Free Shadow Fall by Seressia Glass Page A

dozen workmen were clearing away several grids while the field assistants documented each layer. The sounds of a dig soothed her, allowed her to think. “It supposedly contains some of the answers I’ve been looking for. The great mysteries of my life.”
    “Supposedly?” Comstock echoed. “You don’t know for certain?”
    “I haven’t looked inside yet.”
    “Seriously?”
    She could hear the surprise in Bernie’s voice, and understood it. “I want to look, and yet I don’t want to look at the same time. I know I’m being chickenshit, but I can’t seem to help it.”
    “You are Kira Solomon.” Comstock said sternly. “You take the Apis bull by the horns. You spit into the eye of Set’s storm and laugh as the eclipse’s Shadow engulfs the world. You walked behind the Veil of reality and sent a Fallen back to Shadow. You, my girl, are not afraid to look into a box.”
    “You have an amazing talent for putting things into perspective, Professor Comstock,” Kira said, chagrined. “I guess it’s stupid to be so cowardly.”
    “You aren’t a coward.” Comstock leaned forward. “Everything you’ve done, everything you’ve lived through, has been about this moment, about finding the truth. You even worship Ma’at, the goddess of truth. You have never once turned away from the truth, no matter how awful the view.”
    “So?”
    “So open the box and acquire the truth,” Comstock urged. “What is the worst that could happen?”
    Kira didn’t want to voice her fear. To speak it aloud, even here in this dreamscape, would be to give it life.
    “You need to confront your fear.” Comstock examined a piece of rubble. “If you can’t do that here, where can you?”
    Comstock had a point. She had to examine and acknowledge her fears. Only then could she face them, understand them, and then conquer them.
    “Balm told me a bit about my mother,” she finally said. “That she was part of a family of lightning spirits in West Africa. That her clan had made a decision to become human. But Balm didn’t know anything about my father.” She chewed on her lower lip. “What if—what if I find out that he’s a Shadowling?”
    “What if you do?”
    Kira blinked at her mentor. “Well, it changes everything!”
    “Why does it have to?” Comstock asked, the epitome of reason. “Why would that knowledge change who you were five minutes previous?”
    “Because … because …” Kira thinned her lips. She didn’t even have a half-assed rebuttal. So she’d find some lemons on the family tree. So what? She’d pick herself up as she usually did, make a big batch of lemonade, and go on with her life. She’d continue being the Hand of Ma’at. She’d continue being a Shadowchaser for as long as her Lightblade responded to her touch.
    “You’re right as usual,” she said ruefully. “I’m tired of this hanging over my head. I’m tired of the what-ifs. I’m going to find the truth and then I’m going to deal with it.”
    Comstock beamed. “That’s my girl!”
    A shout rose from the workers near the outer wall of the temple. Kira quickly made her way up the rise to the mud brick barrier, Bernie following. Workers and field assistants parted like waves breaking before the bow of a ship as she approached. They huddled close as she knelt on the dry, hot earth.
    “It’s a was scepter,” she said, carefully brushing bits of debris away. “One of the best preserved I’ve seen since the cache found in Tutankhamun’s tomb. And it’s intact.”
    She took a brush from one of the workers, then slowly worked to free the staff from its baked tomb. Somehow, here, it had been protected from the Nile’s annual flooding, perfectly preserved by the dryness and heat of the western desert. If she thought about how something like this could still be found now, after thorough excavations by Petrie and others, the collection of red and black pottery, the dried bodies and other artifacts that enabled dating of several