Max met Eden’s eyes, and in his gaze, she saw that he had been ready to risk everything—even the expedition—to protect her. Gratitude swelled within her.
They pressed on, the sun now beating down with renewed cruelty. The false alarm had burned up their mental reserves, and the next hours were a blur of sand, sweat, and silence. Everymuscle screamed in protest, and Eden didn’t know how she managed to cling to her camel.
They camped that night in a low depression, half-hidden by a cluster of jagged rocks. Amir prepared a meager meal while Max pitched the tent and unrolled the bedding.
They ate in silence. Eden didn’t bother to inspect the surrounding rocks, too tired to even think of the scroll. She simply wanted the blessed oblivion of sleep.
Once they finally entered the tent, she pressed against Max’s side, feeling the comforting solidity of his hip against hers.
“I’m so tired, Max,” she whispered, not hiding it this time.
“I know, my love,” he replied, wrapping an arm around her and pulling her flush against his chest. “I am too.”
They did not speak again. Max blew out the lantern, and they slipped beneath the blankets fully clothed, too worn out for anything but necessary warmth. Eden burrowed into his side, feeling the soft rhythm of his heartbeat beneath her ear.
She fell asleep instantly, her last conscious thought the profound gratitude that, after the day’s anxiety, the only thing touching her was Max. She knew, with a certainty that erased all fear and doubt, that she was exactly where she belonged.
The two days following their scare were perhaps the hardest yet. The momentary rush of adrenaline from the false alarm had vanished, replaced by a consuming fatigue. They rode in silence, the desert demanding every ounce of their focus. Yet, every night, sharing the tent restored them. Eden slept as she hadn’t slept in years, the steady weight of Max’s arm across her middle acting as an anchor in the darkness.
Then, late in the afternoon of the seventh day, the air changed. The brutal, dry heat did not diminish, but a new, subtlescent arrived on the wind. It was the scent of water, and it nearly undid Eden.
The Bahariya Oasis wasn’t the lush Garden of Eden she’d pictured as a girl reading Herodotus in her father’s study, but after days of sun-blind delirium, the small stand of date palms and the crisp surface of the spring were the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen.
Amir, his face half-shadowed by the ragged leaves of a palm, murmured something in Arabic that sounded like a prayer. Even the camels slumped into the shade, grateful for the respite.
Eden dismounted with a groan, her muscles protesting every movement. She cupped her hands into the trickling pool. The shock of the cold water made her gasp, but she didn’t hesitate; she drank deeply, then rinsed the worst of the gritty sand from her neck and wrists.
Max arrived a minute later, his sleeves rolled to the elbow, golden hair slick with sweat. He dropped his pack and knelt by the water, bringing scoop after scoop to his face. She watched him in the glassy surface: his jawline thickly stubbled, eyes narrowed as he indulged in the cool water as well. He looked up, caught her watching, and offered a soft, tired smile.
“I can’t believe we are finally here,” she told him, excitement filling her despite her fatigue.
He reached over and squeezed her hand. “You’ve done so well. Not one woman in a hundred could have done this. Hell, not many men either.”
His continued praise made her walk a little taller, made her certain that even though it had been difficult, she might actually make it through this.
They ate in the palm’s ragged shade, Amir keeping to himself, chewing dates with monkish deliberation, and the rest of the men talking quietly, the water having obviously raised their spirits as well.
When they were finished, Eden unwrapped the battered scroll case from her satchel, careful not to let the dry palm fronds brush the delicate papyrus as she laid it flat on a cloth.
Max shifted closer, his thigh brushing hers—a simple contact that felt immensely reassuring. “The moment of truth, then?” he asked softly, nodding at the scroll.
She smoothed the papyrus, letting her fingertips linger on the faded ink. “The translation is sound. It says this is the place we must wait.” She pointed to a line of looping, angular script. “This is the map. And this—” she tapped a block of Coptic, “—the key.”
Max peered over her shoulder, his breath warm on the flyaway strands of her hair. “Is everything lining up the way you thought it would?”
She felt the familiar rush of intellectual fervor, but this time it was tempered by fear, not arrogance. “Yes. The valley described is not on any of the official maps. The text says the approach is visible only on the night of the new moon. When the stars align in the form of a hunter, and his eye touches the peak of the white ridge.”
Max studied the papyrus, his expression thoughtful. “You’re betting everything on a celestial compass, Eden. What if you’ve misinterpreted the mythology?”
“That is the question that terrifies me,” she confessed, her voice barely a whisper. “But the ancient word here is too specific—it translates to ‘feint,’ or ‘illusion.’ A place that seems to exist but does not until seen from the correct vantage.” She spread out her own hand-drawn chart next to the papyrus, cross-referencing her notes. “We wait two days for the moon to vanish, then observe from that chalky rise.” She pointed to a ridge on the horizon. “The entrance will show itself as a single star—’the false sun’—at the rim of dawn.”
Amir, who Eden had assumed was resting, opened his eyes. “There is a story about this,” he said in his careful English. “A sheikh once tried to follow the stars, and when he returned, he had lost his shadow.”
Eden raised an eyebrow, a flicker of scientific skepticism welling within her. “Superstition?”
Amir smiled thinly. “Everything is superstition until it is not.”
She glanced at Max, almost crippled with worry. “Then we’ll prove it. Or disprove it.”
