Ancient trees soaredover ground thick with ferns, flowers, and twisting vines as Neil hiked through a legend.
This was the Dandakaranya, the demon-haunted forest of Lord Rama’s exile.It felt like a place that had fallen out of time, where at any moment Neil might stumble across someone from a hundred years in the future—or two thousand years in the past.
More than he usually did, anyway.
It hadn’t yet rained, but it would.The sky was heavy and gray where it was visible through the canopy.Sweat ran down the line of Neil’s back under his shirt and waistcoat, even with a pair of buttons loosened at his collar.
There were twelve men in their party besides Subhas, Neil, and Constance.They ranged in age from the silver-haired Jignesh to a pair of teenagers.All of them were armed.Several carried bows and arrows.A few hung wicked-looking axes from their belts.Most held Enfield muskets like the ones used to threaten Neil on his approach to the village.The guns were antiques, probably dating back to the time of the mutiny, but they were all in working order.The men carried the weapons in a way that signaled they knew perfectly well how to use them.
Subhas was clearly the leader, despite being younger than many of the others.Even Jignesh, the oldest, deferred to his orders, though the two men often talked things through before coming to a decision.
Constance walked ahead of Neil, easily keeping up with Subhas’s merciless pace.She had cheerfully slipped out of her jacket as soon as they’d crossed the river, stashing it in the small pack she carried on her shoulders as she took in everything around her with a wide-eyed air of wonder.
Neil caught himself staring at the way her thighs flexed against the well-tailored fabric as she hauled herself up another step.
He pushed to catch up to her so that he would stop staring at her derrière.
“Water?”he offered, slipping the canteen off his shoulder and holding it out to her.
Liquid spilled over the column of her throat as she downed a hearty gulp.She wiped a hand across her mouth before handing the canteen back.
It took Neil a moment to remember to accept it.
“How’s it work, then?”Constance demanded.
“The canteen?”Neil echoed, his mind still fuzzy from the way the damp glistened on her neck.
“Not the canteen, Stuffy.Your magical past-seeing powers!”
Neil choked on his own sip of water.
He thought of the look on Ellie’s face when he had blurted out his secret.It had read of shock and disbelief—and then a flash of betrayal.
Which was understandable.It hadn’t been fair for him to hide the truth from everyone for so long.He owed his sister an explanation for why he had kept it to himself… which shouldn’t be hard to provide, as Neil knew exactly why he’d done it.
He was ashamed.
Respected academics weren’t supposed to have supernatural powers.Magically seeing into the past was the most unscientific thing Neil could imagine, right up there with talking about faeries and hunting for ghosts.If any of his old Cambridge colleagues had found out about it, they would have laughed him out of the room—or stopped talking to him altogether.
Neil’s strange ability was a danger to everything he had built over the course of his education and career… though admittedly less so now that he’d blown his professional reputation to bits by sabotaging his own excavation back in Egypt.
Constance waited for him to answer.
Neil slung the canteen over his shoulder alongside the scabbard for his equally impossible sword.He started walking.“I don’t know.It just… happens.”
“But what’s itlike?” Constance pressed, hurrying alongside him.
Neil fought an unfair sense of irritation.“It’s different every time.”
Constance studied him cannily as he used a skinny tree to haul himself up a steeper section of the path.“Have you ever done it when I was there?”
Neil stilled halfway up the slope.“Yes.”
“When?”
He forced himself to look back at her.“Tell al-Amarna.”
Constance’s eyes widened with recognition.“You called it beautiful, only we were standing in a dusty field with a bit of rubble.Not that I’d put it past you to find a field full of rubble lovely,” she added dryly.“But that’s not what you were seeing, was it?”
