Page 36 of Us in Ruins

“Margot, please,” Van said. Tension rippled down his shoulders. “One of us is an expert, and one of us is here on a glorified vacation. Let me lead the way.”

Margot gritted her teeth. Her nails pressed into the softs of her palms. She had to bite her tongue from saying something she regretted—he was her ticket to the rest of the Vase shards. With his journal destroyed, she’d have no idea where to look on her own.

But as soon as she had all five pieces of the Vase in her hand? Then, Van Keane was getting an earful of how she really felt.

Margot lost track of how many turns they took before their path ended abruptly, an unyielding slab of stone cutting them off. Van exhaled, stiff, and Margot miraculously refrained from using a pointed I told you so.

“This way,” he grunted, retracing his steps.

Margot’s irritation bubbled to the surface. She was tired of playing second fiddle to someone who clearly barely even knew how to play fiddle. “Just admit you don’t know where you’re going.”

“It was just a detour,” he grumbled.

Something thudded again on the other side of the house, and Margot brushed past Van. She sprinted ahead, breezing through the halls toward the sound.

The ceilings lifted cathedral-high in this wing. A gust of wind whipped through the house and blasted Margot’s curls away from her face.

She’d never seen anything like this. A series of five pendulums lacerated the sanctuary. Massive feats of ancient engineering, the pendulums had been carved out of marble with bases as big as wrecking balls. They swung in a syncopated rhythm, each off-kilter just enough to make it impossible to cross the arched threshold at the end. A doorway Margot was willing to bet life and limb led to the Vase shard.

Van sidled up next to her. “And this would be the trial part.”

“So,” Margot said, “how do we do it? Without, you know, getting sliced and diced.”

Van’s face was all frown. His eyes traced zigzagged paths through the atrium. Scanning, searching. As if taking it in for the first time.

“You do know how to do it, don’t you?” Margot prompted.

“Atlas insisted he complete this trial himself while I stood guard outside.” He said the words under his breath, ashamed almost. “I never should have trusted him to do it alone. But I’ll figure it out.”

Van exhaled once and darted into the maze before Margot could say anything else. He ducked beneath the first pendulum and rolled into the lane of the second. Margot gasped and watched between her fingers.

The ground beneath him shifted. With his arms outstretched for balance, he took quick steps, but each pendulum swung faster than the one behind it. He bobbed, trying to nail the timing. Because if not...

Van hopped backward, seconds behind getting bulldozed by the pendulum.

Margot traced their dangerous arcs, the curve of their swings—all but one.

At first glance, it was as if the hinge on the first pendulum had gotten stuck at the top. But Margot looked closer. On a track below the pendulum’s blade rolled a soccer-ball-sized rock so polished, Margot wondered if she’d be able to see the future if she looked closely enough. It depressed a clay tile directly under the pendulum’s blade at its apex.

When the tile shifted, tilting, the ball rolled off. It tumbled between rows of columns, and when it reached the other side, it lodged in an identical tile. Thunk. The first pendulum released, swinging, and the second one stopped.

Margot counted her heartbeats. One and two and three and—tilt.

“Oh, my god.” It all made sense. “It’s like the Cave of Delphi!”

Van ducked beneath the pendulum. “The what?”

In chapter eight of Relics of the Heart, Isla and Reed arrived at the Cave of Delphi separately. They were still just rivals (not yet -to-lovers) that early in the book, working separately before they committed to teaming up. When they entered the cave, a gate trapped them inside, and to escape, they had to work together to trigger a series of chain reactions, placing stones in the correct order. That was the only way to lift the bronze gate before they were locked underground with a metric ton of pythons.

This boulder was like the Cave of Delphi’s stones. It was a counterweight that triggered the pendulums.

She raced to the edge of the first lane, timing it so that she entered the danger zone right as the pendulum swung past.

“Don’t move!” she shouted suddenly. “I’ll grab the rock when it rolls to me.”

The pendulum sank back over Margot, so close it might have trimmed a few of her hairs, but the rock rolled back to her, just like she knew it would. When it landed at her feet, she wrapped her arms around it. Or, tried to. It was heavier than it looked.

“Watch out for—”

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