❝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 COULD HARDLY STAND.
She had never been in so much pain as she was now. Small but painful burns on the soles of her feet. Shallow cuts on her neck from the dagger that stopped bleeding some time ago, around the time he decided to strangle her into unconsciousness. A broken wrist. Bruises everywhere else. He was torturing her, making her pay for what her brother did just as he said he would.
She fought him. She even managed to scratch at his face, deep enough to draw blood, but she wasn't strong enough to overpower him. Her fighting him only seemed to encourage him. He left twice and came back more cruel than before. Those moments between, when she was alone in a cold, dark room, she wept until there was nothing left in her.
It had been maybe twenty minutes, if she still had any sense of time left, since he last left. She now sat on the ground, knees pulled to her chest, and stared blankly ahead of her. Moving nearly killed her. What time was it now?
The door clicked.
Mara didn't dare to look at it this time. She didn't react at all until a voice that wasn't the one that had been tormenting her for hours ordered her to stand. There were two men who had stepped into the room this time. One of them had a pair of iron cuffs in his hand; she recognized him as the one in the alley that had pistol-whipped Jonathan. She couldn't comprehend moving at that moment, only stared at the iron cuffs. So that one stepped forward, grabbed her arm, and yanked her up from the ground before securing the cuffs around her wrists, making her already broken bone hurt even worse.
She started to yell when they dragged her out of the room she had been locked in, resisting against them even as they dragged her through the halls of the building she was in—some kind of warehouse, and if it was the same that Ardeth had found a way into the night before, surely they would know. Surely they were here somewhere.
Qadir's voice entered her ears again as they neared one of the doors. He was speaking loudly in Arabic, addressing a group of people it sounded like. "...I've waited long for this night, dreamt about it often. The crown is back in my possession, and the vessel—the thief's sister—is here. This is the night the world changes."
Mara was shoved through the door by the two men who had her. Qadir was walking toward her, that awful look on his face. The scratch on his cheek she had given him fighting back was more prominent in this lighting. Seeing his face again and hearing his voice made her feel like she was going to be sick. Qadir took hold of her arm, pulling her over to an altar that sat by the wall. On it was the crown and papers with writing that even in her state she was able to recognize as the demotic on the crown. There was a cup sat on top the papers with a dark liquid inside.
