❝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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MARA'S HEART HURT.
There was simply no other way to describe the horrible anguish inside her now, how she felt as if she had stumbled over the edge into an abyss—falling, falling, falling until there was not even a glimmer of light left at the top, no hope that this would end and she would step out of the darkness into daylight. The storm was gone. There was no more thunder, no lightning. There was nothing but silence, and she couldn't breathe. She couldn't breathe.
It was not the first time she had felt this, those first few moments of sorrowed grief that weighed on her. When her mother died, when she believed her father to be dead at Hamunaptra, when her best friend was killed at Ahm-Shere—she knew this feeling well. But this...oh, this was so much worse, in a way that words could never truly convey. Her heart was torn from her chest. A part of her was lost the moment the thunder cracked and the lightning flashed for the final time. This was not something that would ever be repaired. It would always be lost.
Her husband's arms were firm around her, fallen with her onto the spot where she had collapsed to her knees in agony. Her hand grasped at air, reaching for their daughter even though she knew she wasn't there. Stolen from them in the blink of an eye. She hoped she would never have to feel this. She never wanted to feel the pain of losing a child. It was unbearable. Oh, Sarah. Her Sarah, her beautiful Sarah.
"He'll have taken her back to Saqqara. To the tomb." It was Evy who spoke first after the dust cleared and the reality of what happened set in. Her voice was gentle, and she spoke to reassure them. But there was a certain pain to her words. It was the pain of a parent who knew exactly what they felt now, for she was once in this very situation. A child ripped from her. "He needs her alive if she's the key to what he wants. But there isn't much time."
Alive. Sarah was alive. Their daughter wasn't lost forever. They needed to remember that, trust that they could—no, that they would—rescue her before it was too late. There was still hope, and Mara was going to cling to that hope until her daughter was back in her arms and Khafre was no longer a threat to her family.
Jonathan drew back to look at Mara. The heaviness in his gaze was surely mirrored in her own. He took her hand in his, fingers intertwining together like they had so many times before, and he nodded at her. It was small, hardly noticeable. She took a breath and did the very same, in agreement with him without saying a single word. This was going to end tonight, no matter what.
"We need weapons. What do you have here?" Rick said. The question did not necessarily go unheard—it was impossible not to hear in so quiet a room—but Mara did not realize it was directed towards them. An absurd thing really, for who else would he be asking that of? It simply did not occur to her in her state of mind.
