❝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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☾ ☽
ABOUT AN HOUR HAD PASSED since Talib, Jonathan, and Ardeth left for the marketplace. Much of the hour had been spent in silence between Mara and Jamil. While Mara studied the crown and tried to determine its history and its secrets, Jamil had paced the length of the flat for a bit until Mara asked him to stop, at which point he decided to go into the second bedroom—the one Talib seemed to use mainly for storage, but had cleaned up a bit to make a space for Mara—and look through the things he had stored in it.
He had just come out from the room and paused to get a glass from the cupboard and fill it up with water. Jamil set it in front of Mara, who had been entirely focused on the crown until the glass thudded in front of her, and asked, "Have you found anything?"
Mara glanced up from the crown in her hands. She had been holding it closer to her face, squinting at it, and sighed. "I'm not sure," she answered before lowering the crown. "There are markings on the interior of the crown, but I can't quite make them out. I can't tell if it's writing or simply scratches. Do you think Talib has a magnifying glass somewhere here?"
Jamil gave a light shrug. "If he does, it can't be that hard to find it."
"You do remember how he likes to organize things, don't you?"
He had stepped over to a set of drawers and opened one of them, and then he stared it for a moment. He reached inside and turned around to show her that Talib had apparently put a compass in the same drawer as eating utensils. "I do now," Jamil said plainly, and Mara laughed. "You would think he would have grown out of this by now."
Mara smiled wider. "He hasn't changed at all, has he?"
"Less than I thought he would have," Jamil said, voice hardly louder than a murmur, as he turned back to the drawers. She tilted her head. "I was afraid I wouldn't recognize him. When I received his letter, I'd wondered if it was really from him. If now he would come back when he was safe. I read it so many times before writing back. I was waiting for you to return to Cairo before coming here, but you made things a bit difficult."
She sighed. "Baba, what would you have expected me to do?"
"I don't know. I do know that I did not expect you to come here first, nor did I expect you to bring Jonathan with you."
"Well, I didn't expect for you to contact Ardeth. Though I'm thankful you did."
As she said that, Mara considered that thankful might not have been the strongest word for what Mara felt. If her father had never contacted Ardeth and asked him to find her in Riyadh, Jonathan would be dead right now, a bullet in his brain because of her. Because Jamil had contacted Ardeth, the chieftain was there to stop him from being killed.
