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Santiago expected the heat of a blush to burn his cheeks, but surprisingly they stayed cool. “I did,” he agreed.

“From who? Atahualpa?” she asked him.

He nodded. “It’s a long story,” he added.

“You bargained for my life,” she said, sitting up and flexing her muscles uncertainly.

He nodded. “He held up his end better than I could have hoped.”

Santiago ran his hand over her healed arm, unable to believe that she was really there and unharmed. He couldn’t stop touching her, making sure she was real. That they both were, and that they had survived.

“Why?” she asked him, staring into his eyes. “Why would you save me?”

Santiago didn’t answer, only looked at her. Her big black eyes, the freckles across her nose and cheeks. Her bottom-heavy lips.

“Santiago.”

“Because I meant what I said in that room,” he finally replied. “Because you are worth more to me than anything else an Incan emperor could have thought to offer. And because…because I can’t imagine my life without you. Not another day more, Ali.”

He leaned in then, and Ali met him hungrily. She gripped at his shirt and he tangled his hands in her hair, kissing her deeply. They finally broke apart for air, and to laugh a little, only to become wrapped up in each other’s embrace again.

When they finally stopped long enough for Ali to look around, her gaze landed on the golden statue of the temple, which Santiago had hastily set aside to get his hands on her.

“Is that?” she asked, staring at it with wonder.

“The line of the Guardians is broken,” he told her. “Atahualpa has no more need of tombs, or temples, or curses.” He handed her the statuette.

She turned it around in her fingers. “So you’re free?”

Santiago thought about her choice of words. He was free, in a sense. Atahualpa had no more need of him. He wouldn’t have to produce an heir just to keep from destroying the world. Or a spare, in case the first one missed a platform on the celestial hell trap.

He didn’t have to worry about where he would be buried when he died. He didn’t have to focus on duty or legacy.

But it had felt good to be a part of something, at least for a while.

“I guess I am,” he admitted. “My days of traipsing through mountains in search of ancient treasures are behind me.”

Ali grinned at him. “Somehow, I doubt that.”

56

Together, they made their way back through the long tunnel that led to the snake head and the river. Santiago worried that the unnatural tremors from the temple folding in on itself might have caused a cave-in that would trap them forever. But they emerged, battered, bruised, and bloody, on the other side of the mountain.

“We did it,” Ali said, breathing deep. “We actually did it.”

“Now, how exactly are we going to get back?” Santiago asked, worry reigniting under his skin. “My pack is buried somewhere inside an Incan ruin, or maybe shrunk down inside this paperweight? And yours is at the bottom of the river. We don’t have any food, or clothes, or tents, or—”

Ali pressed up on her tiptoes and kissed him again. He allowed his anxiety to settle.

“We can do this,” she said when she pulled away. “The first thing we need is—”

But whatever she might have said was swallowed by the sound of helicopter blades.

“Damn it,” Santiago swore, shifting in front of Ali as if he could somehow shield her from what was to come. “We’re too exposed here. Maybe back in the snake head?”

“The ATVs,” Ali shouted, already running toward the abandoned vehicles by the river. “If we can get to the cover of the trees…”

Santiago followed her, vaulting onto the back of one. He looked for a key but didn’t see anything. He found a button and pressed on it to no avail.