At her words, a gust of wind ripe with the scent of a coming storm stirred the trees that crowned the ridge.The whisper of the leaves mingled with the sibilant rush of the waterfall.
“Great,” Adam replied queasily.
Ellie looked disappointed by his response—until her eyes widened knowingly.“Oh.We are quite high up, aren’t we?”
“Sss’fine,” Adam assured her.
Ellie kept hold of his arm, her concern for his state warring with virulent curiosity.“But what’s that all over the ground?”
“Bones,” Adam replied.
Across the floor of the ravine, enormous skulls and massive ribs lay in tumbled piles, draped with moss and verdigris.A great tusk, thick as Adam’s chest, pierced through the growth to point up at the roiling gray sky.
Adam had recognized the distinct shape and unique scale of the remains the moment he had spotted them.“They’re elephants.”
The animals must have been coming to this place for ages, drawn by the presence of water during times of drought or the gorge’s relative insulation from predators.Ill, injured, or aged to exhaustion, they had lain down by the stream and died.
Adam thought of the stories he had heard about this forest—a place haunted by gods and monsters.
He recalled the word with an uncanny chill.Rakshasas.
The bones started to spin.Ellie firmed her grip on his arm as he swayed.
“We should probably get you off the ridge,” she suggested pointedly.
“I’d rather go down on my boots than my face,” Adam agreed.
She kept her hold on him as they descended the pass, trailed by his guards.
Singh Rao directed his men to a broad, sandy bank at the edge of the stream.The space was relatively flat and free of the undergrowth that sprawled through the rest of the floor of the gorge, tangling with the massive elephant bones.A red-hued cliff rose up behind the site, pockmarked with several of the man-made caverns.
Ellie studied the openings worriedly.“The Brahmastra must be here.We need to get back to Constance and Neil—but we can’t just leave the arcanum for Borthwick to find.”
Adam felt a bit steadier now that he was on the ground.He surveyed the irregular walls of ruddy stone.“There’s gotta be nearly fifty of those caves.It’ll take him a while to search them all, assuming whoever put the thing here didn’t just leave it lying out in the open.”
“But itcouldturn out to be in the first place he looks,” Ellie countered, her voice aching with worry.
The weight of all Adam’s responsibilities pressed down on him.
Armed guards stood at his back.A platoon of soldiers surrounded him.He was starting to lose track of how many people were depending on him—Ellie, Vanika, Constance, and Neil.Subhas and the rest of his men, who had been left bound and under guard by the ruins.The whole damned Adrija village that Borthwick intended to go after as soon as he’d gotten what he’d come for.Adam needed to do something about all of it, and yet he remained shackled by the need to keep meeting Borthwick’s expectations.
“I don’t have a plan, Princess,” Adam confessed, his voice rough.
“Since when has that ever stopped you?”Ellie challenged.
Adam was thrown.Whenhadit stopped him?
He’d been doing stupid things against overwhelming odds for most of his life.It came as naturally to him as swinging a machete or forgetting to change his socks.Hell, his father had spent years trying to batter the trait out of him.
Maybe for once in your life, you might actually stop and think before you do something stupid.
Ellie put her hand on his arm.The touch was gentle but firm, just like the look she gave him.“You told me when we got here that you’d have to be someone else in order to keep us both alive.And it worked, Adam… but maybe now it’s time for you to be the man you really are again.”
Her words made him feel like he was back on the ridge again.The world went into a slow, dizzy spin.
“Reckless and irresponsible?”he quipped back awkwardly.
Ellie didn’t flinch.“Exactly.That’s the Adam we need right now.MyAdam.”
