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Sayyid met his desperate gaze… and then slowly looked away.

It was all the answer Neil needed.

??

Thirty-Eight

Neil fought theurge to collapse into hysterics, unsure whether it would emerge as laughter or sobs. Instead, a heavy sense of guilt settled into place in his chest.

He dropped down to one of the shattered stone stumps, putting his head in his hands. “This is… this is all because of me. I should have listened to Ellie from the start. You told me that she was right about those…” He paused, at a loss for the word, and waved awkwardly at the sock-enclosed firebird bone.

“Arcana,” Sayyid filled in without looking at him.

Arcana—from the Latinarcanus,Neil thought automatically. Most likely derived from the Latin wordarca—a chest or box.

For the things that were secreted away. A shared root with the wordark.

Ark. Arcane.Arcana.

He wondered if he was losing his mind. He forced his thoughts back to the present—and to the dusty, tired man who had been trapped in this inescapable cavern with him.

“I know you’re upset with me,” Neil admitted quietly. “You have every right to be. I was an idiot to write that note to Mr. Forster-Mowbray. If I’d simply left well enough alone…”

Sayyid stared at him incredulously. “Thatis why you think I am upset with you?”

“Isn’t it?” Neil flushed with bewilderment.

Sayyid clamped his mouth firmly shut. He stalked along the shadowy line of the pillars.

Neil hurried after him. “If it’s something else I’ve done, please tell me! I can’t possibly make it right if I don’t know what it is!”

Sayyid whirled back to him, throwing up his hands. “Has it not occurred to you that perhaps youcan’tmake it right?”

The blood drained from Neil’s face. “Of course it has. My little sister is up there, along with one of my oldest friends. And Constance, who I… that I…” He couldn’t quite find the right words, struggling onward without them. “Your wife and her apprentice and that frankly intimidating old lady! None of them are safe! And whatever those villains do to them is on my conscience, because I’m the one who told them where to find us—like an utter, bloody fool!”

“Why did you tell them?” Sayyid took a quick, angry step closer. “Why?”

“I don’t know. I…” Neil caught himself with a wince. He owed Sayyid more than that. “Because I didn’twantit to be true. I wanted it to be some mad flight of fancy that Ellie had dreamed up. I wanted everything to go back to the way it was when you and I were stabilizing artwork and sorting out finds. Arguing about the semantic changes from Middle to Late Egyptian—even though you were always right about those,” he added in a grumble.

He closed his eyes, washed by a powerful sense of hurt and loss. “Ilikedthings the way they were. I didn’t want them to change. Didn’t you?”

The anger in Sayyid’s face drained away, leaving him drawn. “It isn’t that simple.”

Neil barked out a hysterical laugh, running a hand through his already wild hair. “Of course it isn’t—since the representative of the British Athenaeum has turned out to be a murderous artifact thief!”

“You really don’t get it, do you?” Sayyid burst out. “None of that was ever real! The Athenaeum, the semantics… the two of us working together like we were—”

His words choked off, swallowed by the thick, waiting silence that surrounded them. The silence lingered, pressing down on Neil as the rows of frozen pillars marched away at his back.

“Like we were what?” Neil tentatively prompted, his chest tight.

Sayyid answered him with a glare. “I’ve been an utter fool,” he concluded and marched away through the hollow quarry.

“What? Why?” Neil stumbled after him.

Sayyid halted so abruptly, Neil almost crashed into him. “And you don’t even know!” he exclaimed with a note of hysteria. “You still have absolutely no idea!”

“Then tell me!” Neil shot back, fear and frustration sharpening his voice.