Page 59 of A Discovery: Love and Other Things

I grabbed his wrist attempting to steady my fit. “I’m not laughing at you. I’m just surprised that you want me to stay.”

He cocked his head to one side, still not comprehending.

“James. You’re the smartest man in the field. You should be with someone who is at your caliber. Like Dr. Moore.”

“Sanura,” he groaned in warning.

“I know, I know. She’s happily married.” I hadn’t brought her up because I was jealous this time. “I just meant that you need someone more educated and traveled than an undergraduate student. I still eat cold pizza from the fridge on my way to class, for God’s sake. You should be dining on caviar with super-smart professors.”

“I hate caviar,” he said plainly. “I’d rather the cold pizza.”

I chuckled.

His fingers intertwined with mine. “I don’t think I can let you go.”

I didn’t want to go. I wanted to remain by his side.

His free hand continued to play at the sand, raking it as he gripped my hand with the other.

I leaned my head onto his shoulder. “Then don’t let me go,” I whispered.

He pulled away from me, surprised by my response. The connection in our stare was like steel.Unbreakable.I didn’t know how this would work, but I wanted to figure it out—with him.

Now was the time to let him know how I truly felt. That I had fallen madly in love with him and that I was his. My heart would burst if I didn’t tell him.

“James, I lo—”

Suddenly, a pebble clanked against something in the dirt hole, stealing our attention. We both leaned in to see what it was.

Gold.

A small gold block with uneven edges, worn and broken over time.

“What is it?” I asked.

James grabbed a brush and removed some of the sediment on it to reveal more of its surface, then gingerly picked it up and placed it in his palm under the light.

Faint engraving in the metal could be seen at first glance. James brushed it some more to make it more visible.

Flowers bordered the edge of the block, intricately engraved. A series of hieroglyphs adorned the center.

I read them— “Ankhesenamun?”King Tutankhamun’s wife and half-sister. I looked at James. “What is her cartouche doing here?”

Brows drawn, James shook his head as if trying to place why.

My brain worked, compiling data from the past two months. The childhood scenes on the temple wall of King Tutankhamun playing in a garden with his sisters. The figurine of Ay. The bracelet with the same flower design on the hook.

These flowers, they seemed familiar. I had seen them in a textbook. A scene with Ankhesenamun gifting her husband flowers.

I flipped the block over in his hands to reveal more hieroglyphs. I read them slowly in my head:Loyal wife, guardian of the memory of the Great King of Wisdom.“King of Wisdom” was Tutankhamun’s title.

I grabbed his forearm. “James.”

His attention was no longer on the block.

“The temple. Ankhesenamun. She’s the patron.”

It all made sense. She had built this temple for her husband. The figurine of Ay was here because he’d later forced her to marry him after Tutankhamun’s death. She must have built this temple in secret while she was married to Ay and had tried to use him as a decoy to keep anyone from finding out she was responsible for the temple.

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