Page 131 of Empire of Shadows

“I guess it’s a good thing for you that I’m unreasonable, then.”

“Honorable,” she returned automatically. She closed her eyes for a moment against a well of emotion that rose up inside of her. “The word you are looking for ishonorable.”

Adam went quiet. She could still feel the weight of his gaze through the near-darkness.

Ellie took a breath.

“If I had trusted you with the entirety of the map from the beginning, we would have been here days ago,” she spilled out. “We might have found the arch and moved on before Dawson and Jacobs ever arrived.”

Adam rubbed his face. “Yeah, well… if I’d hazarded more of an educated guess about where the rest of your landmarks might be once Ididhave the whole thing, I might’ve saved us the trouble anyway.”

“I suppose Dawson and Jacobs would simply have caught us in the city, then,” Ellie mused awkwardly.

“I dunno. That guy Dawson is godawful at reading a map,” Adam returned dryly.

A smile pulled at her lips involuntarily at this hint of his old humor—and then died fairly quickly.

“I… owe you an apology for the rest of it as well,” Ellie said carefully.

Adam’s silence had weight. Ellie forced herself to push past it, knowing that it was the right thing to do.

“There might have been some sense to it in the beginning—concealing my name,” she continued. “Before I really knew who you were. I should have corrected it long before now… along with everything else.”

“Everything else?” Adam echoed a little dangerously.

“I stole that map,” Ellie blurted out. “The circumstances were admittedly unusual, and I told myself I was only really borrowing it… but borrowing something without telling anyone about it is stealing. Dawson and Jacobsarethieves as well,” she hurried to add. “Jacobs was trying to purchase the map and the medallion off my supervisor, Mr. Henbury, who had absolutely no right to sell them. When Mr. Henbury no longer had the items to sell, Jacobs tried to throw him through a door.”

She forced herself to say the rest.

“But I haven’t any more right to it than they do. I took it with me because I knew it shouldn’t belong tothem, but I could quite easily have turned it over to a reputable authority. I kept it for myself, and I was far from transparent about that with you when we agreed to undertake this expedition together. I was afraid if I told you the truth about where the map had come from, you’d decide the whole business was more trouble than it was worth.”

“Princess… you fell on me from a balcony with a gag on,” Adam pointed out. “I’m pretty sure I knew how much trouble I was getting into.”

“You helped me,” Ellie countered firmly. “You came to my aid, and I repaid you with falsehoods. You deserved better than that.”

She could see his shrug through the gloom.

“You wanted to follow your map. I had an opening in my calendar. Don’t see that you owe me much for that,” he replied flatly.

The reply stung, even as it offered Ellie a convenient way out. She could accept it, and the matter would be settled. They were more or less strangers—their relationship one of convenience. What else should it be?

“No,” she burst out roughly. “You protected me from Jacobs. You took a chance on my map. You—you lost yourboat, and you never once made me feel like it was my fault. You treated me like an equal partner—like… like acolleaguewhen you were the one with all the knowledge of how to get where we were going, and all I brought to the table was… well, a respectable knowledge of current scholarship on Mesoamerican civilizations… but you hardly required that. Perhaps I was simply an opening in your calendar, but you have been averygreat deal more than that to me.”

Ellie uttered the words in the same low tones that she had used since Adam had entered. They still seemed to ring in the silence of the tent in a manner that left her feeling terribly exposed.

“The least I could have done in return was grant you the truth,” she finished.

“It would’ve been nice to know who I was really traveling with,” Adam finally said. His voice carried to her softly through the shadows that cloaked them.

There was nothing of accusation in his voice. What Ellie heard there sounded more like hurt.

She winced against it, knowing what must come next.

“Yes. Well. About that…” she began awkwardly.

Adam slumped back in his chair.

“Awww hell,” he said. “What is it? You’re actually an escaped felon? You’ve got a trigger-happy maharajah for a boyfriend?”

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