He reached out and gently took her hand, his thumb tracing slow circles over her knuckles. “You have two days to rest and calculate. When the moon is right, we’ll face the feint together.”
They spent the afternoon preparing: Eden staring at the scroll and making notes, Max repairing a broken tent pole, and Amir and the others resting. As dusk began to settle, Eden climbed a nearby dune with her telescope, aligning it by instinct and memory.
She had to be right. She just had to be.
As darkness descended, the stars revealed themselves. Max joined her on the dune, arms crossed against the sudden cold that nightfall always brought.
“How are you doing?” he asked, his voice low.
Eden didn’t look away from the eyepiece. “Tired, but I think a few days of rest will restore me.” She found the hunter’s constellation and traced its arc across the sky. “I used to think the ancients worshipped the stars out of ignorance. Now I think it was reverence. They knew how to read what was written in the dark.”
Max was silent, watching her. Then, his hand dropped, and his fingers closed over her shoulder, squeezing gently. “Amir is restless. And I don’t like the look of that far horizon.”
Eden followed his gaze. A small, indistinct plume of dust, far to the north, was moving laterally across the desert. It was faint, but unmistakable. The same cold, sick feeling of fear returned, tighter this time.
“They’re tracking us,” she breathed. “They knew we’d stop for water here.”
Max immediately slid down the dune. “We need to pull back into the deepest shadow of the palms. Amir, can you tell which route they’re on?”
Amir came quickly, his movements economical and swift. He watched the moving dust cloud for a long moment, then turned to Max. “They travel the upper track. The road to Siwa. They are not coming into Bahariya. Not tonight.”
Max waited, his tension palpable, until the plume’s trajectory was confirmed to be taking it away from the oasis. He let out a long, heavy sigh. “Two scares in two days. This desert is wearing down my nerves.”
He turned back to Eden, his eyes dark with the exhaustion of constant vigilance. “Come on. Let’s go to our tent.” He offered his hand, and she took it, her fingers gripping his tightly.
In their tent, they simply fell together. Max didn’t even bother to take off his trousers; he just blew out the lantern and pulled Eden immediately into his arms. Eden pressed her face into his neck, inhaling the familiar, comforting scent of him.
“Just hold me, Max,” she whispered against his skin.
“I’m here,” he mumbled, his voice already heavy with sleep, and she fell instantly into a deep, dreamless rest, assured that nothing—not bandits, not fear, and not the desert—could touch her while she was in his arms.
Chapter Nineteen
The two days they spent at the oasis were a much-needed break from the rigor of the trail. By night, Max and Eden slept heavily, cocooned in the comforting silence of their shared tent, allowing the deep, dreamless rest that only comes from absolute safety. By day, Eden worked—spreading out the papyrus, cross-referencing maps, and re-calculating the angular position of the star-chart, while Max ensured the six Bedouin crewmen, under Amir’s direction, were watered, fed, and prepared to move at a moment’s notice.
They rose before dawn on the third morning, the air still and thick with the profound silence of the deep desert. The new moon had vanished, and the sky was a canvas of impossible black velvet.
Eden shivered in her greatcoat, the pre-dawn cold a stark reminder of the desert’s extremes. She felt sick with a potent mix of excitement and existential dread. If her interpretation of the ancient Coptic script was wrong—if the entire trek had been based on a mistranslation—Max would not gloat, but she would have failed him as well as herself, squandering their resources and their time.
Max crouched nearby, expertly coaxing a pile of camel dung into a small fire. He was already dressed in his layered expedition gear, his posture alert, but his eyes were soft when he looked at her.
“Nervous?” he asked, his voice a low, encouraging rumble.
“Terrified,” she admitted, wrapping her arms tightly around herself. She never used the wordterrifiedlightly. “I am asking you and half a dozen men to ride into a featureless valley based on a riddle about stars and a single, ambiguous word in a dead language. I don’t want to let anyone down.”
