I was brave. I could do hard things.
Goddess, help me.
“Should we tell Shay and Dirge before we go down?” I asked, glancing up at the damaged spot in the ceiling from which we’d fallen.
“I would love to, but our phones still aren’t working, and they’re back outside, trying to find an alternate way in. I think our best bet is to find what we came for and get back to the surface as quickly as we can.”
“Okay, then, let’s do it.”
If we waited much longer, I might lose my nerve.
One more kiss, and Lucien started climbing down the spiral staircase. I sucked in a deep breath through my nose and followed him into the darkness.
I focused on the light filtering in from the stairwell, not daring to let myself look down or think about the fact that the ground was swallowing me up with every step.
Still, by the time Lucien’s footsteps stopped, my breathing was rapid, and my heart was pounding as if I’d just run a marathon instead of descending the stairs for a few minutes.
The staircase had taken us several stories down, the light small overhead. I just kept my focus on it as I reached the bottom stair and waited.
“Hang on. There’s a torch here and what looks like a lantern. The room is pretty big.” He kept talking as he worked, and within a few moments, he had lit the torch and was touching it to the bowl-style lantern he’d found. But the fire didn’t stay in the bowl; it raced along the walls, where troughs of oil surrounded the room and ignited, casting their dancing light into the room.
Finally, I exhaled.
This room was at least as large as the temple itself, but now that it was lit, shock filled me.
It was made of the same stone, sure. But that was where the similarities ended. Gold and treasure were stacked higher than my head, in great mounds all throughout the room.
“Holy shit,” Lucien murmured, taking my hand in his free one as we gazed around at the massive hoard of treasure together and began to walk deeper.
“I think this is more gold than Fort Knox.” Everywhere I looked, there was some kind of treasure. Coins, bars, jewelry, and jeweled goblets that looked like they belonged on King Arthur’s round table.
“Is that… the Florentine Diamond?” Lucien paused next to one of the mounds, pointing at an enormous, glittering diamond two-thirds of the way up the pile.
“I’ve never heard of it.”
“That’s because it was stolen over a hundred years ago, and it’s been missing ever since.” He shook his head, but we kept walking.
“We probably shouldn’t touch anything, just in case.” Maybe it was superstitious of me, but you didn’t mess with the dead or the sacred, and this place felt like hallowed ground. Almost as if the spirits of the phoenixes were still here, guarding it, watching us.
“I agree. We’re not here to get rich. We’re here to save our people.” I didn’t miss the way his gaze dropped to my palm, the way he seemed to swallow the unspoken you.
They lay heavy in the space between us, all those unspoken things. Like how he felt about me. I’d told him I loved him, and even though he’d asked me to bond with him, he hadn’t told me he loved me. I thought he did, but what if I was just reading into things more than what he actually felt?
“Hellcat, look there.” He pointed up at a taller mound, a giant, sapphire nest sitting atop it. “We found the nesting grounds.”
“Yes, we did. The question is, how do we find a single piece of the omega stone in this hoard without disturbing anything?” This was way more than finding a needle in a haystack; this was a single piece of treasure in a hoard any dragon would be proud of.
“I have no idea. I guess we just start looking.” He shrugged, and we walked deeper.
We looked high and low in the mounds, careful not to touch anything, in case they all came tumbling down. Or we set off some kind of ancient alarm system that would fry us.
You know, either or.
“All the nests so far have been empty.” I hadn’t put much weight on the first one, because, well, we’d known the phoenixes were always rare. But I’d counted four so far, and not a single egg. It looked like we were about halfway through the room, and those weren’t good odds.
Was the entire species really gone? It was a depressing thought. So many species were in decline, and I knew the omega wars had been deadly, but wiping an entire magical race from the planet was a new level of horrible I couldn’t stand to think about, as we stood here in the midst of the amazing things they’d created.
But it wasn’t just phoenixes. We were all in decline because we couldn’t stop fighting and let each other exist. It made me wonder what would happen once we did complete the stone and Brielle’s powers extended to all the wolf packs in the world. Our numbers would increase again, but would the new power tip us back in the wrong direction or right the scales?
All told, there were eight nests, each formed from a single, large gemstone into a bowl-like nest shape.
From the ground, they all looked empty.
At the very end of the rectangular space sat a single chest made of wood and iron. It looked old and, other than its age making it rare, relatively worthless.
“That doesn’t blend in with everything else, don’t you think?” I pointed it out to Lucien, who was studying a mound a few feet away, topped with a fiery ruby nest.
“Not at all. I think we’re going to have to check it. I was hoping we’d see the piece lying somewhere so we could take it and go, but this all seems to be unmagical, just valuable.”
I nodded, agreeing with his assessment.
“I’ll do it,” I offered, ascending the eight steps to the elevated platform where the chest sat, completely alone.
“Go slow, just in case.” He was right behind me, ready to spring into action if anything went wrong.
But when I hesitantly placed my hand on the heavy iron clasp, nothing happened. No magical zing, just inert metal.
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