Page 7 of At the Mercy of Midnight
She looked at him sharply. “Pardon?”
He scoffed. “You forget that I know you, Winslow. If you’d gotten anywhere, you would have had me sit through a ten-minute speech while you bragged about how brilliant you are.” Silas shook his head with a small chuckle as he gathered his things from around him and stood deftly. “Relenting to me proved what you had in that sad little notebook of yours.” His eye gleamed in the sunlight. “Nothing.”
Amelia set her bowl down. “I don’t havenothing.”
“You meant to say: I don’t haveanything,” Silas said with mock concern. “My word, the decline of a once great academic.”
“Finley.” Cutting, spoken through her teeth.
He took a small step towards her, swinging his backpack over one shoulder. “Winslow,” Silas echoed with irritating calm.
When she said nothing, he winked before turning away to walk for his tent. She followed him irately. “I’ll have you know I also translated connection, though the third glyph I’d thought was variant, rather than change, but seeing as they’re relatively synonymous, I chose not to waste my breath.”
“Mm-hm,” was all he said over his shoulder before he ducked past his tent flaps, leaving Amelia open-mouthed.
She whirled around and left, heading back to her tent to prepare her pack for the trek into the centre of the ruins.
By the time she stepped back out into the camp, everyone was awake and sitting in the common area. Silas stood near the boundary of their site, beneath an arcane lamp with one of his assistants.
When he saw her, Silas rolled his eyes and gestured for her impatiently. “Come on, Winslow, time waits for no one.”
Amelia ignored him and moved over to where Halpert sat. “We’re heading for the temple, will you join us?”
Halpert squinted up at her, the early morning sun on his face. “I am only here to guide the process as needed, Amelia, you don’t need me for this. You know what you’re doing.”
She sighed and glanced back over to Silas.
“He certainly doesn’t think so,” she grumbled.
Halpert chuckled. “Are you going to pretend you don’t give it right back? I know you very well, Amelia.”
She made a face. He was the second person to say that to her today, and she wasn’t sure what to make of it. Often, Amelia thought that nobody truly knew her, or her heart, especially not the people that were meant to be closest to her.
“I suppose,” she answered guardedly, and because she felt oddly vulnerable in that moment, Amelia said nothing more than a perfunctory farewell to him. She strode across the sandy ground towards the edge of the perimeter where Silas now stood alone, arms folded across his chest.
“Ready?” he asked.
Amelia hitched her backpack higher onto her shoulders and thumbed the straps. She gave him a sharp nod. Silas ran his eyes over her before he met her gaze once more.
“You’re in agreement to trek just the two of us?” he queried.
“If we find anything, the junior scholars can join us tomorrow on a return visit. I’ve set them to exploring and observing the outer rim while we’re away. Today is simply scouting danger on the way to the temple, and I’d prefer to do that alone to mitigate risk.”
Silas grinned slyly at her. “But you aren’t alone, are you?”
Amelia narrowed her eyes and walked straight past him, muttering, “I’d rather be.”
The trek across the Rift was slow and uncomfortable.
The morning heat escalated the deeper Amelia and Silas travelled into the ruins, their boots crunching over the sand, dust, and fragmented pieces of stone. The dry heat caused sweat to cling to her skin, making her linen clothes feel itchy.
It made her long for the milder weather in Ivory City, or her place of birth in East Town.
Twice they had needed to backtrack and find another path when they came across a toppled pillar or when their compasses led them astray, the needles shifting erratically all too often.
Amelia cast her eyes in every direction, wanting to take it all in, even if it were a mere shadow of the ancient city it had once been. She absorbed every stone pathway cracked by time, and broken staircase that led to nowhere, imagining what it might have looked like a thousand years ago.
“I think that eastern path might have been quicker,” Silas muttered, ducking beneath a tilted column, and then looked back at Amelia while she did the same.
