vague if they were to work – as they believed they would work, anyway. Every character must be correct. And you were not correct.”

Lucien rolled his eyes. “I am a leading archaeologist employed by the Department of Antiquities. You are not. Allow me my translations, please.”

“I hardly think a leading archaeologist should need translation practice,” she huffed.

“Well, excuse me if I was too busy making actual discoveries to keep up to date with my translation,” he shot back. “Because I’ve never seen your name on a plaque in a museum.”

“You are entirely too vain for your own good.” Anger filled her veins – God, she knew she shouldn’t have engaged him in this ridiculous conversation. “Besides, come forth and arrive have entirely different meanings. You can’t argue translator’s license on that; that’s just plain wrong.”

“Enlighten me,” he said, laying back flat against the deck, folding his arms on his chest. His hair – long, curly, naturally dark red – fanned out around him, somehow perfectly smooth and styled compared to Elain’s frizzy mess after nearly a week of travel.

“Well, to come forth implies something transformative,” she said. “A movement from one place to another; a change, an appearance. To arrive implies only one place – the destination. But the whole point of the Book of the Dead – also known, I’ll remind you, as the Book of Coming Forth by Day – is the journey, the movement of the soul on its quest to paradise. So, to simply arrive is doing a disservice to the beliefs of the ancient Egyptians.”

He stared at her for a second, then drew a sharp line through something on his paper. “Come forth it is,” he muttered.

She gaped at him for a second. “You actually listened to me.”

“Enjoy it while it lasts. It will never happen again,” he quipped, letting his papers fall onto his chest and tilting back his head into the sun. God knew how he could bear it – even after living here her whole life, Egypt in the summer was unbearable for Elain unless she kept to the shade. Lucien didn’t even look the slightest bit burnt, his skin having already deepened to a dark brown during the course of the past week. “You’re staring,” he said suddenly, sounding amused, and to her horror she realised she was.

“Just wondering how long you must spend on your hair each morning to keep it looking like that,” she muttered, looking away.

“Jealous?”

“Of you? Never.”

Propping himself up on his elbows, he drummed his fingers on the deck. “You know, I read your most recent paper on Menes.”

Surprise sluiced through her, cold compared to the heat of the day. “You did?” she said, forgetting for a second that she hated him. “But I couldn’t get it published!”

“I know. But you sent it up to the Department—”

“So you rejected it.”

“No! God, Elain, how bad do you think I am? I’d not be here if I didn’t believe in Menes. A colleague showed it to me, is all.”

She glowered at him. He waited expectantly. “God, you’re practically begging for me to ask you what you thought, aren’t you?” she snapped.

He didn’t reply, a smirk playing over his infuriatingly full lips. After a long, tortured second, she couldn’t bear it any more. “Fine! What did you think?”

“It was alright,” he said, shrugging. “I don’t agree with your point about the palette fragment, though.”

“Whyever not?” she demanded. “It’s Amarna-dated, and it quite clearly says his name—”

“Doesn’t mean it’s our Menes though. There’s no reference to a priest on the fragment, or anything religious.”

“He’s not ours,” Elain said. “We don’t have anything. And you are wrong, Vanserra: I have seen other fragments dated to the same period which do make mention of worship. It’s obviously a common theme on each. They’re too degraded to fit together, but I’m certain there’s a correlation between them.”

He shrugged again. “I’m just saying. If you were wondering why your paper got rejected, that’s certainly one reason.”

“My paper got rejected because I am a woman, and I am working independently, and nobody believes in Menes.” Elain picked furiously at a splinter in the deck. “If I said I had a fragment with Alexander on it, they’d not think twice before publishing it. But Menes…”

“Believe me, I know,” Lucien muttered. “I mean, not about the woman part. Or the independently working part. But the rest…”

“You got enough funding to mount a last-minute expedition with an entire crew,” Elain pointed out. “Somebody must believe you.” God, she didn’t even want to imagine who Lucien’s patron was. Probably some ridiculously wealthy European aristocrat, ready to swoop in and steal any artefacts that were turned up.

Lucien’s face soured. “My elder brother. And believe me, it took some persuading.” Abruptly, he stood, catching his papers as they fluttered down around him. “If you’ll excuse me, I’d like to work on my translations somewhere free from your incessant yammering.”

“Incessant – ugh! You are the rudest man I’ve ever met!”

“I’ll wear that as a badge of honour.” With a bow, he turned and made his way to the hatch that led below-deck, leaving Elain to kick her feet against the rails in anger.

On the other side of the deck, she heard a low laugh: Azriel, reading a book in the shadows. “What are you laughing at?” she snapped.

“I’ve just never seen you get so riled up,” Azriel said, snapping his book closed and walking over to stand beside her, resting his elbows on the railing. “You really hate him.”

“Well, he’s a real idiot. A real arsehole. A real – real – nincompoop!”

Azriel laughed again, raising his eyebrows. “Strong language there, Elain.”

“He deserves it,” she muttered, cheeks flushing. “God. If he finds the Temple before us…”

“You’ll never hear the end of it?”

“Never. Not one day of peace for the rest of my life. I’ll have to move to Timbuktu or somewhere. And he’ll probably still follow me there, taunting and gloating every second I’m awake.”

Azriel turned, leaning backwards against the railings so he could look down at her. “I don’t think he’s that bad.”

“You’re only saying that because you beat him at poker.”

“Well, he put up a fair fight. His crew seems alright too.”

“Don’t be a traitor, Azriel,” Elain warned. “Lucien Vanserra is the enemy. Don’t forget that.”

“I’m just saying. Wouldn’t it be a hell of a lot easier if we combined teams? Worked with him? I’m telling you; he seems decent enough to me. I’m sure he’d credit you.”

“You don’t understand. The—”

“The knowledge, yes,” Azriel said. “Come on, Elain. You can’t really believe that.”

Hurt spasmed through her, and she glared at him. “Not you as well.”

“I’m just saying. Isn’t the science more important?”

“And what do you know about science?” she said, glaring. “You’re a glorified bodyguard and now a digger. I’m the scientist.”

“Ouch.” Now it was his turn to look hurt, anger flashing across his face. “Tell me how you really feel, El.”

She winced, getting to her feet. “Sorry. I didn’t mean that. I just—”

“No, it’s fine. You’ve made it pretty clear how you feel about my input; I won’t bother you anymore.” Azriel stalked off, presumably returning to his cabin to brood.

Elain stared very hard at the murky water of the Nile, willing herself not to cry. On the far riverbank, a crocodile floated within the reeds, one yellow eye visible above the water. In the distance, the lush green-brown of the fertile riverside soil stretched out ahead of them, cut through by the water, so wide she could barely see from bank to bank. And above her, the sky was dry and wide and as blue as faience, and…oh. It was no good. Determined tears rolled down her cheeks and dripped from the end of her nose. She leaned forwards over the railing, letting them fall over the side of the ship and mingle with the river beneath.

“Not thinking of chucking yourself over, are you?”

Frantically, she wiped her eyes, spinning around. “I thought you were going below-deck. What happened to being sick of my yammering?”

Lucien folded his arms over his chest, shifting uncomfortably. “I left my pencil. And…I heard some of that argument.”

“Eavesdropping now, too?”

“Bloody hell, Elain,” he snapped. Normally, he spoke English with the neutral non-accent of someone raised in many countries, but at that moment he sounded like a true Englishman. “I’m just trying to see if you’re alright.”

“I’m fine. I want to be left alone, please.” She fixed her eyes on a point in the distance, which swam liquidly in a blur of colours.

“Azriel doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” Lucien continued, ignoring her plea. “You’re right. Menes was real, and his tomb exists, and…whatever was buried with him does, too.” He sighed. “As much as it pains me to say this…you’re a good scientist. You’ve dedicated your life to this. Are you really going to let a barely-educated ex-soldier knock you that much?”

She swiped at her cheeks again, drying her eyes – which, she realised, had stopped watering. Nothing to do with his words, of course. Just – the dry air, that was all. “Yes, well,” she muttered, cheeks flushing. “Azriel’s not barely-educated. He went to university for a year, you know.”

He didn’t reply. When she turned, she realised he was already gone; she caught sight of a flash of red hair and perfectly-pressed linen sauntering off into the distance. And, frustrating thought it was…she felt better.

***

Wherever she went on the barge, Lucien was frustratingly there. Sunning himself on the upper deck, drinking in the mess with his crew and furiously debating the correct translation of various hieroglyphs, flipping his irritatingly shiny red hair about and tilting his face so the light perfectly illuminated his odd-coloured eyes, swanning around the various ports they stopped in in linen suits and shiny shoes and never once seeming to sweat a drop – God, he was annoying!

It would take them three weeks to reach Asyut and then a further week to reach the tomb. Elain had spent hours poring over maps and numbers and star-charts, trying to work out the exact location of the tomb from the vague hints given by Cassian’s papyrus, and she still wasn’t exactly certain. Her only consolation was that she doubted Lucien knew, either.

One night, about a week from Asyut, she was poring over the papyrus in her cramped little cabin, trying to ignore the fact that a wind was rocking the barge about on the river and making her nauseous, looking for anything she had missed. Could there be any hidden meaning in the symbols? Anything that would give her a hint about what to expect?

Her eyes burned with tiredness, her vision swimming. Outside, the moon was full-fat milk in the sky, low and tinged with a slight golden hue; it was late, and she should be sleeping. Should be, but she just couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something more here.

“What are you hiding?” she whispered, leaning in so close her nose almost brushed the papyrus and the symbols blurred before her eyes. Her candle flickered, the light in the cabin dimming. Goodness, she’d be glad to return to civilisation and electricity.

Picking up the candle, secure in its lamp, she held it closer to the papyrus, examining each symbol in the light. Nothing…nothing…wait.

With a gasp, she jolted back, realising in her tiredness she had brought the lamp so close to the papyrus the flame had almost leapt out to touch it. Cursing herself for her foolishness, she sat back, adrenaline pounding in her veins. If the papyrus was lost, everything would be…

Wait. Wait.

Where the flame had come close to the papyrus, the ancient paper had heated – not enough to catch, but enough to…

“Invisible ink,” she murmured, her eyes going wide. “It’s in invisible ink!” She clapped a hand over her mouth, not wanting anyone else – alright, Lucien – to hear and know she had found something. But where the papyrus had been heated, a dark squiggly line had emerged.

She chewed on her lip. If her hand slipped…not to mention applying heat to something this old could cause it to crumble. If the tomb did turn out to be a bust, she could have destroyed the only significant artefact she’d get. But…

No. She had to know. She had to.

Lowering the lamp again, she gripped its handle with both hands, trying to keep it steady as she warmed the air around the papyrus, praying as she did so. And it seemed somebody in the sky was listening, because when she set the candle down, the papyrus was still intact.

The blank corner of it, in the bottom left, was also no longer blank. A strange shape sat there, already fading as it cooled, a squiggle, shaped sort of like a wobbly crescent moon. It was certainly no hieroglyph she recognised… Briefly, she ran through every ancient language she had ever seen in her mind, but none looked like this.

An ice-bucket of disappointment washed over her. She copied the scribble onto a blank sheet of paper and then slammed the box closed, extinguishing her desk lamp and flopping onto her bed. In the dim light, she turned the paper back and forth, sideways and upside down, searching for any hidden meaning to the shape. Could it mean an actual crescent moon? But surely not – the sun was what was important; the moon had no bearing. Some kind of code, then? Or…or a map? But if it was a map, it was a pretty useless one, with no label or landmark. And why was it so wobbly and messy? It looked like the work of a schoolboy; a baby, even.

With a frustrated sigh, she tucked the paper under her pillow and closed her eyes – as if she would be able to sleep now. At least the distraction had stopped her from feeling so sea-sick.

***

She found Azriel in his cabin the next morning, still asleep despite the fact it was past nine o’clock. “Az!” she hissed, kicking his bed. “Az!”

No reply. She spotted a flask of water on the side; tipping a handful into her palm, she splashed it on to his face. That did the trick. With a groan, he began to awake, attempting to pull his pillow over his head as she yanked it away. “Elain,” he moaned, squeezing his eyes shut. “Please let me sleep.”

“And why should I do that? You should be up, it’s late already.”

He glanced at the time, then groaned again. “Nine o’clock is not late. It’s early. Especially when you’ve drunk enough beer to fill the Nile the night before. Where is my—”

She held up the small bottle he was looking for. “You can have the aspirin after you hear what I have to say.”

“Can I at least go and piss first?”

“No. Now, look, Az, I know I’ve already apologised for the other day, but let me do so again. Effusively, if need be. Because I need things to not be awkward so I can show you this.”

He sighed. “Fine. Apology accepted.”

“Wh—I haven’t made it yet!”

“I’ll say whatever it takes to get my cock over the side of the boat more quickly,” he said, and Elain threw a pillow at him for his vulgarity.

“Well, look at this.” She showed him the bit of paper with the scribble on it. “What do you see?”

He sighed. “A croissant?”

“A croi—no, Az, it is not a croissant.”

“Then what is it?”

“I don’t know. I was hoping you might.”

“So it could be a croissant.”

“It could not, because delicious buttery French pastries did not exist in Ancient Egypt.” Her stomach rumbled at the thought.

“Then remind me why we’re investigating it again?”

“Ha ha.” If she had another pillow, she would have thrown that one at him too. “It was hidden on the papyrus that we’re following, in heat-activated invisible ink. It must be important, but I just don’t know what it means.”

“Maybe there’s someone you can ask.”

“If you say Vanserra, I will smother you.”

Azriel looked as if he wouldn’t mind being dead of smothering right then, but he rolled his eyes and said, “Not Vanserra. Someone at Asyut. There might be an academic there, or even a local who knows something.”

“Yes.” Her heart rate calmed. “Yes, that’s exactly what I’ll do. Thanks, Az.”

“Aspirin?” he said hopefully. She tossed the bottle at him and left the room, stuffing the paper down her brassiere as she did so.

Of course, who should she see exiting his own cabin just down the corridor, but Lucien Vanserra? Immediately, he raised his eyebrows. “I thought he wasn’t Mr. Archeron?”

“Don’t be an ass,” she said. Drat – she would have to pass him to get to her own cabin; behind her was a dead end. “I was just conferring with Azriel about work matters.”

She tried to shoulder past him, but he caught her arm, stopping her. “You sneak out of his room in the early morning adjusting your brassiere, and you expect me to believe that was work matters?”

“Let go of me!” she cried. “And why does everyone on this godforsaken boat think that nine o’clock is early?”

Lucien did not let go of her. Glancing up, her eyes met his own: they really were very unique, one of a dark reddish-brown like autumn leaves, the other a brown so pale it was almost gold, and for a split-second she found herself unable to look away. “Did he hurt you?” he said, his voice low.

“No,” she breathed. “But you’re about to, if you keep squeezing my arm.”

With a sharp intake of breath, he let go, stepping back so she could pass, and without him there, cool air rushed in. “There is something seriously wrong with you,” she muttered, taking several long steps away from him and trying very hard to ignore the fact that she could still feel his fingertips, five matching points of tingles sending fire up and down her arm.

He looked away, and the strange tension was broken. “Forgive me for looking out for your virtue,” he muttered.

“Well, not that it’s any of your business, but my virtue is very much intact,” she snapped, cheeks heating. It was true: men didn’t tend to like lady archaeologists who preferred dusty old stones and dead bodies to wine and diamonds.

“Oh.” His cheeks darkened a little too – harder to tell, since his skin was so much darker than hers, but was he actually…blushing?

“Good day, Vanserra,” she managed, drawing herself up to her full height, and scurried away before she could embarrass herself any further. Slamming the door to her cabin behind her, she slumped against it, practically gasping for breath. To accuse her like that – and then accost her, grabbing her by the arm, and to look at her like…like…like he wanted to eat her alive! Who did that?

The sooner they made it to Asyut and she could leave Lucien Vanserra in the dust, the better.

Chapter Text

Asyut was a bustling patchwork, like all Egyptian cities Elain had visited. Colours sprawled everywhere, people zipping back and forth on camels and donkeys and motorbikes and automobiles, the air perfumed with spices and sand and sweat, the day hot and dusty and yet full of life. As they disembarked the SS. Luxor, showing their paperwork at the base of the gangplank, she straightened her wide-brimmed floppy hat and sighed happily.

It would have been quicker to get off straight in Al-Amarnah, of course. But there wasn’t an official harbour and this particular ship didn’t stop there – and as last minute as it was, Elain had thought it better to get the first ship that arrived. She was glad, now, that she had – since her competition was here too, meaning she wasn’t lagging behind for the diversion, and she got to see a new city and all the wonders that came with it.

“Look, Azriel!” she said in excited Arabic, tugging him towards a stall. “Dates and honey!”

“Very nice, Elain,” he said rather sullenly – he had lost twenty English pounds to one of Lucien’s crew at cards last night – and dutifully let her drag him over and purchase them several dates each. She sighed with pleasure at the rich, chewy sweetness, licking every last bit of honey from her lips. Opening her eyes, a strange bolt went through her when she saw Lucien standing opposite the street from them, staring right at her, a deeply curious expression on his face.

She was pulled from him by Azriel’s voice. “These will rot your teeth,” he said, eating one anyway. “Too sweet for me.”

“Live a little, Az,” she said. “Now. We need a week’s provisions and a car to bring us to Al-Amarnah. From there, we’ll skip the main ruins of Amarna and take camels east into the desert.”

“Shouldn’t we have a guide?”

“You are my guide,” she said, pulling a face. “Or maybe I am yours. We’ve both spent plenty of time in the desert, Az, anyway – or are you scared of riding a camel?”

“Any sane person is scared of riding a camel,” he muttered. “Come on. We can get provisions from that shop there.”

She let him lead her away, leaving Lucien Vanserra behind, standing stock-still on the side of the road, hands in his pockets, struck dumb.

***

Azriel trudged back towards her, shaking his head miserably. “Nothing.”

“Oh, for God’s sake. This has to be the fiftieth person you’ve asked! Let me try.”

“In your dreams,” Azriel cut back. “If you ask, some creep will take you two hundred miles in the wrong direction and then murder you.”

“Oh, so just because I’m a woman, I can’t handle myself? I think I can tell if someone’s a murderer, Azriel.” Elain was hot and impatient and extremely irritable. Fanning herself with her hat, she sighed, slumping back against the wall of the building they stood by. Getting a car was proving to be significantly more difficult than she’d anticipated – they weren’t all that popular here since the quality of the roads was often very poor. And the few people she’d tried to ask about the moon-shaped symbol had looked at her like she was mad. “Vanserra’s probably already got his car arranged. Probably already left, too.”

“Right on one, wrong on the other.”

Elain spun around. “How do you always do that?”

Lucien smirked amusedly. “Do what?”

“Appear. Butt into my conversations. Be annoying,” she answered. “Come to gloat, have you?”

“Actually, I’ve come to offer you a lift.”

“A…lift.”

“Yes. I have two automobiles arranged by the Department of Antiquities. One for my crew, and one for me and the gear. And there’s two spaces.”

“Thank God,” Azriel began, but Elain cut him off.

“Absolutely not. We do not need your charity, Vanserra.”

“Looks to me like you do, Archeron.”

“Why?” she demanded. “Why would you help us? This is your chance to get ahead – you should be relishing in it.” God knows I would, were I in your position.

“Well, a race is no fun if it’s over before it’s begun, is it?” he said with a shrug. “We’ll part ways again at Amarna, don’t you fear.”

“Elain,” Azriel said warningly. She glanced behind – at his sullen face, at the hot, dusty day and the miles and miles that lay between them and the Tomb of Menes…and sighed heavily.

“Fine. Fine. You have space for our gear?”

“Come load it up.” He led them around the back of the building to a paved area where, indeed, two motorcars waited, idling. One had space for five people – though she counted at least six crammed in; the other only two, though its back practically overflowed with luggage and gear. Glancing once at Azriel, she tossed her own bags in on top.

“I am not driving with him,” she whispered.

Azriel glanced between the two cars, and she knew what he was seeing – a perfectly comfortable seat alongside Lucien Vanserra, or a tiny cramped space in the back of the crew’s car. Then he looked back at her, a mysterious twinkle in his eye. “I’m not riding with him either.”

“Why not? You said you don’t mind him!” she whisper-shouted.

“Changed my mind.” He shrugged. “Let’s rock-paper-scissors for it.”

“Ugh. You are such a child. Fine.” She chose paper; Azriel chose scissors, miming cutting through her hand.

“Looks like I win. Enjoy three hours with Vanserra!” he called, jogging back towards the crew car; the men there greeted him cheerfully, squeezing up to make space for him.

With a groan, Elain turned back to Lucien’s motorcar. He had already taken the driver’s seat, drumming his fingertips on the black-painted exterior impatiently. It was an open-top car, and his hair stirred around him in the slight breeze.

“No,” she said, fixing him with a look. “Out.”

“I thought you—”

“I’m coming because Azriel forced me to. But I will be driving.”

“You know how to drive?”

“Surprised, because I’m a woman?”

He was silent for a beat too long. “No.”

“Sure thing. Out. Now. Give me the keys.”

Rolling his eyes, he did as she said, handing her the key to the motorcar with a dramatic flourish. She slid into the worn leather seat, digging her scarf out of her pocket to enclose her curls, sitting on her hat so it wouldn’t blow away. “Nice car,” she admitted grudgingly, shifting it into gear and pulling away.

“Not mine,” Lucien said with a shrug. He had sprawled back in his seat – sprawled was the only word for it – all long golden limbs and flowing red hair. Tipping his head back, he sighed in relief as they began to drive, cool air whipping against them.

As they turned onto the main road, bumping along, he glanced over at her. “Why do you hate me so much, Elain?”

“Because you’re insufferable.”

“You know, you’re probably one of the only people I’ve ever met who would say that. With the exception of my family, of course, but that’s life, I suppose.”

She glanced at him, wondering if he was joking. “You…well, you have entirely too high of an opinion of yourself.”

“But really. What have I, specifically, done, to make you hate me so much?”

She sighed. “Royal Society of Archaeology annual conference, 1927.”

“What?”

“Mull on that.”

“Fine.” He slumped back in his seat, fiddling with the corner of the map.

The silence was rather peaceful. Unfortunately, it only lasted for about fifteen minutes before he was talking again. “I just don’t understand you, Elain.”

“What’s not to understand?”

“Why on Earth are you after the sacred knowledge of Menes?”

“Why are you after it?” she countered.

“I asked you first.”

She glared at him, biting her lip in thought. “Because…because things in the world – in the universe – don’t make sense. And I like things to make sense.”

“Me too,” he said. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see him looking at her with an expression she couldn’t quite name. “I mean, that’s why I’m looking for it too.”

“Hmm.”

He went quiet again. A minute later, she felt something tickle her far shoulder – and gave a squeak, swerving the car into a wobble, when she realised it was his fingers. He had stretched his arm (long, brown, lithely muscled, dusted with fine hair bleached pale by the sun) out to rest on the back of her seat. “Why are you doing that?” she snapped, leaning forwards to get away from his fingers; the light touch was making her shoulder feel funny.

“Small car, long limbs,” he said, as if it were nothing. “Do you want me to arrive in the Tomb of Menes with my digging arm cramped up?”

“Actually, yes,” she muttered.

I will not let him see that he’s bothering me. Leaning back in her seat, she nestled her head against his arm, adjusting her shoulder so his fingertips pressed against it. He made a slight, strangled noise, and she clamped down on her smile. Who’s laughing now, hm?

“1927,” he said thoughtfully, as if they weren’t practically pressed together. “I would have been…twenty-two. I believe I presented my thesis there.”

“You did,” she said sharply.

“An analysis of pottery retrieved by—”

“Howard Carter on the Tutankhamun dig,” she said. “Yes. I recall.”

“Now why were you there?” His fingertips tapped against her shoulder thoughtfully.

She sighed. “My father had just died. I was presenting the findings from his latest dig.”

“Oh, of course. Everyone knew Mr. Archeron.” He smiled. “He was a nice man. I was never able to work with him personally, but everyone in the department at the University of Cairo loved him. He always had a kind word for everybody and their work.”

“Well, that’s not what you said at the conference,” she muttered, her words whipped away by the wind.

“What was that?”

“Nothing.”

“No, tell me.” He squeezed her shoulder insistently, the touch sending heat rippling through her from frustration. “If I’ve slighted you, oughtn’t I to know what it is, exactly, that I have to apologise for?”

She bit her lip. “Well, you must know that even with Father’s connections, I was not allowed to attend university, being a lady and all that. So I never got the chance to write my own thesis officially, but I decided to anyway, based on some of the findings from his last dig. Alongside presenting his general findings, I also created a board displaying my own analysis, of medicinal plant usage in the Middle Kingdom.”

“Oh.” His face fell.

“So you do remember?”

“Elain, I was an ass when I was twenty-two. I’m sorry—”

“You said, if I recall correctly, that the findings were useless in the wider context and meant nothing, and that’s all that could be expected from someone like me.”

“I didn’t realise you could hear—”

“Well, I could hear. I heard it loud and clear. A continual reminder that I will never be taken as seriously as the men in my field – as the English men in my field – simply because I am a woman, and half-Egyptian at that. So forgive me, if I dislike you for that – especially because, in the many years that have passed since, you have never made any attempt at politeness, greeting my every work with snide comments, smugness, and a constant desire to – to – to one-up me!” The car swerved as she gripped the steering wheel in anger, and she only just managed to straighten it before they ploughed off into the desert.

“Elain.” Lucien’s hand was hot on her shoulder; now he stroked it in little circles, almost instinctively, as if he didn’t realise he was doing it. “I really am sorry. I was an idiot, and—”

“I don’t care.”

“Well, I do. I think you’re an excellent scientist, and…” His fingers were toying with the edge of her sleeve, their touch warm and callused against her skin.

“Stop trying to distract me,” she said through her teeth.

He huffed a laugh. “Why? Is it working?” He brushed a curl of hair back behind her shoulder.

“No,” she said, swallowing hard.

“Just let me apologise.”

“Oh, go right ahead,” she said coldly, taking one hand off the wheel to adjust the neckline of her blouse, undoing the first couple of buttons. “Don’t mind me. It’s rather hot.”

“I – I—”

“Yes?” She squeezed her elbows in more tightly to her sides to show off her cleavage, well aware she was being utterly ridiculous but not caring. He was so frustrating, with his fake apologies and smug smile, and anything – anything – she could do to wipe that smile right off his face was entirely worth it.

“I…am sorry. For…for…” His tongue darted out to wet his lips, his breathing deepening. The sound of it sent a strange unfamiliar thrill through her – one which she rather liked.

“For what?” She fanned herself with her free hand, bringing it to the third button on her blouse.

“For being – oh, for Christ’s sake, Elain, will you stop undoing your bloody shirt when I’m talking to you!”

She turned her head to glare at him. “You are so rude!”

“Stop flaunting your – your assets when I’m trying to apologise, and I won’t have to be!”

“I can’t help it if you’re distracted, Lucien. But I suppose that’s all that can be expected from someone like you.”

“You are unbelievable,” he said, his voice dropping to a low, husky pitch that sent shivers through her despite her burning anger. “You are absolutely unbelievable. You are – oh, bugger.”

“I am oh bugger?” she said, frowning. “That’s not very polite.”

“No. You – we – are now about twenty miles in the wrong direction.”

She gasped in outrage, their game forgotten. “You were supposed to be doing the map!”

“Well, it was a bit difficult to see the map, given that it was blocked by your—”

“Finish that sentence and so help me God, I am throwing you out into the desert and leaving you there,” she threatened. Wisely, he shut up.

A cloud of dust and sand billowed up behind them as she stopped the car on the side of the road. “Right. Show me the map then, if you can’t be trusted.”

Silently, he handed it over. Indeed, about twenty miles back they had passed a left turn which they should have taken – would have, had they not been too busy riling each other up. “Damn it,” she muttered, screeching the car into a sharp turn.

“I still want to say that I’m—”

“No.” She cut him off, thrusting the map at him blindly. “I cannot trust you to do this properly if you’re speaking, so I would advise that you do not say another word for the remainder of the journey.”

His mouth closed with a sharp snap. And for once, for a full blissful hour, he was silent.

***

When they pulled up outside the stables on the edge of Al-Amarnah, Azriel and Lucien’s crew had already arrived. The crew were packing their bags onto camels; Azriel, however, was just leaning against the car. Laughing.

“Don’t even start,” she snapped, slamming the door shut behind her.

“What time do you call this?” he said, eyes dancing with laughter. “Did the two of you find yourselves some diversion?”

She gave him her fiercest warning glare. “There was a wrong turning. It was not my fault.”

“It was partially your fault!” Lucien yelled from where he was unpacking the car.

Ignoring him, she retrieved their packs. “Why are you not saddling a camel?” she said to Azriel suspiciously.

“Because you have the money,” he said. “Owner wouldn’t let me in the building without proof I could pay.”

“You don’t have any cash on you?” she said despairingly. Then, “Oh, God. There are still some left, aren’t there?”

Snatching her purse from her bag, she strode into the stables. There were, in fact, two camels left, and she almost sighed with relief, until she saw the vicious gleam in their eyes. “Oh, no.”

She slid several coins across the counter to the owner. “Do they have a good…temperament?” she asked weakly in Arabic.

“Of course they do,” he said comfortingly. “As long as you keep your hands far from their mouths at all times, yes?”

“Great.” She looked from the camels to the owner, hesitating for a moment. Then she dug the piece of paper out of her brassiere, the man’s eyes going very wide. Dropping her voice to a whisper, she asked, “Do you know what this is?”

He finished staring at her chest, eyes snapping to the paper. Then he laughed. “Of course.”

“What is it?”

“It is a terrible drawing.”

She sighed loudly, crumpling the edge of the paper in anger. “Great. Thanks so much—”

“A terrible drawing of the Cliff of the Moon,” he said.

Her eyes widened. “Cliff of the…Moon?”

“It is a rock formation maybe…fifty, seventy-five miles into the desert that way,” he said, pointing.

She fumbled out her compass from her bag, checking the way he was pointing. “East-north-east,” she murmured. “Off course. Not due east. Why would they tell us to go there?”

“You were told to go there?”

She bit her lip. “It was…alluded to.”

“Ah. Whoever alluded to it must know the desert well, then.”

“Why?”

“When the wind blows, the cliff blocks the storms of sand that whirl across the desert,” the man said, leaning forwards conspiratorially. “It is good shelter. And underneath – the sand is shallower around there, rockier. Easier to walk across.”

“Hmm.” Elain stared at the drawing, then shoved it away – into her pocket, this time, much to the disappointment of the man. Why would the ancients who buried Menes leave a hidden message implying they should go to the Cliff? Menes must be buried east, into the rising sun; the whole symbolism made no sense otherwise. Unless it was a red herring. Or unless the priests knew something they didn’t. “You didn’t talk to any of the men who were just in here about this, did you?”

“Hah!” The owner let out a loud snort. “White men, Americans – no, no. I did not. They think they know the ways of the desert, I let them find out how well they know the desert.”

“Thank you,” Elain breathed, relieved. She pushed more money over the countertop. “For your discretion.”

***

“It’s looking at me, Elain,” Azriel said, shuddering.

“It’s not doing anything.” Elain focused on attaching the strap of her bag to the camel. With only two animals, they’d had to leave some stuff behind, since there was no third pack animal to bring. But Elain was used to travelling light, and had dumped everything but the essentials, which she now secured to the beast.

“It’s looking at me like it wants to eat me.”

“It doesn’t want to eat you,” Elain said. Probably.

Azriel glanced over his shoulder. “Lucien and his crew left half an hour ago.”

“I know.”

“Well, it’s just – after all this about racing him, you seem suddenly very calm to let him go ahead.”

“Do I indeed?”

Azriel turned to look at her. “What do you know, Elain?”

She finished packing the camel, clambering onto the mounting block and then into the saddle from there. “A lot more than Lucien Vanserra, I’ll tell you that much.”

With a disgruntled noise, Azriel mounted his own beast. “I hate these things.”

“I don’t know why.”

“They are the closest thing to demons one can find on this earth,” he groaned. “Allah got tired of creating all the animals, and he let the devil do the last, and it was a camel.”

“You are far too dramatic,” Elain declared. “Hyah!”

The camel took off at a fast, swaying walk. Behind her, she heard Azriel’s make a groaning, lowing sound and then spit. She couldn’t help but smile to herself as he swore viciously.

By mid-afternoon, they were well and truly in the desert, Al-Amarnah a distant blur far away. The white scarves wound around Elain’s head and face helped protect her skin from burning in the fierce sun, but did nothing to keep out the unbearable heat. Around them, the air shimmered, still and heavy where it lay over the carpet of golden sands, undulating out in an endless plain, a stark contrast against the low blue sky.

“We are not travelling east,” Azriel observed from behind her.

“We are not.”

“Where are we going?”

“I have a hunch,” she said, then explained to him what she had learnt about the Cliff of the Moon.

“So you think…he was buried there?”

“No,” she replied, taking a careful, measured sip from her flask of water; they wouldn’t reach a well until evening. “But it has to be significant.”

“So we’re travelling miles off course, into an area of the desert barely mapped, with wells days or more apart, with only a week until the solstice, because of your hunch?”

“That’s right.”

Azriel sighed. “I’m not saying I disagree with you. But last time you had a hunch…”

Last time she’d had a hunch, she’d dragged a team of ten people out into the desert miles and miles away, convinced that Menes was just around the corner. They had found nothing but empty sands, been caught in a storm, and one man had nearly died of dehydration. Thank God, he had been fine, but it had taken her two years to stop having nightmares. Suffice it to say, she had not received funding ever again.

“I know. But this isn’t like last time. We have evidence, and I’m certain it’s significant. If nothing else, travelling this way will shelter us from any sandstorms for the majority of the journey.” She shuddered at the thought.

“None are predicted,” Azriel countered, but then agreed, “but better to be safe than sorry.” Then, “What about Lucien?”

“What about him?”

“If he’s caught in a sandstorm—”

“They have hundreds of pounds worth of equipment. They’ll be fine.”

“And you think that without the Cliff of the Moon…”

“I think they’ll struggle to find the tomb. I swear to you, Azriel. We need this.”

“I know. But I thought you and Lucien…”

She turned around in the saddle to glare at him. “Lucien and I what?”

“Well, you drove together. I thought you might have bonded.”

“I will never bond with him.” She remembered his fingertips tracing patterns on her shoulder, and shivered despite the searing heat.

“Alright,” Azriel said, the voice of a man without the energy to argue. “If you say so.”

By evening, they made camp in the shelter of a dune. In theory, it would only have taken two days to ride the one hundred and fifty thousand paces the papyrus spoke of, but she knew in practice it would be longer. They had to stop often, for rest and water, and they made camp as soon as darkness fell, not wanting to be caught in the cold desert night. What with following this triangular route, rather than going directly…it would be probably more like four days, giving them just a day to solve any puzzles the tomb posed before the solstice hit and their chance was lost. Knowing they were pressed for time, she was loathe to stop, but Azriel forced her to.

“You employed me as a guide just as much as dig crew,” he said, helping her stiff body clamber down from the camel. “And as your guide, I’m telling you, you need to rest.”

“Maybe it would be smarter to travel at night,” Elain mused, attempting to erect their tent. “When the air is cooler.”

“If we were travelling for more than these four days, and had all of our equipment, I would suggest it,” Azriel said. “But switching from a day to a night cycle will leave you dead on your feet for the first few days. And given that we’re following your hunch, I don’t think we want that. Besides,” he added, expertly hammering tent pegs into the clump of rocky earth they had found, “the desert at night is cold, and we don’t have enough warm clothes to wear.”

Indeed, Elain soon found herself shivering. “I won’t be curling up against you for warmth,” she said tartly, crawling inside the tattered canvas of the tent.

Azriel barked a laugh. “I could imagine nothing worse.”

“Hey!” She glared at him, only to smile as he passed her a tin of stew and a spoon. Then, “You aren’t married, are you, Azriel?”

“No.” He regarded her suspiciously. “You aren’t suggesting you—”

“Oh, God, no,” she said. Then, “Sorry. No offence. You’re just so…you.”

He shrugged. “None taken. You aren’t married either, though.”

“No.”

“Why not?” He had that strange gleam in his eye again, as if he were plotting something.

“Men don’t like lady archaeologists,” she said, spooning food into her mouth vigorously. “In fact, men don’t like it when women are better at them than anything in general. And given that I am better than a great deal of men at a great deal of things, they don’t seem to like me very much.” She sucked on her spoon. “It’s emasculating.”

“An archaeologist might,” he pointed out.

Now it was her turn to regard him suspiciously. “And what exactly do you mean by that?”

He shrugged, crunching on a saltine. “Just that there’s a fine line between love and hate.”

“Lucien?” she cried, horrified.

“You said it, not me.”

“I would never even dream of it. I could imagine nothing worse than spending a life with him.”

“Methinks the lady doth protest too much,” Azriel muttered, scraping the inside of his tin.

“Say another word and I will throw my spoon at you.”

“Don’t do that. You’ll get sand on it.”

“I can’t believe you.” She set down her mostly-eaten meal, appetite now gone, and flopped back on her bedroll, looking up at the canvas ceiling of the tent. “I can’t believe you would suggest that.”

“If you spend even half as much time thinking about him as you do talking about him, I’d say that’s an unusual amount to think about someone you don’t have feelings for,” Azriel said sagely, finishing her meal as well as his own.

She remembered Lucien’s fingers on her shoulder, the way his eyes had darkened when she’d unbuttoned her shirt, the way he’d lost the ability to speak as she revealed the first inch of her cleavage, and was glad of the darkness in the tent, so Azriel could not see her blushing. “I’m going to sleep. I want to be at the Cliff by tomorrow night.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Azriel muttered sarcastically.

She rolled over and closed her eyes. Then, “And if you so much as think his name in my presence again, I will know, and I will set the camels on you.”

His only answer was a shudder.

Sleep was a long time coming that night. She tossed and turned on her bedroll, sticky and cold and stiff, and when she finally managed to drift into an uneasy slumber, the face in her dreams had red hair and mismatched eyes.

***

The following afternoon, sore and thirsty and sunburnt, they crested a sand dune and the moon-shaped rock formation came into view. “There!” Elain cried, pointing to it triumphantly. It jutted from the end of a line of cliffs meandering through the desert, dark red and craggy, and at its base she could see the dark sweep of blissful shade.

“We better hurry,” Azriel said, and something in his voice made Elain stop celebrating abruptly and turn and look. He gazed into the distance, standing in his stirrups, one hand shading his eyes, and a worried expression carved through his dark face.

Reluctantly, Elain followed his gaze. On the far horizon, she could see a dark blur, like a thick cloud, a charcoal smudge against the rapidly greying sky. A hot wind picked up, blowing sand into her eyes as she squinted against it.

Several very unladylike words spilled from her mouth. A sandstorm.

“Come on,” Azriel said, switching his camel into a run, for once ignoring the way it grumbled and protested. “If we hurry, we can make it to the shelter of the closest cliff before the storm hits.”

Elain needed no further persuasion. Hitting the camel as hard as she could, she drove it onwards, golden sands churning beneath its hooves. The jolt and sway of the motion send bolts of pain through her already-stiff limbs, but she paid it no mind, focusing only on the safety of the cliff far in the distance. Too far.

“Faster!” Azriel cried, urging his mount on. Elain did the same, hot wind cutting at her face, eyes screwed up against the sand as the air snatched her scarf away from her face, fluttering in a white trail behind her head. Her hair whipped around her face, her heart pounding as they tore up the sands.

The storm was getting closer, the sky overhead now a heavy grey, churning with wind. Flurries of sand blew up all around them, and she knew they had barely any time, still an open expanse of desert between them and relative safety.

“Come on, come on, come on!” she yelled, digging her heels into the beast’s sides. The storm was almost upon them now, but so was the cliff, looming up ahead maybe a mile away.

Sensing the urgency, the camel didn’t protest. It ran faster and faster, faster than she had any idea they could run, overtaking Azriel in a wild gallop for safety. They rode and rode and rode—

And then the storm hit. For a moment, the world was an awful stinging brown colour, and she huddled down in the saddle, bracing her eyes closed as flying sands tore at her skin, her clothes—

The hush-hush of sand beneath hooves suddenly turned louder and harder, as if the camel moved now over solid rock. And then – Elain gasped for air, her mouth full of sand, as they crossed the last of the desert and into the shelter of the cliffs, Azriel hot on her heels.

With a moaning, braying noise, the camel slowed, sinking to its knees. Through divine intervention or some dumb luck, they had emerged by a rocky overhang which sheltered them from the storm like a cupped palm. The air was hot and blowy and sand still gusted around them – but it was safe.

On trembling legs, she stumbled from the saddle, pressing herself against the rock face and sinking down to a sitting position.

“There wasn’t supposed to be a storm,” Azriel murmured, his chest heaving as he gathered the reins and tethered both camels to an outcropping of rock. “It’s the wrong time of year – there were no winds, no signs—”

Elain nodded, pressing her head into her knees, willing her heart to slow. “It’s as if it just came out of nowhere.”

“Or was sent,” Azriel said darkly, glancing up towards the sky.

“I thought you didn’t believe in things like that?” she said tiredly, tipping a little water into her mouth. God only knew where the nearest well was.

“I don’t believe in three-thousand-year-old magical knowledge,” Azriel shot back. “I do believe that there are certain things Allah does and doesn’t want us to do. Maybe this is a path we shouldn’t be treading, Elain.”

“It’s not a sign from God or Allah or Ra or anyone,” she snapped. “It’s just a freak storm, Azriel. It happens. We’ll rest here and go on once it’s blown over.”

“If we were out in the desert, exposed, right now…” Azriel breathed, sitting down next to her. “Thank every God in existence for your hunch.”

“Thank the man who rented us the camels,” she said. Laying her head back against the rock, she closed her eyes and pulled her scarf over her face, letting her ears fill with the roaring of the wind snapping against the cliffs. “Wake me when the storm passes.”

Chapter Text

The storm ended up lasting for several hours, during which Elain slept fitfully, dimly aware of Azriel pacing and muttering angrily. Finally, he shook her awake; startled, she rubbed her eyes. Each blink hurt – no doubt sand had gotten in them and perhaps scratched her corneas, though not badly enough to need medical attention.

Her head ached, her mouth as dry as if it had been packed with cotton, and she groaned. “Ugh.”

“Ugh indeed.” He handed her a flask of water. “Here. We’ve used half of our water already.”

She drank, careful not to take too much, and fumbled out her map. “There’s a rest stop thirty miles to the south-east. We were going to stop there anyway, before we changed course. We must be…” She dragged her fingers over a jagged line on her rudimentary map. “These are the cliffs, I think.”

Azriel peered over her shoulder. “Yes, they are. We’d be best off going straight to the rest stop, then east from there.”

She hauled herself into a standing position. “What time is it?”

He shrugged. “My pocketwatch got full of sand and stopped. From the position of the sun, I’d say we’ve maybe two hours till nightfall.”

“Perfect. Let’s go find this Cliff of the Moon.”

Every muscle in her tired, aching body protested, but they rode along the edge of the cliff for a couple of hours. The storm had subsided, leaving behind a weak blue sky and liquidy sun, the air alive with glittering spindrifts of sand, slowly drifting back down to earth and settling wherever they landed – including in Elain’s hair, in every fold of her headscarf, down the back of her shirt, her boots, and even her underwear, which was ridiculously uncomfortable and reminded her very strongly of the fact she was at least a week away from her next bath.

Finally, just as the sun was slipping below the horizon, painting the western sky in a deep ruby glow, they arrived at the end of the cliff formation, which, as per the drawing on the papyrus, curved in the shape of a crescent moon. It was a remarkable sight in and of itself; Elain was no geologist, but she couldn’t help but muse on how such a shape had been created.

At the base of the moon, they dismounted, tying up their camels; Azriel began setting up their camp for the night. “So, what are we looking for?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Elain sighed, picking her way through the scree at the base of the cliff. “We don’t have time to do a proper dig. Maybe there’s nothing here. But anything unusual…”

“Hmm.” Azriel finished erecting their tent and came over to help her. For about an hour, they dug through the stones and examined the curving interior of the cliff, but Elain saw nothing.

“Maybe there’s nothing here,” Azriel echoed. “Maybe it was just a guide to avoid sandstorms.”

“But in that case, wouldn’t it go all the way to the tomb? There’s nothing to suggest any kind of building has ever been here.” She dropped down in the curved mouth of the moon, sighing. “I’m hungry. Are you hungry?”

He tossed her a bag of some strips of mysterious dried-out meat. “Best you don’t ask what it is.”

“Ugh.” She tore into it with a wince. “If only Farrouk hadn’t been so stingy.”

The sun slipped below the horizon, the moon rising in a thick silver crescent that matched the rock they sat under. Azriel tipped his chin back, looking up at the stars. “At least we get to see the desert sky at night,” he said wistfully.

Indeed, constellations were beginning to emerge like scattered grains of rice, the tarry sky streaked through with clouds of gold and silver and purple as the cosmos painted itself across their vision. “I always forget how beautiful it is,” Elain murmured.

“The most beautiful sight in the world,” Azriel agreed, settling down against the rocky sand.

Moonlight drifted slender fingers over the rolling sea of dunes, silvery-white beams creeping closer and closer to them. As it touched the surface of the cliff, the rock seemed to glow as if set alight, as if some secret, inner fire burnt within it, as if—

She froze. “What is that?”

“What?” Azriel said, yawning.

“There’s something—” Scrambling forwards, Elain moved towards the very edge of the cliff, where rock gave way to sand. Something in there was glowing brighter than it should be, brighter than anything should be, like a reflection of the moon buried deep in the sand.

The storm earlier had disturbed the sand, pushing it up onto the rocks; already, it was starting to trickle back down, but Elain scrabbled it away. “Azriel, there’s something here!”

Awake now, Azriel moved to help her, snatching the dig kit from his bag. “It must have been uncovered by the storm,” he breathed. “But what…why is it glowing?”

“It’s not,” Elain said, fingers brushing the edge of a piece of metal. “It’s reflecting.” She looked up at Azriel, his skin lined with silver in the moonlight. “The Egyptians used to use mirrors to reflect light and create a new light source. It’s some kind of marker.”

“Here.” He passed her a trowel and brush, and she eagerly began excavating. Slowly, the object came into view – a long piece of mirrored glass, which cracked and crumbled as she removed it, but underneath – underneath was something made of metal. Bronze, from the greenish oxidised tint, but still very much intact.

“What is that?” Azriel said, frowning.

“I have absolutely no idea.” Baffled, Elain turned it over and over in her hands. It was a small piece of metal, hammered into a roughly circular shape. One side of it was perfectly smooth, the other decorated in worn ridges, with what appeared to be a sort of loop of metal – a hand-hold, perhaps?

“How do we know this is ancient?” Azriel said. “And not just dropped here by someone passing?”

She sighed. “Well. Without laboratory analysis, we don’t. But…”

“Don’t tell me. You have a hunch?”

“It has a certain feeling about it, wouldn’t you say?” she said, handing it to him. He hefted it in the palm of his hand as if testing the weight. “Like a kind of…aura.”

“Just looks like a chunk of metal to me,” he said, shrugging. Then, “If we’re done here, I’m exhausted. Shall we sleep?”

“Yes, let’s,” Elain said, poking around in the hole they had dug and ascertaining there was nothing else in there. Gently, she wrapped the object in a spare scarf, tucking it into the inner pocket of her pack. Perhaps it was nothing, but all the symbols were lining up, and something inside her heart was jumping and singing. It had to mean something – it just had to.

***

By the following evening, they had made it not only to the rest stop – where Elain was overjoyed to find a functioning well, with enough water to splash over herself as well as to refill their canteens – but on further, some twenty miles into the east. They must be close to the tomb now – a day, maybe two at the most.

“I think we should make camp soon,” Azriel said, peering overhead at the sun, which was starting to dip into the west.

“Soon,” Elain agreed. “But just a little further? The more we cover now, the less we have to do tomorrow?”

“You’ll tire out the camels.”

“We’ll go slowly. And mine’s fine.” The beast in question swivelled her head to glare at Elain, and she shrank back in the saddle. “Maybe we should camp soon, after all. Over the next ridge, do you think?”

Azriel didn’t reply. “Az?” she said, glancing over at him. He was staring into the distance, a frown creasing his brows. Her heart sank. Not another storm, surely not – they had no shelter beyond their tents, nowhere to hide—

“There’s someone there,” he said. “Or something. I can’t tell if it’s a person or an animal.”

“Where?”

He pointed. She followed his gaze, rising up in the saddle – “Oh! You’re right!” A strange figure was staggering along ahead of them, moving in an odd lurching fashion.

“Watch out.” Azriel’s hands went to his belt, where she knew he kept two pistols holstered. “It could be dangerous. Predatory animals sometimes hunt in the desert; I saw a cheetah once, in the west.”

“It’s obviously not a cheetah,” Elain said. “It looks like…” Her blood ran cold, despite the heat of the evening. For as they grew closer, she could make out the colours of the figure – and the splash of dark flame red atop its head. “Azriel, it’s a person.”

“That doesn’t mean it’s safe,” Azriel cautioned. “Bandits, thieves – they might be waiting to waylay a traveller – Elain, wait!”

But she had already kicked her camel into a jog. Because the figure stumbling ahead of them, determinedly forcing its way east, was no bandit or thief. She could see him more and more clearly now – red hair in a frantic tangle, beige linen clothes dirty and torn, the dark blue scarf wound around his face – and she could see the way he staggered, clutching at his head as if he were ill or injured.

He heard her approaching, Azriel hot on her heels, and stumbled backwards onto the sand. “Please,” he shouted in accented Arabic, his words carrying over the distance between them. “I need your help. I need – Elain?”

She drew up next to him. “Hello, Lucien. How the mighty have fallen.”

He swayed as he looked up at her, hand shading his eyes and the sunburnt skin around them. “Come to gloat, have you?”

She was just opening her mouth to, when she frowned. “You don’t look very—”

Thump. With a soft puff of sand, Lucien fell to his knees, then tumbled forwards face-first into the desert. Behind her, Elain was dimly aware of Azriel swearing viciously, scrambling from camel-back to rush to his side, but it all seemed strangely distant and far away, and all she could think was, He looks so small.

“—don’t see a wound,” Azriel was saying, his words bringing her back to reality as she blinked, her ears humming. “I think he’s dehydrated; certainly heat exhaustion. Could you—”

She was already dismounting, snatching up her mercifully full canteen. They had filled extra at the well, anticipating several days without a stop, and she was glad of it now as she brought it gently to his lips. He groaned, half-awake, lucid enough to start drinking and drinking and—

“That’s enough,” she chided, pulling back. “You’ll make yourself sick.” She sighed, looking up at Azriel. “What the hell are we going to do with him?”

Azriel ran a hand through his hair, sand flying everywhere. “Right now this second? We need to make camp.”

He set up the tent whilst she dipped a cloth in water and wrapped it around Lucien’s forehead, feeling worriedly at his pulse. It was weak, and too fast, but not worryingly so, which was a relief. Or was it? He was her sworn enemy, after all – although, enemy or no enemy, she didn’t want to see him die. Most of the time.

As night fell and the temperature dropped, he stirred awake, rubbing his head with a groan. He glanced around, his eyes landing on her, and then laughed softly. “What’s so funny?” she demanded.

“I thought you were a mirage,” he rasped, his voice painfully dry.

“Here.” She handed him the canteen. “Little sips.” He did so. “What happened to you, Lucien?” she said. “Where the hell’s your crew?”

He screwed the lid back on, handing it back to her. “Sandstorm,” he said, a little colour coming back to his face.

“I thought you had all the equipment for it?”

He shrugged. “We did. Came on too suddenly, we couldn’t get the tents up.”

“Was anyone…?” She bit her lip, unsure if she wanted to know the answer.

He shook his head. “Mercifully, no. Everyone’s fine, though one man took a flying tent pole to the leg. He’ll need stitches.”

“So…they turned back?”

His face darkened. “Yes. They all turned back, as soon as the storm cleared.”

“But you didn’t.” She sighed. “I can’t say I’m surprised.”

He glanced at her, then at Azriel, who was eating dinner a little way away. “How’d you get through the storm so unscathed?”

“We were lucky,” she said, shrugging. “Found shelter.” And something else – but she certainly wouldn’t be telling him about that.

He nodded. Then, “You know, I think this is the longest conversation we’ve ever had without arguing.”

She laughed softly, handing him another damp cloth to wipe the sand and sweat from his skin. “Only took you nearly dying to manage it.”

“I am not—” He tried to rise, but immediately his legs buckled, his whole body swaying alarmingly, and she only just caught him in time. “I am not dying,” he muttered, as she lowered him back down to the sand. “It’s just a touch of a headache.”

“It’s dehydration and heat exhaustion.” Azriel, having finished putting up the tent, came over, grabbing Elain by the elbow and drawing her aside, several feet from Lucien. “What are we going to do with him?”

She hadn’t thought that far ahead. “Um…”

“We need to take him back to the rest stop,” he said. “There’s water there, and shelter. He can wait it out until we come back for him.”

Her face fell. “We can’t. If we do that, we’ll waste a whole day.”

“We have days to spare.”

“We have one day to spare, and I’ll need it to crack the secrets.” And the strange piece of metal we found, she tried to convey with her eyes.

“Well, we can’t just leave him here!” Azriel said. Then, “Well, we could. Though I don’t know if he’d be very happy about it. Elain, we have to take him back—”

“Absolutely not!” Lucien yelled, more loudly than was necessary given that he was only five feet away. Azriel and Elain both shot him glares, but he didn’t back down. “If you take me back, I’ll just start again on foot. You are not keeping me from that bloody tomb.”

“Mind your language,” Elain said.

“I’ve heard you say far worse,” Azriel muttered, and it was his turn to be on the receiving end of her glare.

“Give me a little of your water – or don’t, and I’ll find my own – and let me go. I’ll get there myself,” Lucien said, lifting his chin defiantly.

“Are you out of your mind?” Elain sat down heavily on the sand, the implications whirling in her mind. She looked up at Azriel mournfully. “We have to bring him with us.”

He said something very rude.

“Hey! I heard that,” Lucien said, scowling. “And why would you bring me with you? You’ve won, after all. You can abandon me and beat me to the tomb now. You should be gloating.”

“Yes, I should,” Elain said. But she wasn’t. She didn’t feel triumphant at all, just…worried. “But…I suppose a human life – even if it is your life – is worth more than the knowledge. And this seems to be the only way to stop you from getting yourself killed.” Besides. She had the piece of metal and the original papyrus, and he had nothing. Even if she did bring him all the way to the tomb…that didn’t mean he’d be able to access it.

“We can leave you a few miles from the tomb and go on ahead,” Azriel suggested. “That way we’ll still have a head-start.”

A slight flush crept over his cheeks, and she wondered if he was still too warm, even though night had brought a chill over the desert. “Fine,” he said eventually. “Sounds like a compromise.”

She blinked. “You really must be feeling unwell.”

Azriel emerged from rifling around in his pack. “Well, we have enough water for three if we’re conservative, assuming one of us – me, I’m guessing – is willing to ride back to the rest stop to get more whilst we’re at the tomb. We only packed enough food for two, but if we ration…” He tossed Lucien a can of stew. “Share that with Elain.”

“Yes, Master,” Lucien muttered under his breath, and Elain stifled a laugh. He gave her a strange, sideways look, prising the can open with his pen-knife and holding it out.

“You first,” she said, pressing a spoon into his hand. “Eat.”

He did so. And, to her shock and horror, Elain actually found herself enjoying his company. As if his illness had drained all the usual unpleasantness out of him, he was…funny, and polite, and surprisingly charming, and—

But he’s still a mean, nasty piece of work, she told herself firmly. Remember what he said about you.

Soon, she couldn’t hold back her yawns. “We should sleep,” she said, stretching her arms above her head. “The tent’ll only fit two. Who’s taking it?”

Both men got a keen glint in their eye that made Elain realise she was about to witness one of the stupid masculine competitions of bravado that men were so fond of. “I will,” Lucien said immediately. “I’m happy to bed down by the camels.”

“That’s completely illogical,” Azriel argued. “The two smallest people should take the tent, and the biggest should sleep outside. Last time I checked, I had four inches on you.”

“Two inches, and I’m sure I make up for the rest elsewhere,” Lucien shot back, and Elain felt herself turn practically purple, though he seemed to have forgotten she was there. “I slept outside last night. I can do it again now. I really don’t feel the cold.”

“Perhaps I should sleep outside?” Elain said sweetly.

Both men turned, fixing her with firm looks. “No,” they said in unison, before going back to arguing.

“Oh, really,” she said, scowling. “I know it’s been a while since my last bath, but I don’t smell that bad.”

Now they both had the good sense to look mollified. “It’s not you,” Lucien muttered, turning pink. “But I should—”

“No. You’re still unwell; your system is delicate. You sleep in the tent,” Elain said firmly. “And since Azriel seems completely unwilling to let me sleep outside, despite the fact he’s the one that’s terrified of the camels, I suppose I’ll be joining you.”

“No funny business, you two,” Azriel said, fixing Elain with a meaningful look. “I’ll be chaperoning from outside.”

“Are you really terrified of camels?” Lucien inquired sweetly.

Azriel let out a sound that could only be classified as a growl, and stomped off towards where the camels knelt, lowing contentedly to each other.

“No funny business,” Lucien repeated, shaking his head with a laugh. “He’s an interesting man, your sweetheart.”

“He’s my friend, not my sweetheart,” Elain shot back. Lucien merely nodded, something sparking in his gaze.

Elain went over the nearby ridge to see to her needs and change into sleeping clothes, doing her best to comb her hair smooth, tying it back in a thick plait, and tried to clean off the sand and dirt that clung to her with only a few drops of water, with minimal success. By the time she returned to the tent, Lucien was already laying on Azriel’s bedroll inside, eyes closed. Unsure if he was actually sleeping, she crept over to her own bedroll, easing herself down.

“He’s really just your friend?” he said suddenly, startling her.

“Yes,” she said, laying down on her back. “Is that so hard to believe?”

“I’m just surprised he isn’t interested, is all,” Lucien said, shrugging.

She turned her head to look at him. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“Well, you’re – you.” Was he blushing? “And he’s got eyes. I mean, all this time unchaperoned in the desert – I’d expect him to have made a move.”

“He’s not an animal, God, Lucien,” Elain said, frowning.

He gave an exasperated sigh. “I didn’t mean – I was trying to compliment you!”

“Oh.” She frowned even deeper. “Well, you could have just said I look pretty, or something, instead of insulting one of my close friends.”

“And yet it’s so hard to resist insulting him,” Lucien said, smirking. All of a sudden, a loud snore cut through the quiet of the camp, making even one of the camels groan in annoyance. Lucien shot her a look as if to say, see what I mean?

She laughed softly. “I should have warned you he snores. I’m almost glad to be sharing with you instead of him tonight.”

“Hm. We couldn’t have your eardrums being ruptured before you get to the temple.”

She laughed again, and then stopped, because he was looking at her in a way that made her skin feel hot and tight all over. “You are, you know,” he said.

She blinked. “I am…what?”

When he spoke again, his voice was low, deep; his eyelashes fluttered, dark smudges on his cheeks. “Pretty. Beautiful, actually.”

Her brain temporarily stopped working, her mouth making shapes but no words coming out. “I…I…thank you.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Thank you?”

Oh, her cheeks were going to set the entire tent on fire. Resolutely, she rolled over so she faced away from him. “Yes. Thank you. For the compliment.”

“You’re welcome,” he said. A long pause. Then, “So, do I get one back?”

“Do you—?" She flipped back over, staring at him incredulously. “Stop fishing, Lucien, God.”

“Oh, go on. I could be dying.”

“You seem fine to me.” She sighed. “Fine. Your eyes are…quite nice. And you’re not entirely stupid, which is more than I can say for most men.”

His eyes danced. “Thank you.” Then he smirked. “You don’t have a very high opinion on my sex, do you?”

“My father, my brothers-in-law, Azriel,” she said, ticking them off on her fingers. “Those are the only men I’ve met whose company is vaguely bearable. After all, being a woman in this field…” She trailed off. From the way his eyes shuttered, she knew they were thinking of the same thing.

“You never gave me a chance to explain,” he said. “Before, I mean.”

“Explain what?”

“What I said. It’s not – what you think.”

“So you don’t think my research was stupid and a waste of time befitting a woman?”

“No.” He closed his eyes, taking in a deep breath. “I think all the research you’ve ever done is excellent. Your methods are meticulous, your articles tight and well-edited – your synthesis of different ideas from different fields is particularly impressive, like the way you pulled together archaeological and botanical evidence to build a thesis as to the use of plants in the time you studied. And…I said those things because I was extremely, embarrassingly jealous.”

She gaped. “Oh.”

“I was a young, stupid fool, the newest in the faculty, and some of my senior colleagues are…well, you know what they’re like. I was jealous of how much better your work was than mine, so I deliberately put it down so I wouldn’t feel embarrassed in front of them. And I am very, very sorry.”

“Oh,” she said again, her voice small. “That’s…but…” She blinked. “What about all the times since? You’re always so – so smug, and rude, and—”

“Only because you were first! I didn’t know why you hated me, but I could see that you did, and besides.” He shrugged. “A bit of rivalry never hurt anybody. It challenged me to do better.”

She rolled onto her back. “This is a lot to take in.”

“I really am sorry. It’s not an excuse, just an explanation. I was an idiot, but – I’d never say anything like that now, and I want you to know that. Especially not about you.”

She glanced at him, and from the way his eyes shone in the near-darkness, she knew he was being sincere. “You were seriously jealous?”

“Are you pulling my leg? Of course I was! It was a fantastic paper.”

She huffed out a laugh. “Well – you’ve written some not-so-bad ones yourself.”

He stuck out a hand into the gap between them. “Truce?”

She looked at him for a moment, something in her chest squeezing tight, and then took his hand. It was warm, callused from years of digs, his fingers twining perfectly between her own. “Truce.”

For a moment, they just gazed into each other’s eyes, something strange and unspeakable growing—

And then Azriel let out a snore loud enough to wake the dead, and one of the camels bellowed and spat aggressively, and a slew of Arabic swearing filled the air. They both began to laugh softly; the tension shattered, his hand falling from her own.

He yawned. “Well, I suppose that’s my cue to sleep. If I can get any with that foghorn blaring out constantly.”

“I heard that!” Azriel yelled, and Elain still had a smile on her face when she fell asleep.

For the first time in several days, she slept deeply and contentedly, all through the night. And when she awoke…when she awoke, the first thing she became aware of was the scent, of sweat and skin, and under that, woodsmoke and something sweet and spicy – cinnamon. The second thing she became aware of was the warm male body pressed up behind hers, his arm casually slung over her waist, his hair tickling her cheek. The third thing she became aware of was that she was on his side of the tent, not the other way around, meaning that in her sleep she had – oh God.

At that moment, she became aware of a fourth thing, which was pressing insistently into her from behind. Flushing, she tried to shift away, but Lucien grunted in his sleep, pulling her more tightly in.

And…it was nice. Really nice. She could almost see why people were so desperate to get married, if it meant waking up to this every morning.

Closing her eyes – and pointedly ignoring the poking in her backside – she snuggled back into his grip, feigning sleep. For a few minutes – just a few more minutes.

***

The camel swayed and rocked beneath her, and Elain realised she had discovered a new kind of torture. With every jolt, she shifted back in the saddle, bringing her back flush against Lucien’s front. With every sway, his strong thighs squeezed, and she could quite clearly see the muscles flexing beneath his tailored (now dirty, but still beautifully made) cream-coloured trousers. Sometimes, he wanted to show them something, so he would point over her shoulder, leaning forwards to speak into her ear, his words rumbling over her skin.

And no matter how hard she tried to tell herself she hated him, he was her rival to the death, and she had to crush him in order to get to the tomb, she couldn’t stop the way her body reacted. The tightening in her skin, the quickening of her chest, the flush spreading over her that had nothing to do with the searing heat of the day.

Alas, Azriel’s camel had refused to allow a second rider, and if someone were to walk, they would slow them down too much. So she was trapped on camel-back, pressed up against her arch-rival, and…enjoying it. A great deal.

Since their truce in the tent, Lucien’s snide, rude attitude fell away entirely. Elain began to wonder if it had ever truly been him in the first place, or if it were a front that he put up to hide his true self from anyone who might go looking. Because the Lucien that emerged from beneath it was witty and charming and intelligent, darkly sarcastic but without the prior superiority. Even the camels loved him, and ceased their endless glaring and spitting when he fed them.

For a day and a half, they trekked over the endless expanse of golden sands. At night, she and Lucien shared a tent again, being very careful not to mention the position they had awoken in the previous morning, both pretending the other didn’t know about it. Thankfully, when she awoke on the second morning, she wasn’t cuddled up in his arms – but he had rolled closer to her, his foot almost touching hers, and he looked so unsettlingly young and vulnerable that her heart did something funny in her chest.

And that afternoon, they arrived: one hundred and fifty thousand paces into the rising sun from Amarna. From the Horizon of the Aten.

“Isn’t there supposed to be something here?” Azriel said dubiously, looking around.

“Don’t be gauche, Azriel,” Lucien said, at the same time as Elain said, “Don’t be so ridiculous. It wouldn’t be obvious.”

 They stood atop a ridge. Ahead of them stretched out maybe five more miles of desert; visible in the distance was a curved rock formation jutting out from the sand, trailing off into bumpy cliffs and scattered shale.

“It must be there,” Lucien breathed, squinting with his hand shading his eyes. “That’s the only feature for miles around. It must be.”

“I hate to say it, but I agree with you,” Elain murmured.

Abruptly, Lucien dismounted the camel, leaving her slightly off-balance at the sudden empty space behind her. “What are you doing?” Elain said, frowning.

“You said you would leave me a short distance from the tomb and go on ahead. You should have left me miles back, but here will do.”

Elain looked at Azriel. Azriel looked at Elain. And Lucien’s words echoed in her mind – I was extremely, embarrassingly jealous. How many times had she felt like that, staring at the work of archaeologists far more successful than herself, gut souring as she wished that just once, she could feel that?

Azriel gave a long-suffering sigh, but Elain noticed a small smile playing around his lips as he dipped his chin at her in silent acquiescence.

“Get back on the camel,” Elain said stiffly, reaching her arm down.

“What?”

“Don’t make me ask again, because I won’t.”

Wisely, he said nothing else; grabbing her hand, he hauled himself back over as the beast bent to accept him. Elain patted its neck, narrowly avoiding being bitten, and then switched it on. “Let’s go!” she called to Azriel, and then the only sound for the next five miles was the soft puff of hooves on sand and her thumping heart, praying she hadn’t just made a mistake.

Almost an hour later, they arrived at the rocky protrusion. “We’ll set up separate camps, then, shall we?” Lucien said immediately. “Work separately, and – may the best man win?”

Elain glared. “Or woman.”

He just smirked. “Or woman. If she thinks she can beat me.”

She levelled a glare at him, their competition seemingly back in full swing. “Oh, you are going down, Vanserra. You are going so down you’ll be buried under three feet of sand soon enough.”

“Already done that once, and I crawled out!” he yelled back cheerfully, sauntering over to one end of the rocks – more like cliffs, really, emerging from the golden sands like broken teeth – to poke through the rubble there.

With an irritated huff, Elain grabbed her pack and set off for the other end, Azriel in tow. When they were out of earshot, she muttered, “If you see anything that could be related to the metal we found, tell only me. We need to find out as much as we can before the solstice hits.” Which would be tomorrow, by her calculations. So they had the rest of the day to search.

And found nothing. Nothing but sand, dust, and stone. No carvings. Nothing to suggest foundations of a building or road had once been there. Slowly, they worked their way inwards, Elain on the left hand cliff and Lucien on the right, and Azriel half-heartedly helping her.

Near the evening, they had canvassed a solid two-thirds of the cliff. Elain was soaked in sweat and dust and dirt, unbearably thirsty, hungry, exhausted and in a bloody awful mood. So when Azriel announced he was going to take a piss, she didn’t even bother acknowledging him, grinding the toe of her boot down on a patch of sand frustratedly. His footsteps faded away behind her, and she let out a heavy sigh, tipping her forehead to the rock.

If it’s not here… No. No. She couldn’t accept that; she wouldn’t. The tomb would be here – they just needed the solstice. Or to work harder – if she lit a fire, perhaps she could work through the night, covering the rest of the cliff and Lucien’s side by dawn. She wouldn’t fail. She couldn’t fail. It was quite simply not an option—

Azriel shouted, a loud, bitten-off yelp, and went abruptly silent. Heart in her mouth, Elain whirled, searching for him – and saw absolutely no sign of him. Across the rocks, Lucien was also staring, glancing from left to right in confusion.

“Azriel?” Elain yelled, her heart leaping into her mouth. “Az? Az! Where are you?”

Lucien was hurtling towards her, leaping over the sands, skidding to a stop right in the centre of the rock formation. “He was just here!” he shouted. “I saw him and then he – he vanished!”

Elain sprinted towards him, fear shooting through her. Fuck the tomb, fuck the knowledge – if Azriel was hurt, if Azriel had been attacked—

Sand flew up around her as she halted, scanning the empty cliffs for anything, any sign of a struggle. “Azriel?” she said again, weakly this time.

“Down here!” came a faint voice, and relief throbbed through Elain so strongly her knees almost gave out.

Lucien saw what she, in her haze of panic, had not, dropping to his knees on the sand and scrabbling it away from where clouds of it stirred up as if it had just been disturbed. “There’s rock,” he grunted. “Azriel, where are you? What happened?”

“There’s a hole!” Az yelled back. “It’s not deep, but—” Coughing ensued. “There’s a lot of sand!”

“Can you breathe?” Elain said frantically, joining Lucien in their wild excavation.

“Yes. I – oh,” Azriel said, letting out a sound not unlike a gasp. “Oh, you two have to see this.”

Her heart vaulted somewhere outside of her body, her eyes immediately flying up to meet Lucien’s, a frisson of strange emotion passing between them – excitement, competition, anticipation. “Menes?” she said carefully.

“No,” came his voice, distant now, and her heart dropped back down into her chest. “Just – get down here. You’ll see.”

It took several moments to haul the sand and scattered stones away, but they soon revealed a bed of reddish-black rock, presumably the shallow roots of the cliffs. And in its base – a small hole yawned, wide enough for one person abreast. “We’ll need light,” Elain said. “And rope. Az, is it deep?”

He didn’t reply, which was rather ominous. Lucien stood. “I’ll get it. Don’t go down without me.”

“He said it’s not the tomb—”

“It might not be safe,” he said, interrupting her. “Do not go down without me.”

Something in his tone was so forceful she just nodded, a strange fluttering feeling rising in her stomach. Nerves, no doubt, about what they would find.

By the time he returned with supplies, she had finished excavating the area. Lucien lowered the rope down, anchoring it to a stable piece of rock, and lit a lantern, holding it between his teeth. “’M going down,” he said around the lantern, fixing her with a look that said, Don’t you even dare argue.

She didn’t dare. Slowly, Lucien shimmied down the rope; Elain peered down into the darkness, watching his light descend maybe seven or eight feet. The flame swayed and bobbed, but did not extinguish itself, meaning the air was safe. Without waiting for Lucien’s signal, she grabbed the rope and began to lower herself down.

Her feet hit solid stone, and she inhaled sharply with relief at how deliciously cool it was. She realised she stood in some sort of dark cave, the floor descending away from her into the distance. Next to her, Lucien was blinking, looking around, lantern held high.

A red glow bobbed towards them in the darkness, burning like the eye of some infernal beast, and fear speared through her for a moment until it came closer and she saw it for what it was: the glowing coils of Azriel’s cigarette-lighter, held outstretched in front of him for light. And there he was, emerging into the puddle of lamplight – dirty, dusty, but unharmed.

She flew into his arms, squeezing him tightly. He let out an oof of surprise, stiffening before hugging her back, patting her back awkwardly. Lucien made a noise somewhere between a grunt and a cough, and she pulled back sharply. “Sorry, I just – I couldn’t see you, and I thought that you – what is this place?”

It was Lucien who answered, having ventured several steps forwards into the gloom. “It’s a lake,” he said, eyes widening. “An underwater lake.”

Chapter Text

Reflecting the lamplight like a sheet of dark glass lay the water, so clear that Elain could see every grain of sand shifting across its bottom. No fish swam in its depths, no mosses grew, no insects or animals stalked the edges – it was silent, empty. Waiting.

Lucien held the lantern up higher, illuminating the majority of the cavern. The lake was fairly big, as far as underground lakes generally went; maybe three hundred yards in diameter and roughly circular, though she had no idea as to the depth. It looked no more than three or four feet deep, though she knew the utter stillness and clarity of the water likely hid its true depths, and she shivered at the thought. Around its edge ran a slender ring of sandy beach, then a lip of rock that extended back to the walls of the cavern, which curved up to form a hollow roof maybe twice Azriel’s height. Water dripped somewhere, a steady metronomic plunking, and stalagmites rose in twisted, hunchbacked forms from the rock, droplets of water slithering down their sides. Overhead, she could just see the gleam of several razor-sharp stalactites, and immediately wished she hadn’t looked.

But.

There was no sign of any tomb. Or carving, or inscription, or anything related to Menes or Ancient Egypt in the slightest. Just stone and rock and water like glass.

Lucien picked up a pebble and tossed it into the water. The splash echoed off the walls, bouncing back over and over; all three of them watched in silence as it sank and sank and sank. “It’s deep,” Lucien said.

“Yes, thanks for that, genius,” Elain muttered darkly. She wanted to kick something – would have, were she not worried about knocking down a knife-like stalactite on her head – out of frustration. There was no way this was a coincidence, and yet…where was the tomb?

Wait until the solstice, she reminded herself. Wait until tomorrow.

“I think it’s fed by a river,” Azriel said, “probably also coming from underground. There’s a slight current, and I heard water rushing when I was investigating the other side.”

“So it’s not entirely stagnant,” Lucien mused, setting down the lantern.

Elain just stared at him. “You aren’t seriously going to—”

“Do you have any idea how much I want a bath?” he said. “Do you have any idea how hard it is for me to go around every day with my hair looking like this?”

Elain thought it looked rather nice, rough and tangled, tied back with a length of leather, but she decided it probably wasn’t the right time to say so. “There could be anything in there. Any manner of parasite or infection. It could kill you—”

“Then it’s a good thing I’ll die clean, isn’t it?” Lucien said, wading into the water fully clothed. He gasped out a choked, “Oh, c-cold!” before letting out a long sigh of relief. “Definitely worth dying for.”

“Fuck it,” Azriel said, darting a guilty glance at Elain – for swearing or for what he did next, she didn’t know – and emptied his pockets onto the beach before leaping into the water.

“It’s perfectly clean,” Lucien said, his head emerging from the water, hair plastered darkly to it. “No smell, no sign of any animals or insects, the currents aren’t strong enough to be dangerous…”

“It wouldn’t be very proper,” Elain said, frowning. “If I were to bathe with two men.”

“No one has to know,” Lucien said, propping his arms on the stony lip of the pool and smirking up at her. “Besides, Azriel’s here to chaperone.”

Azriel popped up from under the water at the sound of his name. “I’m what?”

“Tell Elain she should come in.”

“Please do,” Azriel said. “If only so I don’t have to smell you anymore.”

Her eyes widened. “That is so—” Sniffing herself, she shrugged. “Fine. Point taken.” She toed off her boots and socks, letting her scarves flutter down to the beach, and emptied her pockets. Cautiously, she dipped one toe into the water.

“See?” Lucien said.

“Oh,” she sighed, utter bliss filling that one toe. “Point very much taken.” She stepped fully into the water, feet digging into ancient sands. “You can touch the bottom in there, right?”

“Can’t you swim?” he said, blinking.

She shook her head, flushing. “Never learnt. Father didn’t think it would be a useful life skill, I suppose.”

She expected him to make fun of her, but he just nodded. “It’s gradual. And I won’t let you drown.”

“How reassuring,” she muttered, but waded into the water. She couldn’t help the long moan that left her lips as she sank down into the lake, frigid water caressing her skin with long, slender fingers. “Oh, that’s good.”

Lucien’s breath hitched, and she glanced at him sharply, worried something had happened – but he was just treading water, hair flowing around him, looking at her.

Azriel cleared his throat. “I’m going to get the other lantern and the rest of the rope. Maybe we can make a proper ladder or something.” Water splashed as he swam for the beach, clambering out. “Also, I never got a chance to piss,” he added.

Elain had to physically turn her whole body to look away from Lucien, who was still staring at her. “Fine. Bring the tools, whilst you’re at it, and we can investigate properly down here.”

Azriel disappeared off into the darkness; a second later, she heard the grunt and scrape of him climbing out. Elain ducked under the water for a second, what felt like a lifetime’s worth of sand and dust and sweat lifting from her skin and washing away. When she emerged, Lucien was looking around again, standing on the bottom of the lake in the shallows. “Do you think anyone’s been here before?” he murmured, looking up at the stone ceiling.

“It doesn’t feel like it,” Elain breathed. “It feels like we might be the first people to touch these sands in three thousand years.”

“This is why I became an archaeologist.” He glanced at her, eyes shimmering in the dim light. “For exactly this reason. To step into the past; body, mind, and soul. To become the past, to feel the spirits of the ancients all around me, and to realise they’re not so different from you and I.”

Elain drifted closer to him, pressing her hand against the rock, imaging the last man or woman to have done the same, if any ever had. “It makes me feel insignificant, but in a way that is more marvellous than I can put words to.”

“It makes me feel significant,” Lucien said. “For so many thousands of years, our species has built temples and pyramids and homes; painted caves and swum in them; told stories around fires, kissed their children goodnight, taken their lovers beneath the stars. It makes me feel part of the most wonderful thing in existence, the most important thing; like I can feel the love of everybody who came before me stretching back hundreds of thousands of years. I get lonely sometimes, in my life – but when I feel like this, loneliness is the furthest thing from my heart imaginable.”

Tears welled up in Elain’s eyes. “Me too,” was all she could breathe, but from the way Lucien looked down at her, she knew he understood.

She drifted closer still – and gasped, her feet suddenly slipping as the bottom of the lake dipped several inches without warning, stumbling and nearly going under. Lucien moved before she could even react, a pair of warm, callused hands bracing themselves on her waist, lifting her enough that her head stayed above the surface. Instinctively, she grabbed onto his arms, the movement pulling them very close together. “Th—thank you,” she stuttered, her cheeks heating.

“Swimming is a useful life skill to have,” he said, his voice rough and gravelly.

“I’ve not needed it until now,” she said mindlessly, unable to properly think about anything but the warmth where his hands still clutched her waist – though there was really no need – and her layers of linen clothes were thin enough that, soaked with water, she felt suddenly practically naked, his hands burning her flesh. And his breathing had deepened – God, she could even hear his heartbeat thundering – and oh, this feeling would kill her, but it was heaven.

“It’s easy. Let me show you.”

She laughed incredulously. “You’re going to teach me how to swim?”

He let go of her waist, and she abruptly tripped back down under the water, surfacing a second later with her hair in her eyes. “You brute,” she said, laughing, splashing him with water. He laughed too, a husky, melodic, beautiful sound. “Fine. Point taken.”

His hands returned to her waist. “Do you trust me?”

“Against my better judgement.”

“Is – is it alright? For me to touch you like this?”

She flushed, then nodded. One of his hands swept around to her front, splaying itself over her middle, the other paralleling the motion on her lower back, and she was very grateful for the frigid water as heat sparked through her. “When you’re ready, lean forward. I’ll hold you up. You won’t go under.”

Slowly, she leaned into his grip, his hand shifting slightly closer to her chest to keep her balanced as her toes left the sandy floor. Water lapped up into her face, and she strained to keep her head above the surface, instinct driving her to paddle her legs.

“Don’t tense up,” he said, his voice rough. “Relax, and you’ll float.” His thumb swept in a lazy arc over her back. “Just relax.”

She tried her best, and realised that she was, indeed, floating – with his assistance, anyway. “Good,” he murmured. “Now, close your legs together.”

Oh, God. Heat flooded her cheeks, and she was very glad Azriel wasn’t nearby to overhear. “Like this?”

“Yes; good. Then draw your knees up to your chest and propel your legs backwards, like a frog.”

She managed it, rather clumsily, laughing softly. “I feel silly.”

“You’re doing well. Keep going, then we’ll add the arms.” His grip tightened around her, and she felt the heat of his body – still warm, even in the cold water – pressing against her skin.

After a few minutes of practice, she began to get the hang of it, and Lucien instructed her how to move her arms as if she was pulling the water back towards herself. It was difficult to co-ordinate both sets of limbs, but he was a surprisingly good teacher. “Have you done this before?” she asked curiously.

“I have six older brothers,” he said, “which means a remarkable amount of nieces and nephews. I’ve taught several of them.”

“Six!” Elain was shocked by that. The chances alone of having seven boys, one after another – “Your poor mother.”

“Never let her hear you say that. She’d use it against us for all of eternity,” he said, laughing. “Right. I’m going to let go of you now.”

She stiffened slightly. “Relax,” he reminded her, thumb still sweeping softly over her back. “Just a few strokes, alright?” He set her down in the shallows, where she could touch the bottom, and then moved towards the centre of the lake, deep enough that he had to tread water, opening his arms to her. “Come on. Don’t let my five-year-old nephew show you up. If you can trek a week over a desert and survive a sandstorm, I think you can swim a few strokes.”

Before she had a chance to regret it, she pushed off from the edge of the lake, swimming towards him with all she had in her. He laughed delightedly, the sound chiming off the cave interior, a smile breaking over his face like the rising sun when she reached him, gripping onto his shoulders. “I did it!”

“You did it!” he said proudly, and then proceeded to somehow – despite not having the purchase of his feet on the bottom – lift her half out of the water, spinning her around until she squealed and beat his shoulders.

As he lowered her, his eyes dropped squarely to her chest, and she realised – possibly at exactly the same moment he did – that the cream and beige linen of her blouse and vest were entirely see-through when wet, the white cups of her brassiere fully visible, the swell of her breasts emerging from within.

Clearing his throat roughly, he lowered her back into the water, eyes trained on a spot behind her, very evidently trying to pretend he hadn’t just seen her undergarments and – from the pink flush rising over his cheekbones – failing terribly.

Yet strangely, Elain didn’t feel the humiliation or self-consciousness that she would if any other man – hell, any other person, full stop – had seen her in that state of undress. Lucien, for all his snark and bluster, was a good man, a properly decent man. A man that she might, in another life, have liked to call a friend. Maybe even more than a friend.

So why not this life? said a little voice in the back of her head.

“You’re not nearly as horrible as you made me believe,” she said softly, her hands curling softly over his shoulders, a lock of hair straying across her fingers.

He shifted, perhaps unconsciously, moving them closer together. “Neither are you.”

“Think how different things could have been all these years,” she continued. “If you hadn’t been an idiot, we could have – we could have worked together. We could have been…close.” She cringed internally – close? What did that even mean?

He didn’t seem to care. “We still could,” he said hopefully. “If we find the tomb tomorrow…maybe we can share the knowledge. And the paper, afterwards…”

“Co-authors?”

He smiled. “I’ll even let you be first author.”

“Do you think we will find the tomb?” she said, anxiously picking at the seam of his shirt. “Do you think we will be able to get the knowledge – let alone share it?”

“I’ve believed it all my life,” he said, shrugging. “I don’t see any reason to waver from that now.”

“Together, then.”

His hands slid to her waist. “Together.”

“I’m glad for this trip,” she added. “I’m glad I got to see – who you really are. I hope that after this, we can be…”

“Friends?” he finished, his tone almost…bitter?

“Hm.” His grip on her waist was tightening, and she discovered that, without realising it, she had hooked her arms almost all the way over his shoulders, pulling them close together. This close, she could see every little detail in his face, the golden flecks in his light eye shimmering in the dim lamplight, the rough stubble coating his sharp jaw, the water-dark hair spilling over his shoulders—

“Elain,” he said roughly, and oh, he was looking at her lips. Maybe lower, maybe trying to see what was visible beneath the water. She shifted closer still, her leg brushing his own, her entire body turning molten at what she felt pressing against her hip bone—

His breath hitched, his hands tightening and relaxing, tightening and relaxing on the sides of her waist. “Elain,” he whispered, and her name sounded like a song in his mouth, like the answer to all her prayers, as precious and delicate as a lotus blossom.

She was breathing hard, she realised, the distance between them closing and closing, slowly, too slowly – and then boots thumped on stone, something clattering in the distance. “Sorry for the delay!” Azriel yelled. “Got the lamps, though!”

They sprang apart, only Elain’s new-found swimming skills keeping her from going under. Suddenly shivering, she made for the beach. “Don’t look,” she called back to Azriel. “I’m getting out!”

“Here.” Fabric rustled; he tossed down a dry set of clothes, turning his back. “Thought you might need them.”

Water splashed, presumably Lucien also turning his back, though Elain couldn’t help but feel like his eyes were boring into her as she rapidly dressed and made for the surface – as if she could escape the burning, tightening desire that his touch and gaze and breath had awakened inside her. As if she would ever be able to escape it.

***

Elain woke a little while before dawn, Lucien snoring softly next to her. She had already been asleep when he’d crawled into their tent, snatches of hazy, desert-night conversation with Azriel drifting into her dreams. Now, the sight of him sleeping, lips parted, hair fluttering over his cheek with each shallow breath, sent a physical jolt of pain through her heart.

Oh, she thought.

She must have made a noise, because Lucien’s eyes fluttered open, sleepily at first, then sparking to life as they found her own. “Good morning,” he whispered, voice quiet in the still morning air, heat already beginning to gather inside the tent as the black outside lightened to a deep blue-grey, the moon softly setting. “Couldn’t sleep?”

She shook her head. “What if there’s nothing? What if we can’t find the tomb? What if it’s all for nothing?”

He just looked at her, gently pushing himself upright. Perhaps out of politeness, he had worn a shirt to sleep; now, part-unbuttoned, the collar fell open, revealing a sliver of elegant bronzed shoulder. A gentle smile tugged at the corner of his mouth as his eyes darted over her face. “It hasn’t been for nothing,” he breathed.

Oh, she thought again.

Perhaps she was still asleep, and dreaming, because something compelled her to reach out towards him, smoothing his sleep-mussed hair back from his face. His eyelashes fluttered as her fingertips traced his jaw, rubbing against several days’ worth of stubble, brushing over his lips. “I should warn you, I have terribly bad breath right now,” he whispered unevenly.

She laughed rather indelicately. “I think by this point in the trip, we all do.” She reached out with her other hand now, cupping his face. “You should know I still think you’re the most annoying man on the planet.”

“I wouldn’t have it any other way.” His eyes darkened, his face turning just enough to brush a kiss over her hand. The touch sent molten shivers through her, and she had the sensation that the sand was giving way beneath her, sending her tumbling down into an entirely new world where nothing would be the same again.

She shuffled closer, only a few inches of space between them now. His eyes dropped to her lips and stayed there, both of them breathing fast. “Go on, then,” she said softly, and he gathered her in his arms and kissed her.

The kiss destroyed her, tore her in half, cracked her open down the middle; from the shreds of herself blossomed something new, something infinitely more beautiful and wonderful. She wound her arms around him, tangling her fingers through his hair, and kissed and kissed and kissed him until she was gasping for breath. Only then did he pull back to trail his lips over her jaw and cheek and ear, pulling her into his lap and holding her against him as he mapped every inch of her neck. She could have kissed him forever – did kiss him for what must have been at least an hour, her lips swollen and chin scratched from his beard, but she just couldn’t stop. Only when the first rays of dawn broke over the cliff face, bathing their tent in a warm golden glow, did they stop, and only then because they had to.

“You two!” Azriel was shouting.

Elain pulled back in alarm, hand flying up to cover her mouth. Lucien buried his head in her neck, shoulders shaking with laughter.

“Yes?” she called, hoping her voice remained steady as Lucien started doing something very pleasant to the side of her neck.

“The sun’s almost up! Don’t you think we should get down there?”

“Coming, Az!”

She forcibly disentangled herself from Lucien, who tugged at her miserably, throwing a proper shirt on over her vest and running a comb through her hair with minimal effect. Nothing to be done about the bruises already blooming on her neck and collarbone, or the redness of her lips and chin, other than put on her hat and scarves and hope Azriel didn’t see them.

He handed her some crackers and a canteen of water as she left the tent. “Don’t think I don’t know what you were doing in there,” he whispered, as they went over to their packs. Elain nearly choked on a cracker, but he just clapped her on the shoulder. “Nice one, Archeron.”

“Now is not the time,” she said, washing down her meagre breakfast with slightly sandy warm water. “We have to be in work mode now, Azriel.”

“Did you tell him about the metal?”

She blinked. “No. I completely forgot.”

“I already brought it – and all the tools we’ll need – down there. If you still want to beat him – now’s our chance.”

She bit her lip, looking back towards the tent. Lucien emerged, stretching, his hair a riot of colour in the dim early-morning light. He saw her looking and winked, his face lighting up. Mutely, she shook her head. “We’ll go all three together, or not at all.”

Azriel gave a low whistle. “You’ve changed your tune.”

“Shut up,” she muttered gruffly.

Down in the cave, she scoured the walls for anything. “It’s so dark,” she sighed. “Even with the lantern, it’s so hard to tell if there is anything.”

“The papyrus said the day of the long sun, right?” Lucien said. “So there must be some feature about today that makes it different from any other day.”

“The position of the sun,” she murmured. “All through history, we’ve built things with the sun in mind. But it was especially important for those who imparted a particular religious significance to it.”

“Like Stonehenge, in England,” Lucien suggested. “Apparently, on the solstice, the stones are perfectly aligned with the rising sun.”

“Exactly.” She sighed, looking up and down. The water looked back, sparkling, taunting her.

Azriel made a soft huh sound. “Maybe I’m seeing things,” he said quietly, “but is it…getting lighter in here?”

She looked at the water again. Sparkling. As if something more than the dim candlelight was reflecting from it.

“What the—” Lucien broke off, swearing loudly and clapping his hands over his eyes. Elain let out a squeal of joy.

“Light,” Azriel murmured.

Streaming in through the ceiling in one bright ray, a spear of molten gold, was sunlight. The sun had finally risen beyond the cliffs, and now glanced off some near-invisible chink in the ceiling in a way it had not the previous day. Perfectly aligned.

The cavern was illuminated in bright golden light, and Elain blinked several times, her eyes adjusting. Then… “What is it falling on?” she breathed. The ray of light split and spread out as it speared through the darkness, landing, puddle-like, on the wall closest to her. Nothing was immediately visible, but—

“Get me my trowel, quick,” she gasped out, bounding over to it; an instant later, Azriel was pressing her tools into her hand.

Frantically, she scraped away at the wall. What had looked, in the dim light, to be solid rock, she now realised was a softer layer of damp silts, packed into some kind of depression. “It’s a…circle?” Lucien said, leaning over her to brush away dirt. “Or…”

“A sun disk,” she murmured. Indeed, the ray of sunlight now filled the circular socket on the wall, turning it into a molten gold piece. “Azriel, do you have the…?”

“Here.” He passed her the metal disc, still wrapped in her scarf.

“What is that?” Lucien said.

She cut a sidelong glance at him. “You didn’t expect me to give up all my secrets, did you, Vanserra?”

For once in his life, he was speechless, which she took great satisfaction from as she fitted the metal piece into its place – a perfect fit. “Twist it,” Azriel suggested, and she did so, gripping the looped handle with both hands and rotating it in its socket.

Something clunked loudly. There was a long moment of silence, and then—

“Get back to the surface,” Azriel said, grabbing her by the arm and yanking her away.

She was about to protest, when she felt what he had sensed – a tremor passing through the earth beneath them, as if the desert was heaving a long breath. “Quick!” Azriel dragged her to the rope ladder, and she needed no encouragement to scramble up and out into the bright light of day, Lucien and Azriel on her heels.

The tremor stilled. She moved back from the cliffs, scanning the rock formation for any changes, the men doing the same. There was another long – endless – moment of silence, fear and anticipation and desperation replacing the blood in her veins—

“Merciful Allah,” was the only thing Azriel had time to say before the entire cliff split in half.

Lucien dived in front of her, shielding her with his body – but there was no need. With an almighty, world-shaking groan, both halves of the cliff fell neatly to either side, like a stone tapped at a weak point with a chisel. Huge clouds of sand and dust flew up, and Elain barely got her scarf over her face in time before she was blinded by it.

Finally, the world stilled. They crouched there for several minutes, waiting for the dust to settle, coughing sand from their throats and mouths.

Elain was the first to rise, lowering her scarf. For a split-second, her dream flashed through her mind – the shimmering heat of the desert, the golden temple rising from within, the sacred knowledge filling her soul – and then she beheld what awaited them.

“It’s smaller than I expected,” Azriel said from behind her. Neither she nor Lucien paid him any notice. Tears filled Elain’s eyes, cutting paths in the dust coating her cheeks.

“It’s Menes,” she breathed. “It’s the tomb. It’s real.”

Protruding from the desert in front of them was a temple, hewn of a creamy golden sandstone. It was on the small side, compared to some of the tombs excavated in the Valley, but the craftsmanship was utterly exquisite. Rows of pillars held up a limestone-topped roof, elaborate carvings decorating every visible inch of stone, and flanking the shadowy open entryway were two vast statues – one male, one female, both with sun-disks instead of heads.

Lucien made a breathy, strangled noise. “We made it. We really – we found it, Elain, we did it!”

She swayed slightly, praying she wouldn’t faint, and brushed the tears from her cheeks. “I’m going in.”

“Wait,” Azriel said. “We need to check—”

“I’m going in,” was all she could repeat, drifting towards the gaping, beckoning darkness of the temple-tomb’s interior as if in a dream.

In a few quick steps, Lucien caught up to her, taking her hand in his own. “Together,” he said softly.

“Together.”

Armed with lanterns and tools, they made their way cautiously inside. The interior was a long, dark hall, its floor polished white stone. Everywhere gleamed gold – gilded carvings, paintings, hundreds of artefacts – golden and shining and beautiful. There would be time – time to excavate it all, to return it to a museum – but not yet.

If it came down to it…would she share the knowledge with Lucien? Would they even be able to share it?

The hall ended in a flight of steps, leading down into a black void beneath. Elain dangled her lantern down there – good; the air was safe.

She didn’t even need to say anything. Leaving Azriel staring at a solid gold statuette, she and Lucien descended the steps. Her heart thundered so loudly she could barely hear her own footsteps, her fingers tingling, her vision sparkling at its periphery. Her entire professional career – all leading to this one moment.

I was right. I was right. I was right!

They emerged into a small chamber. The decorations were thick on the walls here – no longer the standard funeral scenes and Book of the Dead stuff she’d already noticed above, but strings of hieroglyphics – no, she realised. Hieratic, the short-hand, cursive form of hieroglyphics. As if it had been painted onto the walls in a hurry. As if it were some kind of…message.

All thoughts of that eddied from her mind when she saw the vast stone box at the back of the chamber. A ray of light fell directly on it, punching through a pin-prick hole in the ceiling; under where the light pooled was another circular socket.

“I think – it’s in here. What we’ve been looking for,” she breathed, setting the metal plaque – the key – down in its lock.

She glanced at Lucien. He wasn’t even looking at the chest: he was staring at her. A series of strange expressions contorted his face, and then he nodded once, sharp and decisive. “I want you to have it.”

“Wh—what? I thought we were sharing it?”

“If we can’t share it, it’s yours,” he said roughly. “You deserve it far more than I ever did or could. This is your mission, your find – your reward.” She opened her mouth to argue, then closed it again. The look in his eyes…his usual stubbornness burned there, perhaps even stronger than usual. He would not be made to change his mind.

She nodded slowly. “Help me open it, at least.”

Putting down the lantern, he set his hands over hers on the key’s handle. Together, they turned it, some strange, long-forgotten inner mechanism clicking open. Together, sweating and panting, they hauled the stone slab covering the top of the box – sarcophagus? she thought, hopefully – away and onto the floor beside it. Together, they peered in.

Elain let out a small, broken noise. “I don’t understand.”

Inside the box lay two mummies, poorly preserved – it did not smell pleasant – and nothing else. The bodies appeared to have been bound with their hands by their sides, and laid together so closely their hands were touching. And on their faces – death-masks, plain painted wood, preserved by whatever freak of nature had kept the rest of the tomb so completely intact. One male. One female.

“Two mummies?” she murmured. “But where is the—” Where is the knowledge? That vast cupped disk, filling with sunlight in a golden spill, understanding of the universe overtaking every fibre of her being…it wasn’t there. There was nothing there.

Lucien leaned forward, barely breathing. “There’s an inscription,” he said softly, running a finger over it as he translated. “Here sleeps Menes, High Priest of Akhenaten, and his—” He stumbled over the words for a moment. “And his heart, Meritankhaten, Beloved Life of the Aten.” Lucien glanced up at Elain. “It’s – it’s his wife.”

“But there’s no – there’s no knowledge,” she said, her chest heaving. “There’s – it’s—”

Lucien turned to the inscriptions on the walls of the chamber, sweat trickling down his brow. There was a long silence. “Read this,” he said finally, his voice very small.

Not knowing what else to do, she did.

“It’s a story,” she breathed, running her hand over the wall. “Meritankhaten was a princess – a priestess?”

“Both,” he said. “A minor princess, sent to serve the Aten, to be kept in a temple, to see nobody but the sun, to love nothing but the sun.”

“To be pure,” Elain finished, taking over from where he was reading. “And yet…she encountered Menes. High Priest, sworn to serve his Pharaoh and God and nobody else.”

“They fell in love.”

“They defied their families and religions and duties. They defied everything they stood for. And they were cursed for it. The Aten brought down its fury in a ray of light and struck their souls from their body, and yet—”

“Do you see this symbol?”

“Yes; the cartouche…” She bit her lip. “It’s as if someone was writing Akhenaten and then had to strike it out and change it.”

“Akhenaten killed them,” Lucien said, realisation dawning on them both at the same time. “Not the god, but the king. He had them killed for going against his orders and then pretended it was his false god that did it.”

Bit by bit, Elain translated the last few lines of text. “We – that must be the builders, or whoever made this place – were to cast them into the desert to let the sand strip their bones. But instead, we laid them in a hidden temple, becoming a monument not to a god we do not worship, but to the love that will endure forever. We seal them beneath the sands, to sleep and be forgotten; we spread rumours to hide what we have done, though we know we shall be killed for it. May their souls live on forever in the Afterlife.”

Her knees gave out and she tumbled to the ground, grasping the lip of the sarcophagus to keep herself half-upright.

“But he – he was killed because he knew too much of their God,” she breathed. “He came too close to the Aten.”

“The Priestess of the Aten,” Lucien corrected, steadying her with a hand on her shoulder.

“So the knowledge…” She gazed into the sarcophagus, into the little bundles that were all that remained of Menes and his beloved. A few amulets had been hastily tucked into their bandages; her gaze snagged on one now, a golden circle, shining in the dim light, polished enough to show a reflection.

Her own face gazed back at her, pale and wide-eyed, Lucien pressed in next her, looking not into the sarcophagus but at her, concern stamped into the lines of his face.

“I don’t think there is any knowledge,” he said softly, “beyond this.” He gestured at the mummies’ touching hands. “He gave up everything for her, and she for him. I think the only knowledge in this tomb is – is love.”

Pivoting swiftly, Elain buried her head in his chest and began to cry.

***

Some time later, Azriel emerged into the chamber, interrupting them. “What’s wrong?” he said, frantically looking around for a threat.

Dimly, Elain was aware of Lucien talking to him in hushed tones, explaining what had happened, but her head was a blur. All that work – for nothing.

Or…or was it? Pulling back a little, she looked up at Lucien, taking in the gentle beauty of his face, his tangled hair, his dusty cheeks, his smoky spicy smell. Was it for nothing? Perhaps…perhaps she had been brought here for a reason. Perhaps whoever tugged the strings of the universe, whoever had brought Menes and Meritankhaten together, had also pulled her and Lucien together, here and now. Had brought her from her small, lonely, loveless life to here, to behold the power that true love possessed. Love, the tomb seemed to say, is the most sacred thing in the universe. Not knowledge, not power, not money – love.

“…don’t think this place is stable,” Azriel was saying. “At all. I keep feeling mini-shakes. I was digging up top and I think – I think this whole place is rigged to fall back down under the sands.”

Elain dried her face. “Show me,” she said – her first words in a while, and Lucien started with surprise.

Gathering her tools, Azriel led her back to the upper level. “Here,” he said gently. “I don’t know many hieroglyphs beyond what you’ve taught me, but there’s another socket here, and from the carvings…”

“Return to the sands; remain hidden forever,” Elain translated numbly.

“Then we need to decide what we’re bringing with us,” Azriel said. “The gold, or the bodies – or I could go back, get a team to come and properly extract this stuff—”

She shook her head. “No,” she said quietly.

“No?”

She ran her hand over the walls of the tomb. “They could only be together in death. Let us not tear them apart once again.”

Lucien just nodded. “They’ve slept, at peace, for three thousand years. Let’s give them three thousand more.”

Azriel looked ready to argue, but Elain didn’t give him a chance to. She slotted the metal disk into its final socket and gave it one last twist.

Immediately, the ground began to shake once more, the stones around them grinding and crumbling. “Run!” Azriel shouted, breaking into a sprint, hurrying them along.

Elain raced after him, narrowly dodging a falling piece of rubble – and tripped over her hem, hitting the stone floor hard enough to knock the breath from her lungs. The next thing she knew, strong arms were hefting her into the air, Lucien practically flinging her onto his shoulder, carrying her out of the collapsing tomb and into the golden desert beyond.

By the time they reached the safety of their tent and camels, nothing remained of the Tomb of Menes but dust and sand and a vast pile of broken cliff-rubble.

***

The ride back to Al-Amarnah was long, hot, and quiet. The three of them barely spoke to each other, minds reeling with everything that had happened. Only the press of Lucien’s body against hers – in the saddle, and in the tent at night – kept her tethered to herself. She felt adrift, weak, useless, and only as the desert began to give way to rocks and then fertile soil and then the lush green bank of the Nile did she begin to come back to herself.

With the last of the money, they booked themselves an inn for the night – Elain and Lucien posing as husband and wife – and passage back up to Alexandria the next morning.

"Farrouk Al-Sarraj is going to be really pissed, isn’t he?” Azriel said eventually, the three of them sitting around a table outside the inn, mugs of beer in front of them.

Elain was silent for a second – and then burst out laughing, utterly hysterical and unable to stop it. “Have you gone mad?” Azriel said dubiously.

“I’m – sorry—” she gasped, wiping a tear. “It’s just all so ridiculous!”

Lucien was the next to start laughing, and even Azriel’s sullen face cracked into a rare smile. Leaning her head on Lucien’s shoulder, Elain sighed, drying her eyes, suddenly feeling about two tonnes lighter. Lucien wrapped his arm around her, his grip warm and tender, and a sun rose in her chest.

“In answer to your question,” Elain said when she could breathe, “yes. I am more fired than anyone has ever been in the history of fired.”

“But,” Lucien said, “that hardly matters. Because as it happens, I think the Department of Antiquities could do with a talent like yours. In fact, I think I could rather do with a partner on my next project.”

“And if they don’t let me?” she said.

“We don’t need them, anyway.” He dropped a kiss to the top of her head. “Look at what we accomplished by ourselves—”

“Hey!” Azriel interjected.

“By ourselves and Azriel. Who, I’m sure, would also be gainfully employed by the Department if he so wished—”

“He does not.”

“Or not,” Lucien continued, “but that is to say – when has being told you can’t do something ever stopped you, Elain Archeron?”

She smiled up at him, and then leaned in to kiss him, to the utter disgust of Azriel, who stomped off muttering something about going to bed – though she saw a gleam of pride and happiness in his eye, however hard he tried to conceal it.

“Perhaps we should go to bed too,” Lucien said against her lips.

She swatted him lightly. “That would not be proper. We aren’t married!”

He just winked. “We aren’t married yet.”

She scowled at him. “If we ever get married, you should know I’m going to propose to you first.”

“It’s a competition, now, is it?”

“There will never be a day when I’m not trying to beat you, Lucien Vanserra,” she said matter-of-factly.

“Perhaps I shall fall so in love with you I start letting you win,” he suggested.

Outraged at the suggestion, she swatted him again. “If you ever do that, I shall feed you to the crocodiles.”

His laugh rumbled through her as his arms came around her. “Fighting talk indeed, Elain.” He kissed her again.

“Maybe we should go to bed,” she said, breathless.

He scooped her up into his arms, much to the strange stares of the other patrons and her utter humiliation, making for the stairs. “I think that’s an excellent idea.”

As day gave way to night, the desert sprawled out away from them, golden and ancient and harsh in its beauty. Far away, buried under sands and rocks and water, two lovers lay, sleeping, as entwined in death as they had wished to be in life. The stars gazed down, those sparkling eyes that had watched the lovers meet, embrace, the world forever changed; the eyes that had watched the long years in-between, passing in a whisper of time; the eyes that had watched the two young archaeologists meet each other and hate each other, meet each other again and fall in love. Another pair in the hundreds of millions that had done so throughout all of human history, that would continue to do so even when nobody remembered them, for there was nothing else in the world more sacred and precious.

But the stars would never tell, and neither would the sands. They tangled together, the night sky and the desert: dunes rising and falling like waves, moonlight glimmering like a secret smile, illuminating the vast golden expanse as it always had and always would.