Empire of Shadows (Raiders of the Arcana, #1)

by Jacquelyn Benson

Her reflection stared waveringly back at her from the rain-streaked glass, sporting brown hair of a standard hue

“I am quite certain the Egyptians don’t go in for torture,” Ellie countered. “Nor do I imagine it would be nearly as fun as you think if they did. That is the whole point.” “You have no imagination,” Constance retorted.

She was still mulling over which of the journals she would approach first. The most respectable ones were also the ones most likely to balk at accepting a submission from a woman.

“Princess?” Ellie hissed. He shrugged. “If the slipper fits…”

With a silent, dawning horror, Ellie absorbed that the knife-wielding maniac was likely the single person in British Honduras with the most knowledge of the very places she needed to go.

not that she’d looked at all bad in that soaking wet dressing gown. Adam was fairly certain she wouldn’t appreciate him noticing that—but last time he’d checked, he still had a pulse.

She’d get them both eaten by a jaguar in five minutes. She had that jaguar bait air about her.

The alcohol made her thoughts a bit fuzzy at the edges as she climbed the stairs to her room on the hotel’s upper floor. She would probably have a headache tomorrow. She decided to blame Bates for that as well.

So long as she and Bates kept making good time, they should be able to stay ahead of any pursuit.

Um … she was wrong about that the last time …

“You’re a cad,” she accused. “A charming one,” Bates agreed. “Intelligent. Moderately good looking.” “Oh, blast it anyway,” Ellie muttered.

He’d been jibing Ellie about the spiders,

jibe is intransitive, right?

I can’t do that. I try to pick up a book, and after maybe five or six minutes, I’m thinking about something else—what they’re gonna serve for dinner, or that my leg itches, or that I left a lamp lit somewhere.

Thank you. That's me, too—for most nonfiction, anyway.

She was having trouble wrapping her mind around it. Books were like breathing for her—an extension of her being. She hardly had to think about the fact that she was reading when she did it. The words melted into a stream of beautiful knowledge pouring into her mind.

Also me

Ellie let him help her up. Once she was standing again, he released his grasp. It left her feeling oddly like she had just lost something.

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.

Sigh. Does every novel with a romance include this same plot device??

He pressed his fingers to the bridge of his nose, and then took another deliberate swig of rum. Part of Ellie’s brain watched the whole scene unfold with a sense of horrified embarrassment, but it seemed to be walled off from the neurons that were actually making her mouth move.

She was reminded—very uncomfortably— that she still wasn’t being completely honest with him. She needed to remedy that… and yet the thought of doing it now—of how it would so quickly and thoroughly shatter this quiet camaraderie by the fire—made her chest feel tight.

ditto

they agreed not to press charges if I signed a statement promising good behavior in the future.” Adam cocked up an eyebrow. “And you signed it?” he asked with obvious disbelief. Ellie raised her chin defiantly. “It is possible that I wrote down the name of the Right Honorable William Gladstone instead of my own,” she admitted stoutly.

Mortification rolled over her. Everything the temperance people said about drink was true. Here Ellie was, just partway through that bottle of liquid gold, and she had turned from a rational, modern woman into a savage beast.

she had assumed that as a scholar and a suffragist, she could choose her own noble principles… and then actually stick to them.

Ellie had even been treated to the local version of a hot chocolate—a piping hot, bitter concoction generously spiced with chili. It was possible she had consumed three cups of it.

the remaining water in the system would instantaneously convert to gas. Gas took up more space than water. In a confined environment, a rapid increase in mass had to find a way out—ergo, explosion.

… rapid increase in _volume_ …

“I’ve gotten out of worse scrapes before.” “Have you?” she pressed. “Er… maybe not, but it can’t be that different. It’s all about waiting for the right opportunity and then improvising.” Adam’s cheerful reply sparked a flash of concern. “What about a plan?” Ellie countered urgently. “Sure,” Adam agreed with a shrug. “We can make one of those too.”

She’d probably want some nice, mild guy in a waistcoat who shaved regularly and never once caught himself smelling a bit like a rotten lizard.

“Coming through. ¡Abran paso!”

a verdigris-covered basin measuring at least forty feet long.

"long"??

once he acknowledged the shocking truth that underlays it.”

underlies

Survive first. Get chewed out later.

His hands felt good. So did the rest of him. Ellie’s cheeks flushed further, and something began to move through her—something tingling and warm, like holding a potentially volatile pair of chemical compounds in her hands that she knew would explode the minute she combined them.

now that he was no longer licking her collarbone, a little part of her rational brain began to reassert itself.

The thought touched Ellie with a little chill of excitement. She was walking through the secrets of a lost world. Hopefully, it wouldn’t kill her.

If Ellie estimated the cubic area of the room, the ambient temperature, and the rate at which the hot vapor was coming in, she could calculate the precise number of minutes they had before they succumbed to heat stroke. Ellie shook off the thought. She was getting distracted. Her brain was flailing for the wrong sort of answers.

“D’iyoos ka’ u-kānān-t-e,”

He took Ellie’s hand and tugged her gently from the collapsing remnants of a lost world.

You think the last 3 words are accidental? Nah.

She didn’t know what they said—yet. She was a little rusty with her Glagolitic.