I give back her phone, hoping I’ve accidentally lopped off their heads in the photo.
“So how many tombs are in this necropolis?” Anya asks.
“There were thirty-nine,” Wyatt says. “This is the fortieth.”
“Do they all look the same?”
“Pretty much. Some have more than one burial chamber, for a wife and husband.”
“How cozy.” Anya touches the wall of the burial chamber. “I wonder how many slaves it took to build a necropolis. At least as many as built the pyramids, I’m sure.”
“Shockingly, it was the exact same number of slaves,” I say. “Zero.” I fold my arms. “I’m sure your grandfather told you this, but the pyramids were built by workers who were paid a wage, or who were paying off their taxes. There is absolutely no evidence of foreign captives working on the pyramids. Also, the pyramids were feats of engineering and detail, like how the corners line up to point to the Benben stone that was the focus of solar worship in Heliopolis. For that level of skill, you wanted an expert. I mean, isn’t that why you picked Wyatt?”
“Dawn—” he murmurs, a warning.
“Oh. Sorry. I meanDr. Armstrong.” I turn to Wyatt. “Hold your own damn flashlight.” I thrust my headlamp into his hands and climb up the rope ladder, running out of the tomb before anyone can watch me fall apart.
—
IRACE SOfast into thewadithat the wind screams in my ears, and I cannot hear Wyatt calling my name until he catches up to me. He is stronger and faster than I am; I can’t outdistance him—and even if I could, where would I go? So when he grasps my arm, I stop. “Why didn’t you tell me?” I ask.
“I thought you knew.” He lets go, falling back a step. “You knew her name.”
“I thoughtshewas ahe.”
“Why does it matter?” Wyatt counters. “You’remarried.”
“I know that,” I snap.
“Then you also know I don’t owe you an explanation about what I’ve been doing for the past fifteen bloody years,” he yells.
I want to hit him. I want to embrace him. “But you let me think that—” I swallow the rest of my sentence, kicking the sand at my feet.
Wyatt’s fingers curl under my chin, lifting my face so that he can see my expression. “Think what?” he says, so gently it breaks me.
“Think that I meant something to you.”
“You did,” Wyatt replies. “Youdo,Olive.”
His mouth crashes down on mine, and even as I grab his arms hard enough to hurt, I am pulling him closer. His hands spear into my hair, knocking off my hat, loosening my braid. The wind whirls in a frenzy, like we have manifested the weather.
When we draw away from each other, breathless and charged, Wyatt touches his forehead against mine. “You vanished,” he says, raw. “When you didn’t write me back, I tried to find you. But it was like you had dropped off the face of the earth.”
Dawn McDowell had. She became Mrs. Brian Edelstein.
“Do you know why I was so determined to find Djehutynakht’s tomb?”
“Yes,” I say, and he laughs.
“Okay, fair point. But also because I thought if the discovery was big enough, you’d hear about it.”
“And do what?”
“I don’t know.” He meets my gaze. “Did you tell him about me?”
I shake my head.
“Why not?”
