“It’s nothing,” Neil asserted quickly.“Everything’s fine.”
He could just make out Constance’s skeptically arched eyebrow in the gloom and felt himself start to sweat.“Not that it wouldn’t be fine.It’s just a closet.And then I dropped my sword.Because you surprised me.”
“Are you going to pick it up again?”Constance asked with careful patience, shadow cloaking the details of her expression.
The bas-relief from the wall blazed through Neil’s brain—of a woman’s head turned back for a kiss while the fellow behind her lifted her leg and…
“Please no,” he pleaded, and then winced.“I mean—I will.In a minute.After I… cool off.”
“Uh-huh,” Constance returned skeptically.
To Neil’s infinite relief, she moved away.
He waited for her to step back out into the well, then yanked his handkerchief from his pocket and used it to safely retrieve Dyrnwyn, shoving it back into the scabbard.
Darting past Hanuman, he leaned against the wall and gave a shaking sigh of relief.
Constance studied the carvings on a pillar nearby.“Aren’t some of these scenes from the Ramayana?”
Neil joined her as she moved between the columns, pointing out scenes from the famous story.
“The stringing of Shiva’s bow,” she listed.“The betrayal of Kaikeyi.Exile into the forest.”
Her fingers brushed against the stone garments of a woman who lingered behind Rama at the edge of the trees, her body partially obscured by his own.
Constance named her.“Sita.”
The uncertain note in her voice finally wrenched Neil’s attention from his own mortification.“Why do you say it like that?”
Constance threw him a slightly rueful look.“Oh, it’s nothing.Only that I’ve always thought Sita was a bit useless.Letting her husband be exiled.Getting herself kidnapped.Sitting around waiting for him to come and rescue her.But…”
Her expression was uncharacteristically solemn in the soft, deep light of the well as she traced the lines of the thousand-year-old carvings.“Aai reminded me that there’s always more to the story for women.Things we have to hide because the world isn’t ready for everything that we really are.”
Something tightened inside Neil’s chest at her words.
He thought of all the things that Constance had to hide from the world.Her dreams of a life of adventure and purpose.Her courage and audacity.The part of her heritage that was woven into the marvel of engineering that surrounded him.
How much more might there be that he hadn’t even discovered yet?
The degree to which she lived as her true self in the face of relentless opposition frankly awed him—and a new feeling unfurled inside of him in response.
It was bigger than awe, and Neil recognized that it was far more dangerous, even as he struggled to put a name to it.The feeling bloomed until he felt as though he would crack open if he didn’t find a way to let it out.But what could he possibly say?
That he wanted to know everything—all the dreams and hopes and fears she kept hidden inside herself.That she was magnificent.That if the world was too small for her, it should get out of her bloody way.
And like that, the careful stories Neil had been telling himself for the last several weeks splintered, shivering away like the walls of Jericho falling to the cry of the trumpets.Destruction stripped him bare, leaving only a raw and undeniable truth in the place where his defenses had been.
One that he knew very well how to name.
She was an endless night in a labyrinthine library.A pyramid complex rife with secrets.A world that Neil wanted to explore in all its stunning depth until he lost himself inside of it.
This wasn’t just lust.This was something else—something that electrified him with terror.
He was herfake fiancé.At some point in the not-so distant future, they would have to find a way to break that off—and where would that leave them?Could they possibly find some way to save their friendship in the face of that?
Two months ago, the notion of being Constance’s friend would have sent him running for the hills in fear of having his site reports set on fire.
That friendship had become desperately important to him.It was still important—even if it had also grown dangerously complicated.
