Page 94 of The Lost Guardian

“Yes,” he breathed.

“Okay, now try not to see the light. Instead, focus on the space in between,” she said, lightly gripping his wrist to twist his hand around. Santiago shivered and prayed Ali would attribute it to the mountain cold, rather than to her touch.

“The biggest bit of ‘cloud’ is made up of interstellar dust, blocking out that part of the Milky Way. You see the llama shape? Its legs down here.” She swooped their hands down. “And up to its long neck here?”

Pulling his focus back to the skies, Santiago gasped. “I see it.” His voice was quiet but delighted. “Oh wow, it really does look like a llama, doesn’t it?”

Santiago dropped his hand, but Ali’s remained inside his. It was only then that he noticed their position, Ali’s arm intertwined with his, her body pressed flush against his own. Her head tilted toward his jaw, and when she turned to look at him, her breath tickled his cheek.

How does she still smell like honey? he wondered. He worried for a moment what he might smell like after two days of hiking in the middle of nowhere. But then Ali licked her lips and all rational thought escaped him.

His grip on her hand tightened, and when she didn’t protest, Santiago brought his face closer to hers. His heart thundered in his chest, and he felt tingles of anticipation brush against his skin. He had a moment to see the ghost of her smile before he leaned in.

Thank you, celestial llama, he thought.

“The llama!” Ali jerked back. Her eyelashes, which had been halfway shut, fluttered open. “Alpacas are part of the llama family!” she gasped.

“Um, yes, they are…” he responded, beyond confused. What had just happened?

Ali sat up, staring at the constellation. “Rios, do you know what the Quechua word for ‘shaman’ is?”

Santiago sat up and shook his head, trying to dispel the fog of lust that still assailed his system.

Did we almost kiss?

“Um, yeah,” he answered, his voice strained.

Ali didn’t seem to notice.

“It’s paqo,” he said when it was obvious she was waiting for an answer.

I must have imagined it, he thought, mortification incinerating any last remnants of desire coursing through his veins.

“Do you know the word for a male alpaca?” she asked him, grinning.

Santiago’s gaze shot back up to the llama constellation. “Oh my God,” he whispered, his embarrassment instantly replaced with pure shock. “It’s paqo!”

“We were never looking for a shaman.” Ali’s excitement was palpable, and Santiago’s own felt like it would bubble over and pour out of his very skin. “This whole time we were searching for the shaman who sleeps in the west…when we should have been looking at the llama that sets in the west!”

“Okay, okay,” Santiago said, scrambling up to his knees. “The next line is that his eyes point to the last light of day.”

Ali shook her head, nose wrinkled. “That doesn’t make sense, though.”

“What do you mean?” Santiago frowned.

“‘The last light of day’ would be the setting sun, right? Which would be in the west, where he sets,” Ali said, face scrunched as she tried to work it out. “But the llama’s eyes there,” she said, gesturing, “those point east. There are even records of the Huarochirí people describing its eyes, advancing toward the earth, ‘pointing toward the east.’ They called them the llamaq ñawin, the ‘eyes of the llama.’ In western astronomy, those ‘eyes’ are known as Alpha Centauri and Hadar.”

“Wait, really?” Santiago perked up. “That’s fascinating. What records? Can I read them?”

“Focus, Rios,” Ali urged him through her grin.

“Right, right,” Santiago replied. “So the last light of day can’t mean the sun. But what else? Can’t be the moon. Its placement in the sky changes. They wouldn’t have been able to depend on it, right?”

Ali squeezed her eyes shut. “There has to be something I’m missing,” she whispered under her breath.

Santiago could see her mentally shuffling through all the knowledge she had on the constellation. The image nearly knocked him down again.

“Okay, there’s something about the llama’s eyes, something important,” she said. “What was it?”