Page 3 of At the Mercy of Midnight
“Your confidence is loud, though your competence is not. Do you know what Gemino means?” Amelia said.
“I’m sure you’re dying to tell me.”
“‘Twin’, ‘pairing’ or ‘double’,” Amelia told him smugly before she leaned closer to him, nudging him with her shoulder. She flipped open the cover of his leather-bound journal, tapping on the glyph they were arguing over with the end of her pencil. “Context is everything, Finley. The Monoliths didn’t exist when this city thrived.” He batted her pencil away like it had personally offended him.
“I guess we’ll find out as we explore the ruins further.”
“That we will,” she agreed, leaning back away from him.
Somara returned with a pinched expression and Amelia stood.
“Nothing to report, Dr. Winslow,” Somara said, her eyes flicking to the device in her hands, “though the numbers were jumping all over the place, it was hard to get an accurate read.”
Silas stood as well, coming over to Somara and craning his head to have a look at the device. The poor young scholar craned her neck to look up at Silas as he leaned close to her with his focus on the screen, eyes wide with an enamoured look about her. “Magic is highly disrupted here,” he explained while Somara blinked dazedly. “It’s unlikely we can rely on these to keep us safe.” Silas raised his eyes to look at Amelia. “When we venture to the temple, we’ll need to be overly cautious, and keep the party small. Perhaps just the two of us to scout first.”
Amelia kept his unusually serious gaze for a moment, a refusal on the tip of her tongue before she forced a nod and turned from them. It was not worth an argument, and she couldn’t deny that safety was paramount in a place like this.
She gritted her teeth, moving away from her fellow scholars.
Amelia didn’t know what unsettled her more, how often Silas challenged her, or the part of her that almost liked it, that wanted to be known.
She walked away towards the solitude of her own tent, ignoring the feeling.
Her eyes tracked over the little gathering of tents, spread out in a circle around a common area where a small campfire was being built in preparation for the coming sunset. Their party had set up a perimeter around the site of hanging arcane lamps to keep the Rift Crawlers away, but with the unstable magic, the fires’ warm, crackling light was the safety net they all needed.
Their entire party had ten people. Amelia and Silas were the lead scholars for the excavation, with Halpert as a seniorscholar. They each had two junior scholars as assistants to the dig and had been assigned a navigator specialist seeing as all their navigation devices would short out while in the Rift. The last two of the party were the…well, they were the muscle. Hired mercenaries for lack of a better description, to protect them in the event that something terrible happened.
Amelia hoped the mercenaries would be very bored over the course of their time there.
She ducked into her tent. Slinging her backpack from her shoulder, she wandered over to the small table pushed up against the wall of her tent and browsed over the set of books she had brought. With a sigh, she concluded what she already knew. Her runic translations were mostly modern, whereas the glyphs she needed to interpret were much older.
“Knock knock,” came a voice from behind her.
Amelia didn’t need to turn. Silas.Of course. She gritted her teeth and turned to find him holding the flaps open and peering inside as though he owned the place.
“We’re finishing up for the night,” he said, “securing camp before the sun disappears.”
“Mm-hm,” Amelia replied, stacking her books in deliberately neat piles.
“Right, then,” he said, already turning to leave.
She sighed. “Wait.”
Silas paused, glancing back at her over his shoulder. She took in a deep breath, already regretting what she was about to do.
“Can I borrow the translation texts you have with you?”
He raised a brow at her and smirked with a small shake of his head, as if she’d said something hilarious.
“What?” she demanded, crossing her arms.
“Oh, I’m sorry…were you asking for my help?” His grin widened, delighting in the moment. “I was just basking in theglory of being needed by someone who thinks she has all the answers.” Amelia glared at him. Silas laughed, clearly pleased with himself. “Fine, I’ll bring one to you. I’m sure I can learn to share.”
She narrowed her eyes on him. “I’ll be sure to send a thank you note when I publish about my discoveries here,” Amelia muttered.
Another low laugh, rumbling around her small tent. Silas gave her one last look before he turned and left, the flap falling shut behind him.
She exhaled sharply.
