Chapter 22
Celia Sinclair’s head hurt like hell.
It felt as if she’d tried to swallow a jar full of cotton balls and failed, so someone took a mallet to her temple to tamp down the rest. Every breath was a muffled pound.
The back of her throat burned. Her eyelids were stones.
What in the world did I drink? Her mind scrambled for answers, coming up with cups of hibiscus tea and metallic-tasting canteen water.
No glittering parties. Not even a nice bottle of red with dinner—
She hadn’t eaten dinner.
Or lunch.
Celia hadn’t even made it back to the hotel.
Oh shit. She could hear herself trying to garble this oath, this echo of everything she’d felt on the street, but her tongue was too dry.
What came out instead was a monstrous groan.
Celia did manage to crack her eyes open.
This is most definitely not the Winter Palace.
The walls were rough stone, with a reddish hue.
The ceiling was low, and made of similar material.
In fact, Celia realized as she pushed herself off the ground, it was the exact same rock.
She was sitting inside a cave… and a dark one at that.
A lamp burned in the corner, but the flame was too small to see more than a few feet away.
Celia’s hand flew to the base of her throat.
Her stomach twisted.
The sunbeam locket was gone. So was the key.
The lighter? She pawed quickly through the pockets of her safari belt. All empty. The Tunguska knife. The ankhs. That cute water-squirting hippopotamus… Everything had been taken…
Celia was in no mood to appreciate this irony. “Shit.”
This time, the word actually managed to take shape.
It didn’t echo, the way she’d expected it to, which meant that the caves went on well past the oil lamp.
Who was waiting for her, out there in the dark?
Hugo? She wouldn’t put it past that rapacious prick to kidnap her for leverage, after what had happened in the pyramid.
Not that she would make much of a difference to Ezra.
Did you even stop to think about what you might ruin?
Celia ran her hand along the empty belt once more.
You’re acting just like them. She had gone and spoiled everything, hadn’t she?
Acting like an absolute fool… a hypocrite.
The exact sort of person she’d sworn never to become.
This wasn’t the time to wallow, though. She could sit and feel sorry for herself after she’d found a way out of here.
She drew close to the light. By the looks of it, this oil lamp probably wouldn’t be granting her any wishes… Not even Hugo would be stupid enough to leave Celia with a magical relic after kidnapping her.
Yet, he had left her unbound.
She gripped the lamp by its handle and held it up, getting a better view of the chamber.
Someone had laid out a mat of woven reeds so Celia wouldn’t wake up on hard earth.
Her poor spine didn’t appreciate the difference, but it showed that her captors were thoughtful.
They’d even left a jug of water in the corner.
Celia drank as much as she needed to wash down that cotton ball feeling, before smashing the pot against the cave wall.
Clay shards landed everywhere. A few were large enough to resemble knives.
Celia picked up the two sharpest, sliding one into her utility belt and gripping the other in her lampless hand.
Time to escape.
She walked the cave’s outer edges until a tunnel rose into view. The air here wasn’t nearly as musty as it had been in the fourth pyramid. In fact, Celia could’ve sworn she felt a slight breeze. Even the lamp sputtered. She gripped her pottery shard tight and pushed forward.
There were several yards of darkness.
Then, light.
It wasn’t the hazy glow of her oil lamp.
It was… colorful. Cool silvers and blues danced across the stone, joined by an orange gold that could have passed for molten lava.
Dim voices danced through the opening. Celia pressed her back to the stone, listening.
The people in the chamber beyond were speaking Arabic…
No.
Not Arabic. That language Celia would have at least recognized—thanks to a sip of tea from her father’s flask in the long ago.
He’d let her taste countless dialects: chai-spice Hindi; grassy, green Japanese; and Russian, bold and black enough to stain one’s teeth.
If Celia had kept drinking these regularly, she could have held a conversation in any country. A hi and bye, at the very least.
But this language…
Listening to their ebb and flow of words, Celia understood that she’d never heard them spoken before. There was no tea that could taste this way: like the rush of the Nile, hiding all those crocodiles in its depths, while the blue sky painted over the rest of its waters.
This language was old.
Old enough to be forgotten by mere magicians.
Hugo and Everett hadn’t kidnapped her.
Celia had been taken by Ageless Ones.
The lamp in her hand started to tremble. So did the pottery shard. Little good that would do against immortals who’d carved out their own hearts…
“Ah, I believe our guest has awoken.”
It took Celia a moment, in her shock, to register that the conversation had switched to English.
For her. They knew she stood here. Listening.
She watched in horror as the colorful lights grew stronger, pasting her shadow to the craggy wall.
A woman appeared in the opening, her masque making the rest of the cave feel as if it had suddenly been plunged underwater.
“Would you care to join us, Miss Sinclair?” The Sanct’s accent was flawless. Posh. The kind you could only get if you were raised with a silver spoon.
Or if you’d had a hearty dose of the Order’s special tea.
“Not really,” Celia exhaled.
Something about the woman’s expression made Celia pause, look more closely at her face. There were lines there. Lines where she’d smiled, sobbed, laughed… and there was silver threading through her hair. Ordinary strands. The kind you earned by aging…
“I apologize for the manner of our introduction—”
“You mean kidnapping me?”
“Yes.” The Sanct nodded.
“You’d better have a damn good reason if you expect me to forgive you.” Celia tightened her grip around the pottery shard, and then thought better of it. She’d seen what Sancts could do. She lowered the makeshift knife. “So start explaining.”
The woman turned, and as the airy sleeves of her pleated linen gown parted, Celia saw feathers. They were blue and gold—the same colors as the wings painted on the tomb of Ezra’s mother…
“You—” She caught herself, not quite sure what she’d intended to say next.
You’re supposed to be dead.
Your son is out there, mourning, searching…
You found me instead.
“I’ve had many names over the years, but you may call me Nour,” the woman said over her shoulder.
So it was all true… yet none of it made sense.
Why was Celia here spelunking with Ezra’s very not-dead mother?
They’d stepped into a section of cave that felt more like a cathedral.
Ceilings yawned high, built for catching prayers—and there were even giant stone pillars lining the chamber.
By some feat of magic or engineering, they’d been smoothed out of the rust-red stone and painted with bright colors at the base.
More colors spilled from the masques of several Sancts who were sitting in a circle in the center of the space.
Celia counted three—two men and one other woman.
All of them were dressed in clothes that the Bright Young Things of Britain would kill for.
Sheer linen tunics. Jeweled sandals. Amulets and gold armbands.
Only… on them, these things did not look gaudy.
They fit in a way Celia couldn’t find words to convey.
Both of the men were shaved bald. No silver hairs there.
No wrinkles either.
Only their eyes—dark and twinkling—betrayed any hint of their true age.
As Celia crept forward, her shadow hugging oh-so-close to her heels, she had the feeling that she was intruding. Which was ridiculous, of course. They were the ones who’d knocked her unconscious and dragged her here!
Nour paused at the edge of this gathering and leveled Celia with her gaze. “Your friends are in grave danger, Miss Sinclair.”
“Would you care to elaborate?”
“Sit. Please.”
Celia eyed the mat warily. It looked as if the others were settled in for a meal, yet there were no plates set out. “I know about Ageless Ones. My father told me stories…”
“You’re safe here. For now, at least.” Nour took her own seat and folded her hands across her lap. Blue-gold feathers crisscrossed out of her arms. “But I am afraid that Ezra has been deceived. If he finds what he is seeking, it will end poorly for every single one of us.”
Celia’s heart fluttered to the roof of her mouth as she came to a careful crouch—enough to be eye level with the Sancts, but also ready to run. Her shadow fluttered too, against their masque light. “The black cloud, you mean… That’s caused by the ivory tusk?”
She could feel the Ageless Ones’ eyes on her. She chose to focus on Nour’s wrinkles; laugh lines twinkled around her brown gaze. These tightened as she shook her head and reached into her linen gown.
The wand was smaller than the pyramid murals had made it out to be.
“But…” Celia frowned. The ivory tusk had been their best guess. “What is Ezra searching for, then?”
“A door that should be left locked,” murmured an Ageless One seated to her left.
“Why all the secrets and shadows? The treasure hunt…? Why choose to let your own son believe you’re dead?”
Nour rose to her feet and walked to the nearest column. Watery light danced from her masque. She tapped the stone with her wand, and painted colors swirled, pulling themselves into new pictures. Palm trees and pyramids and falcons. The sun rising and setting.