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Santiago reached to check his phone before remembering he didn’t have one. He looked down at his watch, which was still. It wasn’t waterproof, so the river had left its mark. He had no idea what time it was, only that there wasn’t much of it left.

If Abuelo Manco needed to be laid to rest before the sun reached its highest point in the sky, he didn’t even have a full day left to do it.

Well, no time like the present.

Santiago opened his pack and took out the cylinder full of his grandfather’s remains.

“I’m sorry, Abuelo,” he whispered. “I tried.”

I really did this time. He tried to convince himself. And look how far I’ve come.

It was unrealistic to expect anything more from him.

Slowly, Santiago unscrewed the lid. This was as good a place as any to spread his abuelo’s remains. He tilted the canister slowly, watching the ashes slide toward the lip of the vessel.

He would say goodbye, here and now, under this tree. Goodbye to his grandfather and to the Guardianes de la Tumba.

The ashes were poised, ready to spill…and then Santiago stopped.

“No,” he said out loud and found that he meant it. This wasn’t right. This wasn’t the way.

Santiago didn’t know where the surety in his stomach or the steel in his spine came from, but he was acutely aware that if he did this, he would regret it forever. Not only spilling his abuelo’s ashes in a random spot in the Andes but giving up before he had reached the end of his journey.

Even if Santiago could find his way home, he couldn’t go back a failure.

Not now, not like this.

He looked at the cylinder in his hands, the only remnants of a grandfather he had barely known, and yet a tangible connection to a legacy greater than himself.

And wasn’t that everything Santiago had always wanted? To feel a connection to his ancestors? To belong to something greater? To not only study history but be a part of it? It was precisely what he was doing here and now in the mountains of Peru.

When they began, Santiago had not believed that he was worthy of such a thing. That he, Santiago Rios, could truly be one of the Guardians of the tomb, a member of a secret sect sworn to protect the last Incan king. Who was he to claim such a title?

But he had persevered. He’d found the clue in Atahualpa’s Ransom Room. His blood unveiled the path on the ceque. He had deciphered his ancestors’ strange and convoluted map and followed the heliacal star to the snake-head boulder.

His own body had brought him through the mountains, despite the strenuous terrain. He had braved gunmen, and pumas, and a damned bone-shattering precipice.

He had even fallen in love.

It didn’t matter that the gunmen had only been there to force him deeper into Ali’s honeypot or that the puma had been a hairless dog. Or even that Alliyma hadn’t been who she claimed to be. It didn’t matter because Santiago had found the courage within himself to brave it all anyway.

No, he couldn’t go back. Even if he was heartless enough to condemn millions of people to Atahualpa’s curse—which he was not—there was no way the man he was now could abandon the quest he’d set upon.

This Santiago would not slink home with his tail between his legs, awaiting his inevitable death. That version of himself had died somewhere between the first firefight and his last.

He was someone new this dawn, and that man was not about to let a superrich grave-robbing prick stop him from properly laying his grandfather to rest.

Determinedly, Santiago tightened the top of the cylinder and returned his grandfather’s urn to his backpack.

He stood up, ready to embrace his legacy.

Only to feel all his renewed determination knocked out from underneath him.

Santiago turned in a slow circle, examining the clearing.

He may have decided not to give up, but the newfound sentiment made little difference to his reality. In his mindless stomping, Santiago had wandered miles from where he began.

He had no idea which way the river and the snake-head boulder lay or what path he’d taken away from it. He could hear nothing but the chirping of birds and rustling of leaves and no gurgling stream, let alone the roar of rushing white rapids.