Page 4 of At the Mercy of Midnight
One day. It hadn’t even been one full day and she already felt smothered by his presence. This excavation had once been her dream. Now, it was being shared with the one person who made her want to dig a hole and buryhimin it.
Emerging from her tent, Amelia made a beeline straight across the campsite towards Silas’ own private quarters, boots crunching softly in the cooling sand. Silas was crouched across the site, rifling through the food stores, his back to her.
She hesitated, wondering if she should wait for him to bring her the text as he had said, but within a second Amelia had made the decision, his parting smirk lingering in her mind.
Amelia would find it herself. She may need the knowledge of a book he had brought, but she didn’t needhim.
The bright flames of the campfire crackled away in the centre of the camp. The sun was starting its descent, casting an orange glow across the plains of sand that stretched as far as the eye could see.
She might call it beautiful if she didn’t know better.
She pushed aside the flaps to Silas’ tent and strode inside. Amelia paused at the threshold, glancing around the space. Given Silas’ general air of perfection, she expected his tent to be unnaturally neat and put together. But she found the dimlylit space littered with items strewn about the floor. His sleeping bag and crumpled pillow lay in a messy heap beside his bedroll. Books were stacked in precarious piles in a corner, ranging from brand new to looking like they would fall apart should they be touched.
Wrappers and an empty drink container lay near her feet.
She raised a sceptical brow. Had there not been the pile of books and the open scroll on the small table to her left denoting ‘Artefacts of the Rift’, Amelia might have thought she’d stumbled into the wrong tent.
Her lip curled. “Charming.”
She stepped carefully through the mess and crouched next to the stacks of books. There were tomes on ancient civilisations, magical relics, and celestial alignments…and then there were a few bound in cracked, red leather that had no title on the spines. They drew her attention immediately, and Amelia peered curiously over her shoulder to the flaps of his tent, which swayed lazily in the gentle breeze. Heart racing at the thought of being caught snooping, Amelia looked back before pulling out one of the leather-bound tomes and opening it to a random page.
The first page had hand-drawn sketches of the Monoliths, each as tall and daunting as the other, but depicting their differing external features: one with a smooth, glassy surface that shone like the sun, and the other with dark jagged edges like it was made of the night itself.
Amelia flipped another few pages, finding densely scrawled notes, interwoven around several other drawings of artefacts.
Her eyes snagged on a single line and read:‘The bond is not simply connection; it is consumption’.
An uncomfortable bite of pain between her shoulder blades made her shiver at the words that seemed to hold a power within them. Her finger hovered over the edge of the next page.
“I don’t recall inviting you in, Winslow.”
Amelia tensed, sucking in a sharp breath. She snapped the book closed, twisting around.
Silas stood at the entrance of the tent, arms folded across his chest and watching her with an unreadable expression. The waning light barely touched his face, most of his features cast into shadow, save for the sharpness of his cheekbone, caught by the lamps’ glow.
She let out an uneasy breath, guilt rising. If he had done the same to her, Amelia would have been livid. She stood slowly, clutching the notebook to her chest as she faced him.
“I…” She cleared her throat. “You said I could borrow a translation text.” Amelia cringed, knowing how weak it sounded.
He took a slow step towards her, the golden light casting sharp lines across his face.
“And you took that to mean you could rifle through my notebooks?” His voice was cool and controlled in a way that made her uncomfortable.
“I didn’t know they were your personal notes,” she said quickly. “They were just…sitting there. You’ve brought more books that I thought a horse could carry.”
Silas didn’t smile, didn’t smirk or tease. His gaze shifted to the book Amelia had in her hands, before returning to her.
“And did you find anything of interest to you?”
Amelia hesitated, thinking on the small passage she had read. She shook her head, but the knowing look in Silas’ eyes told her he knew she had found something that had piqued her curiosity.
His eyes narrowed and he closed the distance between them in a few long strides. Amelia took a quick step backwards as Silas tugged the notebook from her, eyes fixed on the unmarked cover. She watched him swallow before he looked up to her.
“Some things,” he said at last, his voice lower now, rougher, “are better left unread, Winslow.” That wasn’t the Silas she knew. No jesting, no smugness, just something hard and hidden.
Amelia cleared her throat. “Well, that’s the thing about knowledge though, isn’t it? Once glimpsed, you can’t go back.”
Silas’ bright blue eyes searched across her face for a moment before it returned to his pile of books. He placed down the red notebook and then crouched to browse the spines. He seemed to find what he was looking for and pulled it quickly from the middle of the stack, the books falling perfectly into place without toppling. He rose and shoved the book at her chest.
