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“Isn’t there some protocol where you may not use your heightened senses?”

“No,” Dante countered. “You are projecting.” He had learned centuries ago how to turn off the faucet, but with Rieka, it would allow him to have a greater insight into what made her think. In the image Sypha had shown him, the woman in the shadows had worn glittering armor. He did not believe in coincidences. “We both want to find Vandana’s tomb.”

Something flashed in Rieka’s eyes, an unnamed emotion. The color changed to a fiery red. When Rieka was emotional, her irises transitioned from gold-red to a bloodred, and the color bled into the whites. He had never come across another Atlantean whose eyes did that.

“The tomb was empty. If anything had been buried, they looted it long before we got there. Someone had vandalized the inscriptions.” Rieka looked at her hands, primly placed on her lap. “The mosaic was half-hidden at the far end of the temple.”

A sliver of hope wrapped itself around him. Rieka may be the key he was looking for. “The sketch is the only depiction we have of Vandana wearing armor. My father spent centuries searching for another copy.”

“I thought I had imagined it until you showed it to me.” Rieka sank into the chair, muttering under her breath. “Why is Vandana wearing armor?”

That’s what he wanted to know.

Chapter 11

House Azaes Territory, Egypt

“Thatwasafirstfor you,” Talik said as he walked toward Dante.

The lazy gait was a blatant misdirection from how lethal he was. Both Atlantean and human media devoured the playboy persona Talik cultivated. It suited Dante. Talik often took the attention off him.

“You told Sypha to ask the pilot to pretend there was turbulence. Did you get the answers you needed?” Talik clarified. His tone held a hint of disapproval. “Genius, if not highly manipulative, considering Dr. Sinha’s background.”

Dante ignored Talik.

The high sun beat down on them; the sticky heat was unbearable. The surrounding air was thick and still. A timely reminder of why he rarely visited Egypt. The landing strip was hidden from prying eyes, surrounded by inhospitable sand dunes. Specks of sand clung to his skin; with a grimace, he dusted off the offending grains. He would be removing them from his clothes for weeks. Dante had spent too many years of his childhood exploring this wasteland with his father to pretend to be tolerant of it. There were few things he openly claimed to dislike, but he despised sand.

“Not entirely.”

Rieka was not telling him the whole truth. A small unfamiliar knot was in the pit of his stomach. He was closer to finding the tomb than ever before, now that Rieka had agreed to work with him.

Talik chuckled as he took off his jacket. Sweat beaded on his temple. “Lost your touch?”

“Unlikely. I have four days,” Dante answered. “She has seen the image before.”

Talik stilled next to him as he raised an eyebrow and emitted a low whistle. “Is she the clue you have been looking for? Sypha makes more sense now.”

This time it was Dante who waited for further clarification.

“Nothing that is of interest yet.” Talik smiled, changing the subject. “Welcome home?”

Dante snorted. “Should I say the same thing to you?”

“Unlike you, I renounced my home.” A dark look passed over Talik’s features before a self-deprecating smile replaced it. “Humans are far more fragile than we are.”

He couldn’t shake the sense of urgency building up within him. The emotion had slowly taken hold of him, and over the last three decades, it had gotten worse. Money was not an issue. Time was. It would be five hundred years before he would get another chance to visit the vault. Time was the one commodity he couldn’t buy, no matter how much he aspired to. The council was determined to enforce the antiquated rule that the vault only be opened every five hundred years. And nothing he offered, including money and power, had changed their minds.

Talik surveyed the area. “Did you watch Kade’s report?”

“Yes.”

The report had been short and to the point, and disturbing. Dante had watched it twice to ensure that he had missed nothing. Or hallucinated what he had seen. Serpopard. The pixelated, somewhat grainy image of a large cat the size of a sabertooth tiger with a snakelike neck and tongue was hard to miss. The animal’s predatory orange gaze had looked straight into the camera, as if it knew it was being recorded. That was impossible, but Dante was cognizant of the intelligence of the animal and their hunting abilities. The video had been taken in one of the abandoned subway tunnels within New York City, in a place far away from the natural cave homes of the vicious monsters.

“For a species that supposedly became extinct more than eleven thousand years ago, they appear to be very lifelike and alive,” Talik whispered, careful of prying tech that may have been placed in position prior to their arrival. “Your sister hasn’t been conducting any new experiments, has she?”

“Aldora isn’t that type of scientist,” Dante answered. Not that he was in close contact with his twin, but she reluctantly kept him aware of what she was working on. The life of an heir was not without some inherent danger, even from within their own House.

“The footage only captured one of them,” Talik mused as he casually continued to sweep the area for any hint of life. “Its mate is somewhere in the tunnel.”