Nik smiled. “They had plenty of smaller artifacts, too. Gold, stone carvings, pottery. The Museum of Anthropology in New Mexico City was built to transfer all the artifacts from the old city’s museums. The collection was said to be excellent. I suspect a lot of small stuff made it off-planet, as we do see examples turn up from time to time.”
She tilted her head. “You’re after something bigger?”
“There were lots of stone carvings. I’m hoping the ones that were too big to transport easily might have survived.”
“But you’re after something in particular.”
Looked like she knew him quite well, too. “Yes. The Sun Stone.”
“Sun Stone? I haven’t heard of it.”
“It was an intricately-carved Aztec calendar stone. It was described as showing many different eras and how they ended. It was supposed to predict the end of the world in the Terran year 2012.”
“Guess they got the dates wrong,” Nera said. “2012 was long before the Great Terran War.”
“Right. It was also said to be three-and-a-half meters in diameter.”
“That’s big. And it’s made of solid stone?”
“Yes. It would weigh several tons. We have the tech to move it easily now, but back then, it would have been harder for them to transport stuff like that without a lot of organization and equipment.” And he really, really hoped that meant it was still in place.
He nudged a bowl of Melarian chocolate across the table. “Dessert time. Try this.”
She dipped her spoon in eagerly. “Mmm, delicious.” She licked her spoon clean.
Nik’s cock had been hard throughout the entire dinner, but now it reached new levels of painful.Damn. Everything this woman did made him hard. “Nera—” His voice was a little choked and he wasn’t sure what he wanted to say.
“You just have to ask, Niklas.”
“I want to know more about you.”
She stiffened a little, the tension so fine he would have missed it, if he wasn’t so attuned to everything she did.
“It isn’t an interesting story.” Nebula eyes lifted. “Isn’t who I am now enough?”
“Everything in the past makes us who we are, Nera. Pushing it into a box doesn’t make it any less true.”
She let out a breath. “You start. Tell me about you.”
“I’m the oldest brother. I always liked books. Zerzura is covered in ruins and legends of Terran colonists.” He shrugged. “No surprise I wanted to study and become an astro-archeologist.”
She took another spoonful of the chocolate. “But it’s more than that, isn’t it?”
Yeah, it was. It was something that inspired and fed his soul. “Have you found that thing, that thing that’s necessary for your being? That just immersing yourself in it for a little while makes you feel…rejuvenated? Like you can take on the entire world, the galaxy.”
Her gaze was locked on his face for a beat, then she cleared her throat. “I don’t think so.”
“That’s what history and learning is for me. It just…fills the well.”
“I was too busy surviving.”
His fingers curled around the edge of the table. “Someone hurt you?”
“Not exactly.” She shoved a hand through her hair. “I was trapped, expected to be anything and everything. To survive, I had to find a way to preserveme—hell, I had to find me first.” A wry smile. “I’m not sure I’ve even achieved that yet.”
He swallowed. “Klavinoi.”
She shot to her feet, her chair tipping over and crashing to the floor.
