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“If you spot them before you step on them, you can just go around, even if it means a detour of a mile or so,” Bates continued. “It’s only if you’ve waded into the damned caravan before you realize what’s happening that things get hairy.”

“How hairy, exactly?” Ellie prodded.

She had to pitch her voice louder to be heard over the rush of the waterfall. They were near enough to the cascade that the light mist cooled Ellie’s skin. Little beads of it began to collect on the tips of Bates’s hair.

Bates sighed tiredly.

“What I’m saying is—it’s not just harder,” he replied carefully. “It’s risky. A lot more risky.”

His eyes flashed with sympathy… and Ellie began to feel a deep, cold fear.

“You think we should go back,” she filled in numbly.

“I’m just trying to make sure you’ve got the whole picture,” he returned, hedging his tone.

“But what do you think we should do?” she pressed.

Bates didn’t answer right away. He looked out toward the shoreline. It was a beautiful, impenetrable wall of green where tangled thatch palms sprouted up beneath soaring trees dripping with vines.

She could not peer at what might lie beyond it. The interior was a mystery shrouded in dangerous life.

Ellie realized that she didn’t need Bates to answer. His hesitation told her what he was thinking.

He wanted to go home. And why wouldn’t he? He had come out here with her for a lark. They’d had their fun, but now things were going to get hard, and he was far from certain that anything worth finding waited for them at the end of the journey.

Ellie admitted the horrible truth—that she was far from certain of it herself.

They hadn’t found theBlack Pillar that Draws the Compass. She had always known the map and medallion could be a hoax. The fact that Bates had recognized one of the glyphs on it was promising, but anyone who had been poking around the territory centuries ago might have spotted something similar and copied it. The symbol didn’tproveanything.

They were about to set out into the uncharted wild on the cusp of the dangerous rainy season based on nothing more than a whispered promise of an implausible legend. Was that really worth risking their lives over?

Of course, Bates must riskhislife like this all of the time. Doing so was quite literally his job. Even if there was no lost city at the end of it all, an excursion like this still gave him more information he could fill in on his maps. So what was different this time?

She was. Ellie was the difference. Bates didn’t want to go out into the bush because ofher—because she was a liability.

And he was absolutely right.

The realization brought with it a wave of anger and shame. Ellie could rattle off the identifying symbols of Schellhas’s gods, along with all the latest theories on Mesoamerican archaeology and history, but none of that would keep her alive in a hostile environment. Out here, she was just another piece of baggage Bates would have to cart through the wilderness.

No wonder he was hesitating. Why wouldn’t he? It was a perfectly rational position for him to take.

It was also awful.

A terrible sense of frustration and helplessness washed over her. What would be left for her if they did go back to Belize Town?

Nothing but dragging herself back to London to try to gather up the tattered shreds of her old life. She had no job and no prospects—nothing but the wrenching choice between marriage and obscurity lay before her. She would be trapped. All her knowledge, her ambitions, and her dreams would be bottled up like wine left to spoil in the cellar.

Her face was wet. It must be the floating mist from the waterfall. It had nothing at all to do with the burning she felt at the corners of her eyes.

“Fine.” Ellie bit out the word even as a piece of her wanted to shrivel up at the sound.

Bates stared down at her, the lines of his face uncharacteristically conflicted.

Water continued to spill down before them. The rush of it drowned out the perpetual rustle of the leaves and the chirps or croaks of any neighboring wildlife. It felt like silence even as it roared incessantly against Ellie’s ears.

“Fight with me,” Bates abruptly ordered.

Ellie looked up with surprise.