Amon, no longer laughing, cradled me even tighter against his chest and we landed with a heavy thump on a pile of sand. Though Amon took the brunt of the fall, he kept me locked in his arms as we rolled down, finally sliding to a stop with Amon’s body ending up on top of mine, pressing me into the stony floor.
Amon lifted his head. “Are you harmed, Lily?”
“I don’t think so…,” I answered, my words trailing off as his concerned expression was replaced by something else.
I could feel a delicious sort of torment rise within him, tempting him.
His gaze dropped to my mouth, and my breath caught. I was in a dark, dusty tomb, spiderwebs in my hair, sand in my boots, with sunburned, sweaty skin, but none of these things affected me more than the drop-dead gorgeous sun god who was currently hovering over me.
I wasn’t sure if what I felt was real or if it was a side effect of our connection, but I knew without a doubt that he wanted to kiss me. And Egyptian heaven help me, I wanted him to. But despite the fact that I was vividly imagining the press of his lips against mine, and the likelihood that he knew that I wanted to kiss him, he closed his eyes, murmured some soft words in his native language, and shifted, moving quickly off and away from me.
For some reason Amon was keeping me at a distance. I wasn’t one of those girls who lacked self-confidence, but his behavior was disconcerting enough to make me second-guess my girlish charms. Maybe there was more to our connection than he was sharing.
I was determined not to allow any more self-doubt to color my emotional response, but Amon’s repeated rejection left me feeling vulnerable and exposed.
As he turned his back to me and began studying the markings on the walls, I sighed, grabbed my bag, and murmured, “I was wrong. I think my ego was bruised in the fall.”
Amon gave me a sidelong glance and frowned, turning back to the hieroglyphs without responding and effectively shutting me out. Sighing again, I chose a passage as far as the light from his body would allow. Finding more carvings, I called out to him, “I think I found something.”
“What does it look like?” Amon replied. “Describe what you see.”
Squinting in the light, I studied the form and answered, “The first part is the sun, moon, and stars, like you talked about. Then there’s a guy with a weird-shaped head. I’ve never seen an animal that looked like that before. It may be a horse? Anyway, the guy looks like he’s pushing a rock. Hold on. There are little symbols on the rock.”
Tracing my finger over the carved grooves wasn’t enough to help me make them out. Leaning closer, I gently blew on the stone and a light powdery dust rose in the air, leaving the symbols beneath more clear. “Wait a minute,” I mumbled to myself as I backtracked a few paces. Sure enough, the large block I’d recently passed had the exact same carvings that the horse-faced god was pushing. Just to be sure, I dusted it off with my hand, took out a pen from my bag, and copied the markings onto my hand.
From around the corner, Amon asked, “What did you find, Lily?” his voice echoing in the large space.
“Just practice some patience for a few seconds and I’ll tell you!” I hollered over my shoulder as I checked the symbols on my hand against the god’s stone box. It was a match.
Pleased with my discovery, I headed back to the large stone and began pushing, wedging my boots into the grooves of the floor for leverage. As I struggled with the stubborn stone, I began describing what I’d found to Amon.
“It’s in the shape of a stone roughly the size of your chest, and it’s sticking out from the wall. The god on the picture is pushing, so I figure that’s the thing to do.”
“Yes, but what are the symbols you see?” Amon called from around the corner.
Gasping, I tried pushing the heavy stone to the right and then to the left, but the thing wouldn’t budge. Turning around, I braced my back against it and pushed with my legs. As I panted, I explained, “There are four pictures. Top left is a full moon with horizontal lines through it. Bottom left is a rectangle. Top right is a sun half over the horizon, and bottom right”—I grunted and laughed in relief as I felt the stone shift slightly—“is a pair of walking legs.”
“Walking legs?”
“You know, like a stick figure with two feet pointing in one direction.”
The stone moved several inches, so I adjusted my feet, bit my lip, and pushed again just as Amon shouted, “Lily! Stop!”
“Amon? What’s wrong?” I called out, but then the stone gave way and settled flush with the wall. Almost immediately the ground began to shake. A large section of it shifted and the side farthest from me gave way altogether, creating a slide that I was at the top of, with nothing to hold on to. My scream echoed as I slid down the rock. I scrambled frantically for purchase, vainly attempting to find a handhold to stop my descent.
Beneath me a gaping black pit waited hungrily to devour me, but right as I went over the edge there was a jerk on my arm that wrenched my shoulder painfully. My body banged against the side of the pit and I continued to look for something to grasp.
“Lily!” Amon cried out. “Hold on to me!”
“I’m slipping!” I knew that any second I was going to fall. As I swung wildly, I glanced down once again. Now that Amon’s light was making things more visible, I cried out with desperation when I saw sharp spears and jagged rocks waiting below.
If I fell I would be impaled and would likely be joining the Valley of the Kings tomb as its newest resident. Morbidly, I wondered if I’d get my own chamber and number. I’d be KV64, or maybe KV65, unless, of course, they didn’t discover me for a few thousand years. For all I knew I could end up as KV6565.
Amon’s frantic murmuring didn’t serve to make me feel any more confident in my chances, and then, to make matters worse, the dirt wall I was trying to cling to with my other hand started vibrating. Clouds of sand began to burst forth and swirl around me.
“Sandstorm not helping!” I cried out, choking and coughing, but a moment later the sand hardened, forming blocks that stuck out from the wall like steps.
“Climb on!” Amon hollered as he swung my body closer to the steps. Thankfully, I was able to clamber onto one of the narrow ledges he’d created, and I felt safe enough to tell him he could let go.
Amon scooted closer to the edge. “No,” he pronounced. “I will hold on to you as you climb.”
I carefully ascended the steps one by one, my back pressed against the crumbling dirt wall. Finally, I neared the top and Amon reached out, grabbed me under the arms, and yanked me up the rest of the way. He tugged me so hard that I lost my footing and collapsed against him. Immediately, I tried to back away, but Amon wasn’t having it. His arms locked around me in a tight grip.
“I almost lost you,” he said against my shoulder.
Twining my arms around his neck, I half smiled, half grimaced, the throbbing in my arm preventing me from truly enjoying the experience. “Thanks for saving me,” I murmured.
Amon lifted his head. “Did you think I would not?”
“No. I was pretty sure you would. After all, it’s not like there are a bunch of organ donors in these caverns.”
Amon frowned. “I did not save you merely for your organs, Young Lily.”
“No?” I teased, lifting my chin in a challenge. “Then is there perhaps another reason that you don’t want me to die an untimely death?”
“There are multiple reasons.”
“Such as?”
He shifted back, as he considered what to say. Finally, he offered, “You are…” He brushed his thumb against my cheek to remove a smear of dirt.
“Yes?” I pressed.
“You are…an excellent scribe,” he finally said.
I dropped my hands. “Really? Is that all I’m going to get? It’s nice to know my penmanship”—I spat the word—“is so important to you.” I folded my arms across my chest, wincing at the movement, and stared him down.
Amon ran his hand up my arm to my hurt shoulder, and I
hissed as he cupped it with his palm. After a quick chant he poured enough warmth into the muscle to rival a heating pad. Still, he avoided eye contact. “Lily, I do not wish to talk about this.”
“I don’t get it. You run so hot and cold. I don’t understand what’s wrong. Am I not beautiful enough?”
Amon gave me an astounded look. “Why would you believe this?”
“I don’t know. You keep pushing me away. What else am I supposed to think?”
Amon’s other hand moved up my arm to cup my uninjured shoulder. “Lily, I can honestly tell you that I have never in my long life come across a creature as beguiling as you. You are as fresh and as lovely as a budding flower kissed by the dew of a golden morning. I breathe you in and am filled with the taste of sunshine, life, and hope. You are much more than beautiful. You are…temptation personified.”
An expression of shock instantly crossed his face as he muttered, “That is not what I meant to say. Please forget those words.”
“Um, unlikely. Unless they were false.”
Amon pursed his perfect lips and groaned. “The gifts I have received have made deception very…difficult for me. It was the truth.”
“Then I really don’t understand. If you like me that much, why won’t you kiss me?”
Amon sighed, removing his hands when I indicated with a nod that my shoulder felt better, and turned away, placing his palms against the stone I’d moved. He let out a sad, sardonic laugh. “This is why,” he said, nodding at the stone.
Taking a step closer, I peered at the offending rock. “What does it say?” I asked softly.
Ignoring my question, he moved around it carefully and held out his arm, beckoning me to hold on to him. When I’d crossed safely, he kept my hand in his, and after checking the hieroglyph map I’d found, continued down the passageway, leading me along. As we turned a corner, he said, without looking back, “Death. The symbols on the stone mean death.”
“If someone really wanted to kill you, why would they advertise it?”
“The carving on the wall showing the sun, moon, and stars is very old, but the etching on the stone and the rock in the carving was recently created.”
“So someone was watching for you.”
“Someone was warning us of a trap. And someone else created it. I cannot discern how long ago that image was added. It could have been fairly recently, or it could have been created a hundred years ago.”
Pondering his words, I followed him silently as we further explored the mysterious Egyptian tomb. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to fully process what was going on between Amon and me because we soon came upon a new section of the underground labyrinth that needed to be solved.
I asked Amon if we were likely to come across any more booby traps, and after I explained what they were, he told me that Egyptian tombs usually came with curses, not snares for the unsuspecting. Still, he seemed very uncomfortable with the idea of moving ahead, though he believed that the path we were peering down was indeed the correct one.
Tentatively, he led me forward, insisting on going first, but then suddenly, he froze. “Do not move, Lily,” he whispered.
“What is it?” I asked quietly.
Reaching forward, Amon touched his finger to the air right in front of him and blood immediately pooled at his fingertip. “It is a deadly wire, created to sever the neck of the hapless person wandering the tombs. And this time, there was no warning.”
We backed up slowly while Amon whispered some words. Sand rose from the tomb floor and swirled around his hands. The grains coalesced and solidified, forming a deadly-looking weapon—a knife. The blade burned with Amon’s white light.
“Stand back,” Amon warned.
Using the glowing knife, he slashed the wire. As he did so, it recoiled violently, like a whip, delivering a stinging slash to his cheek.
Amon cut another wire and another, his mood darkening with each discovery. After we finally made it to the end of the tunnel, consulted some hieroglyphs, and turned down another corridor, Amon finally began to relax.
Because he let his guard down, I did, too, and it came as quite a shock to both of us when I tripped over a slightly elevated stone and the walls began to shake.
“Amon?” I called out. “Is that you?”
“I am not causing this disturbance,” he said as I stumbled against him. The walls shifted, and before we could get our bearings, we were trapped inside a stone box. It became deathly quiet. Amon attempted to use his knife to pry open the sealed edges, but he couldn’t find a place to insert the blade. He stirred the sand around us and sent it scurrying into the corners searching for cracks. The sand just hovered in little clouds, not finding a way out.
I sat on the ground and dusted my hands off on my jeans. “So much for your Egyptians-don’t-use-booby-traps theory.”
Amon frowned. “It does not make sense. The tombs were never protected in this manner before.”
“Maybe your so-called guardians who are missing in action set up the traps to protect you and your brothers so that you wouldn’t be discovered.”
“Maybe.”
“In that case they should have set up a few more, since you were found anyway.” I sighed. “Can you sandstorm our way out?”
Shaking his head, Amon explained, “If the sand cannot find a crack in this prison, then we cannot escape it in that manner, either.”
Sitting down next to me, Amon dusted off his hands and held them up in the air, chanting different spells. When one didn’t work, he tried another, and another. It was around the third or fourth spell that I noticed the light coming from his skin was waning. It actually flickered.
“What’s wrong with your light?” I asked.
“I am not sure,” he said as he lifted a hand to study it. “Let me try something.”
A ball of flame materialized in Amon’s palm, but it soon sputtered and went out. “I do not understand why this is happening,” he said.
“Wait a minute. You can create fire with your hands?”
Amon nodded.
“You are full of surprises,” I said in awe.
I took a few deep breaths and felt a niggling pain in the bottom of my lungs. “I…think we’re running out of oxygen,” I said, the pain in my chest now becoming a dull ache. “You need it to maintain your flame, and it’s also affecting the light from your body.”
Amon took my hand and switched off his light. Darkness deeper than that of a grave surrounded us. Desperate to figure a way out, I ran my free hand over the wall closest to me. “Try to see if there is an indentation or a trigger,” I suggested to Amon. “In the mummy movies there is always a way out, we just have to find it.” Amon worked on the wall opposite mine and then we moved on to the other two. When giving the same treatment to the floor, I came across a depression in the stone. “What do you think this is?” I asked.
Making his way over to me, Amon slid his hand on top of mine until he felt the stone I’d found. “I am not sure,” he said.
It felt like a hollowed-out curve, similar to a mold for a sphere, but no matter how we pushed or beat on it, nothing happened. I sat down heavily with my back against a wall. Amon slid down next to me. “So this is it, then?” I said, more to the tomb than to Amon or myself. “We’re just going to suffocate in here? What’s next? The walls will crush us?”
Not a minute later, there was a terrible grinding noise. Amon stood to investigate.
“You’ve got to be kidding me!” I cried.
“The ceiling is lowering, Lily,” Amon said. “Stay as low to the floor as possible.”
“What are you going to do?” I asked, my voice trembling with the conviction that whatever he tried wouldn’t be enough to save us.
“I will attempt to brace it,” he panted.
“You’ll be crushed,” I wheezed.
“I do not know what else to do.”
Little by little the ceiling dropped, and as strong as Amon was, there was no stopping its progress.
&nbs
p; As I sat there cowering, hoping Amon would pull a secret sun-god power out of his bag of tricks to save us, I contemplated my impending death. At that moment, I realized my entire life had amounted to essentially being trapped inside a box. How fitting that I was now going to die in one.
Despite the fact that I liked to believe that I was a regular girl who longed for an adventure with a mysterious man, the truth was, I was about as far away from being a regular girl as I could be. I’d been conditioned like a pampered poodle to be utterly obedient and go only so far as my diamond-studded leash allowed. If the world got too crazy, I’d tremble at my parents’ feet and let them make everything all better. I was a coward.
This little adventure with Amon was so far outside my comfort zone that I didn’t even know who I was anymore. My outer shell had been ripped away and what was left was a raw, scared girl. My confidence, the marrow that made up who I was, and my grasp of what was real and what was imaginary had been ripped apart. The foundation at the core of Lilliana Young had crumbled and only broken rubble remained.
The irony was that as I waited for death, I realized that I was now finally living. I was experiencing the world. I’d run away from home, developed a serious crush on a guy who didn’t feel the same, and traveled to the desert. I was in serious need of a shower, said whatever acerbic comments came to mind, and couldn’t care less about the consequences of my actions.
And now, here I was, nearing death, and I felt…glad.
Being with Amon was the most invigorating thing that had ever happened to me and if I was to meet my end here, then at least I could say that I had truly experienced living in all its sweaty, uncomfortable, harsh, heartbroken, scary, sometimes deadly, but always thrilling glory.
If I was going to leave this earth, I would do it with a smile on my face and consider it a fitting end to the ultimate adventure. “All things considered, I think I’d rather suffocate than be crushed,” I wheezed. “How about you?”
Amon panted. “Why do you speak like this?”
“I don’t know. Just accepting the inevitable, I guess. Please stop straining yourself,” I pleaded as Amon grunted and staggered beneath the ceiling.