❝death is only the beginning.❞
Mara El-Masri's fascination with the long-ago world of ancient Egypt started with the stories her stepfather would tell her when she was a child. Her brother Talib El-Masri is missing, left after their mother's funera...
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☾ ☽
WHEN MARA MET EVY, it had felt like a silent wish of Mara's, that to have a friend who understood her after so long without any true friends at all, had been granted. Evy had been so kind to her when Dr. Bey introduced them at the museum and somehow Mara knew then she had found a kindred spirit, someone with as much curiosity in her veins as her. It had only taken a month for them to become as close as sisters, sharing stories of their families and coming up with their own inside jokes as Evy tried to teach Mara how to catalogue the library at the museum.
Neither of them had known then, of course, that in just a few years they would become sisters-in-law but it had always been lovely for Mara to look back at the beginning and marvel at where they were now, still best friends but sisters-in-law in addition to it. Mara was first godmother to her son before becoming his aunt. Evy was going to be aunt to her child. They were family. And family was everything.
Mara almost wished that it had been possible then to know what would happen in the years that followed. If one could see the future, know what would happen to Evy at Ahm-Shere...perhaps this could have been stopped. Perhaps Evy would not have died in the arms of her husband, perhaps Evy's son would not have been forced to watch his mother die right in front of him, perhaps Mara would not have lost the first person who ever truly understood her.
Was this truly what fate had in store for Evy? So young, only a year or so older than Mara. Her son left motherless. Her husband a widower. Her brother heartbroken. Her sister-in-law grieving. How cruel fate was to let this be how Evy O'Connell ended. She deserved a full life, to see her son grow up, to meet her grandchildren and great-grandchildren and experience so much happiness that now she never would. She deserved so much better than this. She deserved so much better than what fate handed her.
But fate wasn't finished yet.
—
Mara's hand grasped the corner of one of the golden statue plinths outside the pyramid as she knelt beside it, trying to keep at least somewhat steady as nausea overcame her again. A few feet behind her, Jonathan sat by Evy's body looking at her like he couldn't believe she was gone. Rick was holding Alex to him as if he never wanted to let go. Aside from Mara throwing up and the sounds of quiet sobs from both her and the others, it had been silent for the past ten minutes. No one said anything. What could they say?
What was supposed to happen now? Were they to just sit by Evy's corpse, waiting and hoping that Izzy had fixed the dirigible and would, by some miracle, find them at the pyramid so that they could bring her back to London and give her a proper burial? Was Evy just the first of them to die here at Ahm-Shere? And what of Imhotep and Anck-Su-Namun, and the Scorpion King? What if this was only the beginning?
