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Ithyphallic representations. Shadowy alcoves.
A flush of heat that had nothing to do with the rising ambient temperature rose into her cheeks.
No, she thought forcefully. She had to stop letting her unruly thoughts run wild when it came to Adam Bates—not until they had sorted things out between them like reasonable, rational people.
Adam cleared his throat and turned his eyes deliberately to the ceiling of the colonnade. Ellie pivoted back to her oblivious brother, hooking her hand through his arm. “Come on,” she ordered and hauled him toward the stairs.
??
Eighteen
Ellie climbed tothe top of the grand temple stairway, dragging Neil along with her. The highest tier of the enormous structure would once have housed its most sacred precincts. Back then, a grand colonnade would have fronted the level, interspersed with statues of the pharaoh and her gods. That facade was nothing but tumbled rubble now, footings and fragments that lined the edge of the floor like a row of jagged teeth.
Beyond the broken columns lay a private open-air courtyard. Chapels and annexes branched off from it, including one carved directly into the face of the cliff, which rose from the back of the courtyard to a dizzying height overhead.
Ellie puzzled over the most likely place where she might find the sun disk mentioned in the inscription from the jewelry box. Could it be something painted on the remaining walls that lined the courtyard? Or might it be hidden in one of the chapels?
The truth was that it could be anywhere.
Instinctively, she turned to Neil for input—but he was looking back over his shoulder at the processional way and the distant glimmer of the Nile. The carriage she had seen earlier had reached the base of the temple, promising the imminent invasion of more tourists. Ellie suppressed a sigh.
“Ist das ein schöner Ort für ein Picknick?” one of the Germans from the hotel announced as he skipped up the steps to the courtyard.
Ellie did not want to search for ancient clues while being watched by a pair of Deutschlanders munching on pickles.
“How about this way?” She tugged Neil through the opening in the cliff.
The heat outside had been rising with the day, but in the shadowy confines of the carved chapel, Ellie was instantly cooler. The space was also quiet. The chatter of the tourists fell away as they moved deeper inside.
She tingled with excitement as she breathed in the smell of stone and dust. In this protected space, more of the temple’s original artwork had survived the centuries. The blue-tinted wings of a ba-bird extended over lines of hieroglyphs and graceful figures draped in royal finery.
“It’s a shrine to Amun.” She spotted the name of one of the pre-eminent deities of Thebes above an empty niche cut into the wall.
“That’s Hatshepsut and her father, Thutmose I, making offerings to the gods,” Neil pointed out from behind her, wiping his mouth after taking a pull from his canteen.
Ellie turned to look. The woman who had made herself king was crowned with the uraeus cobra of a pharaoh. A false beard extended in a column from her chin. Her skin was a ruddy ocher, and she was depicted bare-chested, wearing a man’s white kilt.
She studied the image as Neil stood beside her. The silence between them began to feel awkward.
This was the first moment Ellie had been alone with her brother since she had ambushed him in his tomb in Saqqara, and the weight of everything they had not yet talked about hung over her.
Part of Ellie loathed the idea of bringing up her relationship with Adam when so much remained unsettled between them, but she owed Neil better than that. He was her brother, after all, and Adam was his best friend. She ought to at leasttryto clear the air between them on the subject, and she couldn’t know when she might get a better opportunity to do it—which meant that she had best stiffen up and get on with it.
She drew in a breath. “I suppose I ought to…”
“So about you and…” Neil began at the same time.
They both stopped, exchanging an awkward look.
“Of course,” Ellie continued hurriedly, “the whole situation was entirely unexpected…”
“And as your older brother,” Neil pressed on simultaneously, “I feel a certain obligation…”
“I mean, we were halfway through the wilderness before I even realized!” Ellie protested.
“But you’re a grown woman,” Neil said stoutly. “It’s hardly my place to…”
He trailed off, and they both stared at each other.
