Page 82 of Empire of Shadows

“Sure did,” he agreed.

“We should have gone directly up the Belize and looked for the arch. It would have cut…”

“A solid day off the ride,” Bates filled in around a mouthful of beef and tomatoes. “And probably two or three days’ of trekking through the bush.”

Ellie closed her eyes and fought the need to curse.

“Should we go back?” she asked.

“Not at this point,” he replied. She heard him carefully fold up the maps. “We’re too far along now for it to be worth backtracking, but it does mean that we don’t have to find your pillar to know where we’re going. We’ll follow the river up another ten miles or so—however far we can get at this time of the year—and then cut overland until we hit the tributary. But…”

He trailed off, and Ellie felt another little jolt of alarm.

“But what?” she prompted.

The look he gave her was unsettlingly sympathetic.

“If we don’t find yourBlack Pillar, you might want to ask yourself whether it’s worth it,” he quietly noted.

“Worth it?” Ellie returned as her sense of dismay grew deeper.

“The location of that tributary on my map is approximate,” he said. “I haven’t surveyed it myself—I was just going off of what was reported back to me, which isn’t always terribly reliable. If we head in the right direction, we’ll eventually hit it or some other branch of the Belize… but there’s no telling how long we’ll have to hack our way through the bush to get there, or what we’ll find when we do,” he added warningly.

“You still think the map might be a hoax,” she pressed. Her throat felt tight.

“I think there’s a distinct possibility that even if there is an El Dorado at the end of your rainbow, we’re gonna find it in the same state as that cave chamber this morning,” Bates concluded bluntly.

His words struck Ellie like a blow.

She thought of the look in Bates’s eyes as he had surveyed the devastation in the looted cavern.

Her White City might not be marked on Bates’s map on the colony—but that didn’t mean someone hadn’t already found it and cleaned it out.

For an agonized moment, Ellie considered whether Bates might be right. Did she really want to chance facing that terrible disappointment on an even grander and more awful scale?

She thought of Bates’s tense confession that he had stopped adding the new Mayan sites he discovered to his maps. It had shocked her, as documentation was such an essential part of her training—but she could understand what might have driven him to do it.

Ellie wouldhaveto report their find if it turned out that there really was a city behind that dratted X on the map. She could hardly keep such an important scientific discovery to herself.

Of course, when she did, it would become clear to Bates that she’d been lying to him all this time about her name.

Guilt burst over her at the thought. Thanks to Bates’s annoying habit of referring to her as ‘Princess,’Ellie had forgotten about her obnoxious alias.

Obviously, she needed to remedy that. Her traveling companion had more than proved that he deserved her trust. The reminder that she had engaged his assistance under false pretenses—and then maintained them long after she had any reasonable excuse for it—made her feel a little ill.

Her name. The truth about how she acquired the map. The teensy little fact that she was related to one of his best friends.

She would fix all of it, she determined firmly. Just… not tonight.

Ellie knew it was weakness, but they were both exhausted by the efforts of the day and the disappointment of discovering the looted cave. She’d find the right time to tell Bates the truth—soon, she promised herself.

Bates’s voice startled her out of her reverie.

“Hey—you all right?”

“Yes, of course,” Ellie replied quickly. “I am well aware of the various risks of hiking overland. I would still like to try, if you’re willing to continue.”

Their eyes locked. Ellie felt an unexpected tension build inside of her… and then Bates’s gaze dropped to her collarbone.

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