Page 160 of The Lost Guardian

The ground undulated beneath Santiago, like an optical illusion in a fever dream. His legs screamed; his feet ached. His pulse pounded in his ears. He stumbled more than once but never stopped moving.

And then he saw it, just before him. Stripped of its gold and filigree, the fast-crumbling stonework that fashioned the walls of the tomb gaped open to the outside world.

Still, death hungered all around.

The walls bore down on them, click-clacking their predator’s teeth. The floor pulled him back, toward the temple’s disappearing center. He was running the wrong way on an escalator. But he ran faster.

Just before the world snapped violently shut, Santiago and Ali were outside once more. Santi blinked back tears.

They weren’t safe yet.

With his heart still in his arms, Santiago ran. He rushed around the side of the temple, shrinking by the moment and pulling at the side of the mountain it was built into. The earth rumbled at the degradation. The whole cliff would collapse at any second.

Santiago sprinted past an appalled-looking Flores—Torres’s single remaining guard. He had been dutifully standing on watch as ordered, but he was gaping at the folding structure, his face pale.

“Run!” Santiago called, racing toward the bridge. When he glanced behind him, he saw the enormous trees that had encircled the temple smashing down, pulled into the furling collapse. There was no more clacking now, only crashing thunder as wood and stone and gold gnashed and folded.

A sinkhole appeared, temple and forest sucked down to the heart of the Andes.

Santiago didn’t slow, not even when he reached the swinging grass bridge. With a quick prayer to whatever gods may be listening, he continued forward, bracing each step against the erratic swinging.

The bridge rocked like a canoe in a squall, and it was all he could do to keep from pitching them both over its edge. To their deaths.

“Move!” a voice yelled from behind them, and there was Flores, running as quickly as his bulk would allow. He didn’t slow when he approached Santiago, fully intent on barreling his way through them.

“Wait, wait!” Santiago cried, pressing himself as far off to one side as he felt safe doing. Flores didn’t wait, didn’t even slow, just plowed forward, jostling Santiago and sending him down to one knee. He heard Ali release a small moan, and he was about to force himself upright again when another quake rattled the earth around them, sending rippling shock waves down the bridge. When they rattled the space around Flores, he stumbled, desperately trying to grab on to the railing to keep himself steady.

His desperate speed proved to be too much, and he was thrown over the side, screaming as his body plummeted down the ravine.

Santiago grunted as he rose to his feet once more, determined to get Ali to safety.

He had barely crossed the threshold onto solid ground when he heard a sharp snap, and he turned to watch the rope and straw fall away from them. His legs buckled and he fell, careful not to drop Ali. Instead, he placed her gently on the grass.

Across the void, Atahualpa’s temple took its rattling final breaths.

The strong stone bricks slotted together, as they had been carved to do, and grew small. The reliefs that Santiago had so admired shattered like mirrors and were pulled in, too. He watched as the lost tomb of the last Incan emperor became nothing more than a glimmer of gold in the distance.

Then, like the closing of a wound, the forest sewed itself together. Dirt and trees and flowers and bush invaded the space where the monument once stood, as though it had never been there at all.

There was a flash of light, and a small golden replica of the temple lay on the grass next to Santiago. He blinked at it.

Surely not? He held it up to the light. My gods…

Not a replica. It was too exact. And far too heavy. The tomb of Atahualpa had compacted to fit in the palm of his hand. And that’s exactly where Santiago held it.

“Santi?” he heard a quiet voice say.

Santiago looked down at Ali, still halfway in his arms. She stared at him with a puzzled expression.

“I thought I—” she said, touching her blood-soaked chest.

“Careful,” Santiago said, pulling her hands away, but she slipped his grasp and pulled up her shirt.

The skin underneath was completely smooth, dirty but unmarred, as if a bullet had never pierced her flesh. She twisted to look at her arm, and that, too, was completely healed. Santiago touched her forehead and cheeks, finding her skin damp but cool, no remnants of a fever.

“How?” he wondered out loud.

“You claimed me,” Ali said, sounding stunned. “I heard you. You said I was your treasure.”