Chapter 8
They stayed in the sarcophagus for several hours, until Ezra could not feel his legs—or Celia’s, despite the fact that they were wedged against his rib cage.
The light filtering through the lid’s gap began to turn a dusky purple.
He could see it gleaming off the tears on Celia’s cheeks, but the young woman stayed quiet.
The Egyptian gallery had fallen silent as well.
No more footsteps. No more back-and-forth about signet rings or the Apex.
Still, Ezra sat with his mother’s relic pressed against his chest, afraid to move, afraid that it might crumble to sand between his fingers, afraid of everything else that this small gold statue meant.
He remembered the piece. He’d stood on many a Saharan dune, watching as his mother twisted sections of the pyramid into new shapes—like some sort of puzzle box.
Nour had never explained what she was doing, but they’d always seemed to reach their destination shortly after this exercise.
Golden pyramid: guides the bearer where they need to go.
She never went into the desert without it…
Not even the very last time.
Lord Blackwood had shown up at Ezra’s doorstep nearly one week later.
The boy had been too young to question why some wealthy aamu lord wished to take him back to Britain.
Later, he would notice the striking sameness of their eyes.
But there were still so many gaps in that story…
It didn’t explain why Nour hadn’t returned.
He’d always known, in his heart of hearts, that his mother would never choose to leave him.
Just as she’d never willingly part with this pyramid.
This pyramid.
Acquired by T. Ellington.
The implications were damning. To say the least.
Ezra tried not to think on them too hard, while he was crouched in the coffin, surrounded by such darkness.
More slithered inside him, eager, but he focused on the faint give-and-take of Celia’s breath.
He would not lose himself. He would not harm her.
He would get out of this sarcophagus, go back to the Cotswolds, get a decent change of clothes and a strong cup of coffee.
That was as far as he could let his imagination wander… so his fingers moved instead, fidgeting with the pyramid’s edges. This had the same soothing effect as his companion’s breath.
“It should be safe now,” Celia murmured, wiping her cheeks. Despite these tears, she sounded sure as she nodded at the crack of light. “We should leave before the museum opens. Popping out of a sarcophagus in front of paying guests would most certainly make the news…”
Their return journey to the Cotswolds went much like their departure: climbing over garden walls and sneaking through potting sheds.
In the end, there was no need for subterfuge.
The country house was quiet. Empty champagne bottles lined the giant pyramid that dominated the dining room.
Ezra could no longer see the door to the Seek and Find.
That party was over. Several Bright Young Things had failed to make it back to their bedrooms—at least three Cleopatras were draped across settees, Biz included.
Her kohl was so badly smudged that it looked as if she’d acquired two black eyes.
At least they were shut… If she saw the blood on Ezra’s bedsheet, she’d be sure to have questions.
Celia had some too, though she waited until the door to Ezra’s bedroom was firmly shut to voice them. “What happened to your mother, Ezra?”
A dark pulse hummed through him. “I need to get dressed…”
The young woman bit her lip, glancing at the headdress that still sat on the bed.
Ezra placed Nour’s relic beside it—the piece was too twisted to be called a pyramid anymore.
Celia’s eyes narrowed at this, pointedly, as Ezra pulled some tailored pants out of the wardrobe and donned them beneath the stained toga.
It was a relief to get the ruined fabric off.
He’d never been too sensitive to others’ blood—George’s smashed skull being the exception—but he’d never really had to face his own, before this.
No scrapes. No scars. His chest was free from the bullet wounds that marked so many of the war’s survivors.
“You owe me some answers,” Celia said, still staring at the deformed pyramid.
Ezra paused, a button-down shirt limp in his hand. “Owe?”
“Yes. Owe. Your little stunt just fucked up any chance I had at getting back my inheritance—” Celia whipped around. Ice-blue eyes froze onto his shirtless form, and her cheeks turned a warm pink.
Ezra found himself flushing too. His voice felt hot in his throat. “I don’t owe you anything, Miss Sinclair. Not you, not Vincent, not Thomas fucking Ellington.” There was sharp pain in his palm, and he looked down to find that he was throttling the shirt, getting old blood on that fabric too.
The stars on Celia’s shift glinted. She didn’t back down, but her gaze had softened. “The Order hurt her… didn’t they?”
He just stood there, squeezing the garment Vincent had spent so much money on, imagining it as his father’s throat.
His father. Ezra remembered the first time he even dared to think this…
when a new Ellington family portrait had been commissioned.
Thomas, Winifred, George, and Biz had posed together in the atrium, where the light was best, while Ezra had stood to the side.
He’d been fascinated with the artist’s process—how he sketched the family first in faint lines, then filled them in bit by bit with carefully chosen colors.
It took the man quite a while to get the green of their eyes blended just right, and in the end he’d used Ezra as a reference, to avoid the distance between his subjects and his easel.
Ezra had watched as more and more white paint got mixed in with the green; just enough for a ten-year-old to understand why he was standing there. Next to the canvas, but not on it.
He didn’t even sit in the Ellingtons’ shadows.
His father’s shadow.
Even now, the word felt wrong to think, much less say. It felt as wrong as the idea of Thomas Ellington following Nour out into the desert and coming back alone…
“They hurt my father too,” Celia said, after a taut breath.
“He—he always saw the world a bit differently than the other magicians. He loved traveling to places like France and America, where magic was more free-spirited. He was open to new ideas. It was one of the reasons he let me remain Enlightened after that first trip to Paris, despite the Order’s rules.
” She bit her lip and looked down at the shirt Ezra was still throttling.
“He wanted a better future for me… and he thought he could convince the Apex to change things.”
Everything felt choked. Ezra couldn’t speak.
“He couldn’t,” Celia whispered. “The bastard cursed him.
“Mama thought he had the Spanish flu,” she went on.
“That’s what the doctors told us, but the doctors couldn’t see the things I did…
Black fingernails. Black veins crawling all the way up to his heart.
I tried everything I could think of to counter the curse the Apex placed on Papa, but none of our relics worked…
None of the other Order members came to his aid either,” she finished bitterly.
“They were too afraid to cross the Apex. I couldn’t even beg for their help, because the other magicians would have tried to erase my best memories of Papa…
” All of her shuddered. “Sometimes, I think I should have. Anything would have been better than watching him die like that… one agonizing inch at a time. That’s all I have left of him.
That and two measly necklaces. I wanted so much more.
” Celia’s voice broke at this. “And he wanted more for me.”
Ezra ached inside. He still couldn’t speak, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t be.
“In the vault, you asked me what I wanted to do with my inheritance,” the young woman went on. “My answer wasn’t entirely honest. Yes, I’m going to get my mother the hell out of England, where she’ll be safe from the Apex. Then I’m going to come back for him.”
“The most powerful magician in Britain?” Ezra managed.
“I don’t know who he is, or where he lives, or how I’ll kill the bastard,” she said, her words suddenly cold. “But I will. And I’ll tear his Order down brick by brick to make that happen. We have the same enemy, Ezra. We can help each other, but in order to do so you’re going to have to trust me.”
“Trust?” He laughed, or sobbed. These revelations felt so large.
So monumentally there—crushing his past and future into place.
“I trusted Lord Blackwood my entire life. He used to say he’d saved me from a terrible fate by bringing me to England.
Sure, he spared me a beggar’s life, but why?
” His gaze fell back on the twisted pyramid. “Why did he kill my mum?”
The stars on Celia’s headband shimmered as she shook her head. “Maybe she got too close to changing things or she just got between Lord Blackwood and that relic. These men will do anything to get what they want.”
But had Thomas Ellington really murdered his mother for a glorified compass? Ezra’s fingers trembled as he tossed the shirt onto the bed and reached for the pyramid. The gold felt warm against his palms. Malleable.
“I thought he loved me… He never said it. Never out loud, the way he did to George and Biz, but he kept on giving me those damn peppermints. He let me stay at Thornhill, even when I feared I was mad enough for an asylum… But that was because he knew. He knew I could see magic this entire time…” Metal went soft beneath Ezra’s hand.
He was throttling again—and not just that, but his fist was beginning to glow, same as it had with Everett’s amulet.
Same as it had before he woke up in a circle of dismembered soldiers.
“Miss Sinclair,” he choked out. “You should leave.”
Her head shook again. More stars glimmered. “I’m not going anywhere—”
“Run! Dammit!” His hands were shaking. More. More. He kept seeing the bodies in that trench. His mother’s too. Twisted and bleeding out in the sands she loved so much. The picture was too raw. It howled inside him. “Get out!”
The young woman stepped forward instead, and let her hands hover over his, not quite touching. “Breathe with me,” she told him.
Ezra’s lungs felt like a nest of snakes, each inhale an angry hum, each exhale a hisssss, but he managed to match her rhythm.
He focused on the way their fingers almost touched—how the glow from his skin did not quite reach hers.
With every breath in, he caught more of her perfume: violets and steel.
A strange mix, but fitting for Celia Sinclair.
She did not back down. Her head was tilted up and she stared at him with those daring eyes, so much bluer than Vincent’s could ever be…
“I know how angry you are, believe me.”
He did, this time.
“I know,” she said again. “But nothing will ever be fixed if we let ourselves break.”
Ezra released a long breath. He breathed in again and glanced down at the relic he’d been gripping, surprised to see that the statue looked like a pyramid again. Even more surprising? A small entrance had appeared at its base.
Celia gasped. “Your magic opened another door.”
Better than the alternative. Ezra pushed back thoughts of shattered corpses as he peered into the hole.
There seemed to be something wedged inside.
It reminded him of the scroll Biz had retrieved from Ramesses II’s back, only this paper looked far older.
He feared it might crumble as he tried to fish it out from the secret chamber.
“What is that?” Celia stood as close as she had before, filling his head with flowers and blades.
“I’m not sure.” The paper weighed nothing in Ezra’s palm. He almost needed tweezers to unroll it.
“Hieroglyphs!” Celia exclaimed as she leaned in to look. “Naturally.”
Ezra stared until the symbols felt carved into his retinas. A seated child. A man with a staff. River waves. A scepter. A jar. Several pyramids. And finally, stars.
“Well, what does it say?” Celia urged.
There hadn’t been a chance to hear his mother’s voice, through Rose’s amulet, but Ezra could hear her speaking now: My son. That’s what the drawing of the seated child meant. Nour had left this message for him… not Thomas Ellington or the Order he so faithfully served.
The Order that Celia Sinclair had sworn to destroy.
Ezra glanced back at the young woman, whose dark bob shadowed the sides of her face.
No, he didn’t owe her anything, but it was nice having someone who understood what it took to keep your balance in this world of tigers, treasures, and tightrope smiles.
He didn’t wobble one bit as he turned to show her the papyrus more clearly.
“It talks about a journey through the stars, to a hidden pyramid.” Ezra tapped at the small row of triangles—the final, fourth shape was bigger than the others.
His finger then moved to the drawing of the scroll beside them.
“A quest for a powerful magical artifact.”
The young woman’s breath caught.
“I think my mother wanted me to find it…”
“What kind of relic?”
“It doesn’t say—there’s just this jar and scepter.” Some said a picture was worth a thousand words, but at this moment, Ezra was inclined to disagree. “There’s no more information about where we might find the hidden pyramid either.”
Celia gave a wry smile. “Egypt, I’d assume.” She went on, “The Order has been excavating there for years, looking for anything ancient Sancts might have buried. There are magicians who’d kill for this sort of clue—”
“I know.”
“Oh. Shit.” Her cheeks burned crimson again. “Sorry.”
Ezra clenched his jaw as he rolled the scroll back into the pyramid. What did this clue lead to? And why had Lord Blackwood murdered his mother for it? If he wanted answers—and Ezra Bright was a scholar, he always wanted answers—he’d have to do more research.
“We have to go,” he said shortly, placing the pyramid in the top drawer of his wardrobe.
No way were they taking the treasure to Thornhill.