Page 84 of Us in Ruins

There was no rush of cold over her skin like the marble had claimed her. No vibration of cruel magic in her bones. Her throat didn’t tighten, and her lungs didn’t squeeze out their last breath.

She peeled one eye open. “Did it work?”

“No, it didn’t work, or else you wouldn’t be asking that, you buffoon,” Astrid wailed.

Van flew down the stairs three at a time and leaped off the edge before making it to the platform. An expression Margot had never seen him wear before twisted his face as he slammed up against her. His hands surveyed Margot, roaming from her cheeks to her shoulders to her hips and back up again.

“You’re all right,” he said. Less like a question and more like a statement he was trying to convince himself was true.

The ceiling quaked above them. She craned her neck upward, and the color drained from her face. Margot didn’t need a bunch of credit hours in architecture to know that the roof wasn’t going to hold much longer.

Astrid seemed to know it, too. “Forget it,” she said to herself more than anyone. She shoveled the clay fragments into her backpack. “I’m not dying down here! The shards are better than nothing!”

Van moved to stop her. Gravel in his voice, he said, “We had a deal.”

Margot knew what he was thinking. How he’d handed his shard, his one tether to humanity, to Astrid—to an Ashby. That the second Astrid got out of his sight, the stone would seep straight back into his heart.

It didn’t matter because it was too late. The cracked ceiling caved beneath the weight of earth that had buried it. Astrid charged toward the exit, but when Van tried to sprint after her, Margot grabbed his hand and pulled him beneath the altar, holding on as the world fell down around them.

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All Margot knew and may ever know again was dirt. Thick, dark, suffocating. Sheets of rock crashed through the center of the temple—hundreds, if not thousands, of years’ worth of history sliding with it. A wall of sediment separated Margot and Van from the staircase back to the surface. They’d only barely made it far enough away to avoid getting crushed, and Van’s arms folded around Margot’s shoulders and head, shielding her.

She slithered back, just enough for his face to come into focus. Van batted his eyes open, bits of dust and debris clinging to his lashes. One, two breaths. They lay nose to nose, chest to chest. Together.

“It’s okay,” she whispered. “We’re okay.”

Van sat up so quickly that he banged his skull against the underside of the marble altar. He didn’t even bother to rub the sore spot. “No, we’re not. Astrid’s gone.”

His voice took that robotic timbre it always did when he was stressed—even-keeled but clipped. Margot wanted to smooth out the tense fold between his brows.

“Astrid’s gone,” Margot repeated. “And we’re okay.”

Van hauled himself fully upright just so that he could start to pace in front of the altar. His eyes lingered on its smooth surface, like he could still see the shards on it. “She took them.”

The corner of Margot’s mouth lifted. “Did she?”

Van pressed the heels of his palms against his forehead. “Yes. You saw her. She took the shards and ran, and now we’re here with—”

“With the shards?” Margot unzipped her backpack and reached down to the bottom. She cradled five black-and-gold fragments in her hands. The Vase of Venus Aurelia was all right here.

The sight was enough to stop Van cold. “What did you do?”

A smile flared across her face, impossible to snuff out. “What any good partner would. I made her look somewhere else.”

The guardians had helped, whether they knew it or not. Slicing Astrid’s bag, letting the shards scatter across the floor. Astrid hadn’t even noticed that the clay fragments she picked up were the cracked pieces of a coffee mug while the real shards had been stuffed way down at the bottom of Margot’s one-strap backpack. Too preoccupied with gloating as she offered them up to Venus that she hadn’t paid any attention to the little white letters of Hotel Villa Minerva’s logo on the backs of the shards.

It was exhilarating, the way Van looked at her. Margot’s stomach bottomed out—not in a bad way.

Van swept Margot into his arms. Her feet lifted off the ground as he twirled her. She looped her arms around his shoulders, burying her face in the hollow of his neck.

Murmuring into her curls, he said, “There is no one like you, Margot Rhodes.”

She laughed, weightless. When she finally found her footing again, she felt like a can of shaken-up soda. Her heart was trying to burst out of her chest. A sheen of silver lined her eyes, blurring Van’s edges. “So, now we just have to find a way out.”

Her hand trailed down Van’s arm until it latched around his fingers and squeezed. He didn’t reciprocate. His eyes focused on something over her head.

Margot lifted onto her toes, forcing herself into his line of sight. “What is it?”

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