Ascending Passion

by Amanda Pillar

  He was hustled out of the way a few minutes later, so he propped himself up against the trench wall. Bits of broken pebbles and cracked rock dug into his arm, but it was better to look like he was supervising rather than standing around clueless.

  “Here.” Kayla ambled over, a notepad in one hand and a trowel in the other. She shoved the tool at him. “Go join the fun.”

  “I don’t know how.” Normally, he would have felt embarrassed at such an admission—being ignorant had been a shameful thing in his family—but honestly, when would he have ever used one?

  It’s not like Mother or Father ever thought to train me in bricklaying or excavation work. The only two things people used trowels for, apparently.

  “It’s not rocket science. Go.” Kayla turned and walked away, ass swaying in her dust-covered pants. Too bad he preferred to watch Rowan’s ass, now in a perfect viewing position as she bent down low to check out the pickaxe.

  Ugh. Not again.

  Maybe he should just have sex with her and get it out of his system. He had no idea if she felt the same damnable attraction, but he’d caught her staring at him a time or two. You’re an angel, she is bound to stare at you. You are one hundred percent more handsome than any human male she’s ever seen. And that wasn’t his ego talking—it was just fact.

  But when had he gone from admiring her body to wanting to fuck her?

  Yael hadn’t had sex with anyone who wasn’t an angel, well, ever. And he wasn’t about to break that rule now.

  “I’m going to check something.” Rowan climbed up the ladder, giving him an excellent view of her ass again.

  Just go dig some dirt.

  He was starting to feel an inkling of pity for Azrael. How had the angel managed to handle being attracted to a psychopathic cambion after being one of Heaven’s most prized warriors? It would have gone against everything he believed in.

  Hell, lusting after a human was putting a serious strain on Yael’s fortitude.

  Just get to work. He kneeled on the ground and gingerly scraped the surface with the trowel’s edge.

  “Here.” One of the workers pointed at the tool and then showed Yael how to angle it just right. “Like this. This much at a time.” The worker held his fingers a half-inch apart.

  He met the guy’s earnest brown eyes and nodded. “Thanks.” Not one to snub instruction, Yael copied the worker and moved a decent amount of soil that way.

  Nice. I rock at this.

  Naturally. He was pretty much awesome at everything, except making friends. Or keeping his parents happy. But who needed them anyway?

  “You suck at bodyguard duty,” a voice called out.

  He sighed.

  Dru.

  He stood and shaded his eyes from the sun’s glare with a hand. “What?”

  “You’re meant to be guarding her and she’s over by that sieve-thing.” Dru pointed to her right, where Rowan stood next to a wire and metal sieve, shoving it from side to side with all she was worth. Clouds of dust coated the air around her.

  “Aren’t you and Azrael both on duty?” he asked.

  “Yeah, but we didn’t agree to come here so you can scrape the ground away one inch at a time.”

  “Pfft, as if I take off that much dirt.” The other two workers looked askance at him. Okay, sure, he was a bit more enthusiastic than that.

  He’d be here for the next forty years if he went that slow.

  And if this really was the start of a staircase, then they had to find out fast. If this was Twosret’s tomb, and she was the last human to wear Heaven’s Heart…

  They had to beat Lucifer.

  Time was everything.

  “How’s progress?” Rowan had returned, even dustier than before. She stood next to Dru, whose white hair gleamed in the sunlight.

  “Getting there,” he replied. He had certainly mounded up a pile of soil near his knees, anyway.

  “Aren’t you hot?” Rowan asked him.

  “I like to think so.”

  Dru snorted. “Man, you are so hard up for compliments you will jump at anything.”

  “It’s not my fault if I happen to be ridiculously good looking.”

  “You’re ridiculous, all right,” Dru snapped.

  Rowan flushed. “No. You’re dressed in black. Both of you are.” She pointed at Dru as well. “Don’t you feel the heat?”

  “Not really, no.” He barely even sweated.

  “'iinah huna!” shouted one of the workers.

  Yael spun to look. “What did you find?”

  The worker pointed to a creamy stone slab, Yael’s pickaxe embedded within the surface. The human had traced its position through the trench. It was only three feet long and one foot wide.

  Rowan climbed back into the trench. “I think it’s a stair. But let’s keep going.”

  First thing’s first; he stepped up to yank that pickaxe out.

  He had just ripped it free when his phone buzzed. “Excuse me.” He hurried over to the edge of the trench, but when he saw the caller I.D., he decided he needed more distance.

  He jammed the cell between his shoulder and ear so he could climb up the ladder. “Raze, what’s up?” At the top of the trench, he headed for a vacant patch of land around a hundred yards away.

  Raze’s voice emerged in a rush, like he’d been breathing hard. “Dina was just here.”

  “What?” Dina? The Dina who had told him to back off, and that she was done with the Darts?

  Has she changed her mind?

  “I left the library to get a drink, and came back to see her rifling through my research. She was looking at the Mortus pictures.” Raze sounded uncharacteristically ruffled.

  “Are you hurt?” Yael asked. Raze was old and powerful, but Dina was stronger.

  “No, she saw me and just vanished.”

  “She can teleport?”

  “Apparently.”

  Seemed like that was a new skill she’d gained since being stolen from Heaven. “Do you think she saw enough of your research to know Twosret had the Heart?”

  “I can’t say. Let’s hope not.”

  “How did she get in, anyway?”

  “I had the wards keyed to all the Darts, in case she and Z found their way back to us. I never thought Dina would come here after she told you she was done with us.”

  “Change them.”

  “I’m already on it.” Raze ended the call.

  Great. So now Dina may know where the second piece of Heaven’s Heart was. Or she may not. He’d have to watch both his and Rowan’s backs if she was coming for them.

  Yael turned to face the trench. Finding the tomb was even more important now than it had been before.

  Twosret, here we come.

  Chapter 32

  Rowan was bone tired. She’d been working almost non-stop for days since they found the top of the staircase. When she wasn’t on the sieve, she was in the trench evening the walls out with her trowel or helping move soil with a small hand axe.

  Yael and the workers had moved a lot of earth since they’d discovered the first stair, and they were nearing what she hoped was the bottom of the flight. So far, her sieving had turned up nothing. Not even a single bead. She hoped that was a sign that the tomb was untouched, rather than this was a stairway to nowhere.

  Because no one had seemed too excited by her find. Dr. Mustafa had just grunted when she’d shown him the discovery, then promptly returned to Nefertiti’s tomb like nothing had happened. Even Luke hadn’t replied to any of the text messages she’d sent, and she’d been sending daily updates.

  No one cares.

  No one except her, the workers, and Yael. But even the workers had to be reminded each morning to come to Rowan’s trench, rather than head off for the opened tomb, like they’d forgotten what they were supposed to be doing.

  Maybe it was because the G.P.R. had said there weren’t any chambers here; the other archaeologists probably thoug
h it was an unfinished staircase to a tomb that had never been built. But she tried to stay more positive. She had to.

  She was risking her reputation on this.

  No doubt Gran would have an opinion on the matter, but it wasn’t like Rowan was keeping her grandparent up to date. She was still annoyed that Gran had foisted Yael on her without even asking her first—even though she now liked, even appreciated, Yael’s presence.

  I probably wouldn’t have agreed had she asked.

  But that wasn’t the point.

  Rowan wasn’t a child anymore, and she didn’t need to answer to her grandparent for every life decision she made.

  Like running off to the other side of the world and working on an excavation with little to no notice. There was no argument that she’d been running away from Eric’s death and his mother’s nasty words; she’d needed something to take her mind away, to focus on other things. But it wasn’t like she’d gone off to backpack around Antarctica or something equally stupid and impossible. She’d gone to work.

  But it was strange, how it felt like Eric had been gone over a year, when it had only been a month and a half. She didn’t think of him quite as often now, and she’d changed her lock screen image to one of a stray cat sunbathing on the dig site. It had felt callous at the time, but she hadn’t been able to stand the guilt she felt every time she looked at her phone. At his face.

  Guilt for what, though? Finding Yael attractive?

  No, it wasn’t that simple. Watching Azrael and Dru, she’d come to realize that her relationship with Eric had been…practical. There hadn’t been the bursts of human, the sizzling looks, the simple desire to be in each other’s company.

  It had been bland.

  She winced and wished she was a better person. If she’d been able to replace the image of Eric on her phone so soon after he’d died, and she’d snuggled up next to Yael for an entire night, had she truly loved her boyfriend?

  Don’t be ridiculous. Of course you loved him.

  But sometimes, during the dark nights when she lay awake in her room, Yael resting on her floor, she questioned if she had loved the idea of Eric and what he represented, more than Eric himself. How he supported her career, how considerate he was, and how his goals complimented her own. He would give her the stable family she had always dreamed of; no talk of magic, no money-making schemes.

  Plus, Gran had never approved of him, either.

  Perhaps that was also part of the attraction. That she’d chosen a perfectly good man who no one could realistically object to, but her Gran had still found a way to be unhappy with the match. He’s not like us. He’s not like you. You are too good for him.

  She’d only said those words once, but they’d stuck in Rowan’s mind. Mostly because she had hated the idea of she and Gran being ‘us’. Like Rowan wasn’t normal.

  I am not a witch.

  It had become a mantra during her teenage years, surrounded by fun-loving and happy-go-lucky cousins who’d discussed the spells they’d cast, the supposed results that couldn’t be empirically measured, and the next magics they had planned.

  She’d loved them—still did. Her cousins had been the siblings she’d never had, but she’d thought they’d grow out of their mistaken beliefs, that they’d come to understand science was the answer. They hadn’t. They’d become lawyers, doctors, detectives, administration officers, but they’d all maintained their beliefs, even if they’d hidden them to the public. It had created a distance between them, one that she hadn’t been able to bridge in their adult years.

  And despite her irritation at their ways, she too had buckled to tradition. She’d helped the family business as well, out of a sense of obligation. Gran had raised her, and Rowan owed her.

  That was it.

  She flinched. Put in those terms, Rowan had been the asshole. Not her family. She hadn’t been able to accept them; she had wanted them to be something else. They’d just loved her and taken her for who she was, had smiled through her rants that they should stop the charade, and hugged her after.

  Perhaps they really do believe in magic.

  And she’d been the one naysaying their belief system, like it was trivial and it meant nothing. God, she should understand now—especially after the attack by those strange cult members—that belief was a powerful thing. It motivated people like nothing else could, bar love.

  Just because you don’t believe in God or magic or whatever doesn’t mean you have to force your ideals on those who do.

  She wanted freedom to not believe in religion, and they wanted the freedom to follow their spirituality. She was as bad as a religious zealot who’d brook no dissent, just the other way around.

  I need to say sorry to them. It wouldn’t be easy; Rowan wasn’t good at apologies. But she’d suck up her pride and do it. As for her gran, that would be harder, because Rowan honestly thought Gran didn’t believe everything she sold, and that she did it to make money.

  I’ve probably still been a brat to her.

  Of course, her gran wasn’t exempt from bad behavior; it was just Rowan was coming to see that the only thing she could rely on was her family.

  And Yael.

  Yeah, well, she could rely on him for as long as her grandmother paid his bill. Once that was done, he’d leave her. She rubbed her sternum. The idea of his walking away actually caused a pang in her chest.

  What am I doing?

  Standing there daydreaming about her life and mistakes when she should be watching her workers and Yael, as they labored to reveal the final stair. She moved to the edge of her trench—which she’d labeled T1 in the hope it led to Twosret’s tomb entrance. Already they had discovered the top of a vertical stone slab that might be a doorway, but they needed to clear all the debris in front of it before they could be sure.

  Since it was only noon, they might be able to clear the trench out around the frame by the evening. Tomorrow, they may even be able to open the tomb door, if there was one.

  Why don’t I feel more excited?

  This could be it—everything she’d been working for, and what Luke had been so keen to find. Instead, she felt a strange trepidation, like the discovery was going to change everything, but in a bad way.

  Maybe it isn’t Twosret at all. It could be a completely undocumented monarch, which challenges the King Lists and Egypt’s entire chronology.

  It would be career-changing, that was for sure, especially because introducing new concepts to her peers was often met with scorn and derision. There was a certain subset of archaeologists who did not like the established status quo to be challenged. And this would be a challenge.

  “We’ve probably got another three more hours of digging, and we’ll expose the door.” Yael said from within the trench.

  She stepped back. “Only three hours?”

  “We made good time today.” He wiped a hand over his brow—even though he hadn’t sweated a drop—and left a smear of dirt behind.

  She turned back into the trench; the staircase was exposed, all but for a small section of unexcavated soil next to it. They had already exposed eighty percent of a stone slab that could serve as a potential doorway.

  KV65. They’d found it.

  Rowan hurried to the ladder and clambered down into the pit.

  At the base of the staircase, there was only just enough room for her to stand, with the unexcavated dirt coming to her knees. Leaning over it, she peered at the stone slab, and the very faint hieroglyphs apparent there.

  She didn’t remember seeing any the previous day, and she’d checked.

  Frowning, her eyes traced the symbols. There was no royal cartouche, so it didn’t indicate who was buried in the tomb. Although it did say the beloved of the gods and child of A’aru was housed within.

  Child of A’aru?

  “This doesn’t make sense,” Rowan whispered.

  “What doesn’t?”

  Yael stood near her, on the stair above
hers, peering over her shoulder.

  “That the tomb belongs to the child of A’aru.”

  “The Field of Reeds.”

  She blinked. And she’d done it again. Forgotten he could read ancient Egyptian. Any why the hell can he read hieroglyphics? It was a question he had yet to answer.

  “How can there be a child of A’aru?” A child of the gods, yes. That was a common phrase. But this didn’t make sense.

  “Wasn’t A’aru the Egyptian equivalent of Heaven?” Yael asked.

  “Yes, but—”

  “So, someone who is beloved of the gods and a child of Heaven lies within.” Something like excitement burned in his eyes.

  “That is a bit of a stretch, to assume that.”

  “Not all things can be translated literally,” he replied. “Context is key.”

  Normally she’d be the one arguing the same. But it doesn’t make sense.

  Shaking her head, she turned to the next group of text. It just got even stranger. There was an Old Kingdom curse here. The Egyptians had stopped leaving curses on tombs by the seventeenth dynasty. Instead, they left warnings—which people mistook for spells or prayers.

  Yael gave a low whistle. “Check it out. If you enter the tomb unapproved, you’ll be killed by crocodiles, attacked by hippos, torn apart by hyenas and be bitten by snakes.”

  That wasn’t the literal translation, but his summary was accurate.

  Not something to actually be worried about, but it concerned her that this may not be Twosret’s tomb. There was nothing here that identified it as hers, but they wouldn’t necessarily advertise the person’s identity, especially since this wasn’t Twosret’s original resting place, but her relocated tomb. Her followers would have wanted her identity to remain a secret, to prevent her successor from defacing the burial site.

  “Let’s get rid of the rest of this dirt, and I can record it in preparation for tomorrow,” Rowan said, a strange kind of worry-slash-excitement building within her.

  Because she fully intended to open this door.