“Come on, I’ll carry you.”
“I’m completely fine, thank you,” she replies.
“It’s getting darker; the rest of us can see in the dark,” Carter points out.
“I’m not going to be carried,” she bristles.
Uncle Liam smiles at her. “Your mother used to want to be carried so her shoes didn’t get ruined. It was mostly Alejandro who gave in to her whims.”
I smile at that. Mama has told me this story.
“Well, I’m not my mother. Thank you, Dante, but no. I’m fine.”
“I heard there’s a fine line between pride and stupidity-”
“Not now, Theo.” Uncle Liam frowns at him. Theo shrugs.
“Just saying, if she’s worn out now, when the time comes to use her powers, she’ll be too exhausted, rendering her useless on this mission.” Theo has a point.
“Fine,” Heaven says as she looks at Dante. “But I don’t like piggybacks.”
“Sure, so arms or shoulders?” he asks with a smirk.
She tilts her head for a moment. “Shoulders.”
“Goliath is fucking huge,” Theo adds. “I mean, those shoulders could carry-”
“You know what I wonder? Why some people can’t shut up?” Allie interrupts.
“Quiet, both of you,” Uncle Liam says. “Pay attention to yoursurroundings.”
Jayce falls into step beside me, his hand brushing mine. “You alright?” he asks quietly.
I look up at him and nod, squeezing his hand, but I don’t want him to let go. He doesn’t, lacing his hand with mine as he guides me through the night instead.
I smile softly. I can’t live without him. I’m determined to find a way to fix the mess I’ve made.
“How do you feel about getting ever closer to the answer we’re here for?” I ask, wanting to kiss him. Even though we can’t really be open since Uncle Liam is here, he’s always finding ways to fleetingly touch, caress, or simply be near me. It wasn’t anywhere near how much I wanted, but I cherished these fleeting moments.
“I don’t know. If I knew what the answer was regarding, that might help.” He smiles faintly, his green eyes looking into mine. My heart skips a beat, and I smile back from behind my mask. He’s only been wearing his when the wind picks up.
“Well, I have a good feeling about it,” I respond. “Maybe it’s the relics that each ruler is given.”
“Maybe, I don’t know – Kataleya’s came to her.”
“True, but maybe yours are in this temple, safely placed like those of the Solaris King’s?” Once again, Helios comes to mind, and my heart sinks with unease and anger, but I push it away as Jayce nods.
“That’s a possibility.”
Seventeen hours later,we’ve reached our destination. There’s no sign of a sphinx at the moment, but when Jayce stopped and pointed to two distant peaks of sand, no one doubted him.
We are now spread out in pairs, trying to find something, anything that might be a sign of a sphinx once standing here.
“There’s never been anything about a sphinx here. I wonder if, with time, it was destroyed,” Artemis, who is my partner, says, as we scan the ground carefully.
“That’s a possibility,” I agree. This area is flat and completely full of sand. I’ve removed my cloak as we search. Dante found something in the sand earlier, and so did Ahren, but both turned out to simply be large rocks.
The guardsmen just stand facing outwards, as the rest of us search.
