Chapter 1: The Fall into Fantasy
The scent of old books and slow-dusting dreams clung to the air in Maree’s apartment, a quiet counterpoint to the city’s hum outside her window. She lay sprawled across bedding the color of deep cream, the silk cool against her bare skin. One hand held a well-thumbed paperback, its spine cracked in all the right places. Her other hand moved with a lazy, knowing rhythm between her thighs, fingertips tracing slow, building circles.
A soft sigh escaped her lips, her head tilting back into the pillow. The words on the page—a particularly vivid description of hands and heat—blurred as she focused on the sensation, a warm, tightening coil low in her belly. Her breath hitched. Just a little more.
Then, nothing.
A vast, hollow exhaustion washed over her, so sudden and complete it felt like a physical blow. The book slipped from her slackened grip, landing soundlessly on the duvet. Her hand stilled, then fell away. Her eyes, a sharp and alluring grey, fluttered shut. Sleep didn’t creep in; it swallowed her whole.
The dream was immediate and visceral.
The soft silk was gone, replaced by the cold bite of leather straps around her wrists. They were firm, unyielding, holding her arms above her head against a headboard she couldn’t see. The room was dark, smelling of sandalwood and something else, something sharp and metallic.
“You’re not in charge here, Maree.”
Todd’s voice came from the shadows at the foot of the bed, low and absolute. It wasn’t a question. It was a fact, laid down like a law.
In her dream, she strained against the restraints, not to escape, but to feel their resistance. A test. Always a test.
“Aren’t I?” she murmured, her own voice sounding distant.
He moved then, a solid shape resolving from the dark. He didn’t touch her. He just looked, his gaze a physical weight on her skin. “You know you’re not. You come here precisely because you’re not.”
Her heart hammered against her ribs, a frantic bird in a cage of her own making. It was fear and anticipation, twisted together so tightly she couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began.
“Now,” he said, his voice dropping to a whisper that was somehow more terrifying than a shout. “You’re going to tell me what you found in the tomb. The real thing. Not the report you filed with the university.”
The tomb. The dream shifted, the scent of sandalwood suddenly mixing with the dry, ancient dust of a buried chamber. The leather on her wrists felt like the rough stone of a sarcophagus.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she breathed, the lie automatic.
He laughed, a short, ugly sound. “Don’t you?”
He placed a hand on her ankle, his grip like iron. He began to pull, slowly, relentlessly, dragging her down the bed, her body a dead weight. The leather cuffs cut into her wrists. The headboard groaned.
“Let’s try again.”
The insistent, abrasive buzz of her phone shattered the dream, yanking her back into the quiet of her bedroom. She gasped, her body jerking upright, her hands flying to her wrists. Nothing there. Just smooth, unmarked skin.
The room was exactly as she’d left it. Muted colors. Soft fabrics. The forgotten erotica novel lay face down on the sheets.
She blinked, trying to clear the phantom sensation of leather and the echo of Todd’s voice from her mind. It was just a dream. A stupid, stress-induced dream.
The phone on her nightstand continued to vibrate, skittering toward the edge with an aggressive urgency. She snatched it up, her heart still pounding a chaotic rhythm against her ribs.
The screen glowed with a name she hadn’t seen in over a year.
Todd.
Her thumb hovered over the answer call button. The dream felt less like a memory and more like a premonition. The buzz of the phone was the only sound in the sanctuary of her apartment. It felt like an alarm.
The phone felt like a live wire in her hand. The name Todd glowed, a tiny digital ghost from a life she’d tried to box up and store away. With a sharp exhale that was more defiance than decision, she swiped the screen and brought the device to her ear.
“You have a terrible sense of timing,” she said, her voice roughened by sleep and the remnants of the dream.
A low chuckle traveled down the line, familiar and unsettling. “Hello to you too, Ravens. Dreaming about me?”
A cold finger traced a path down her spine. She sat up straighter, pulling the silk sheet around her shoulders. “What do you want, Todd?”
“Straight to business. I’ve missed that.” She could almost hear him leaning back in a chair, the smug smile in his voice. “I’ve got a line on something. Something big. The kind of thing that makes tenured professors weep into their sherry.”
She said nothing, letting the silence stretch. It was a tactic he’d taught her.
He broke first, his tone shifting into something closer to genuine. “It’s the Lion’s Maw, Maree. A location. A real one.”
She felt the air leave her lungs. The Lion’s Maw wasn’t a myth; it was a grail. A lost trading outpost from the 3rd century, supposedly swallowed by the Sahara, rumored to hold a library that made Alexandria look like a neighbourhood bookmobile. “You’re full of it.”
“I have a patron. A very serious, very wealthy patron who doesn’t enjoy being laughed at. He’s got a fragment of a map, corroborated by a text I sourced from a rather dramatic auction in Vienna. It points to a specific valley in the Ahaggar mountains.”
Her mind was already there, sifting through sand and stone, feeling the dry, ancient air. “And?”
“And I need my best archaeologist. I need you.”
The words hung between them, charged and heavy. This was why he called. Not for pleasantries. Not for what they’d been. For what she could do.
“When?” she asked, her voice tight.
“That’s the catch. The patron is… meticulous. He wants another week for satellite imagery and ground-penetrating radar analysis. We move in one week. Not a day sooner.”
A week. The tension in her shoulders eased, replaced by a flutter of anticipation. It was real, but it was distant. A future problem.
“So, you’re just calling to get me on the hook,” she said, a dry note entering her voice.
“I’m calling to give you a heads up. Clear your calendar. Buy some sturdy boots. Try to remember how to play well with others.” The smugness was back. “We’ll talk details in seven days. Don’t do anything reckless before then.”
“No promises,” she murmured.
The line went dead. Maree held the phone to her ear for a moment longer, the dial tone a bland replacement for Todd’s demanding presence. She tossed the device onto the rumpled sheets. The dream’s fear had evaporated, leaving behind only a low, familiar thrum of excitement. A new tomb. A new puzzle.
Her gaze fell on the forgotten paperback, its pages crumpled beneath it. She reached over, smoothed the spine, and picked it up. The apartment was quiet again, the city’s lights a soft glow behind the curtains. The scent of old books and dreams enveloped her once more.
She sank back into the pillows, the erotica resting open on her chest. She didn’t read. She just closed her eyes, her fingertips resting on the printed words, and let the quiet hum of possibility pull her back under. This time, there were no dreams of leather or demanding voices. There was only the deep, silent dark, and the wait for what was to come.