At first glance, it appeared to be empty, and my hopes sank at finding something useful. I forced myself to slow down and looked over the area again steadily, focusing on different areas. Nothing stood out on the ceiling or walls besides the impressivesupport structure they’d built, but something caught my attention in the center of the room.
I walked over and studied the ground, finding it was the same dirt flooring as the rest of the room, but parts of the floor were darker here.
My breath caught in my throat as I knelt down and swept dirt away from a jet-black piece of stone.
“Holy shit,” I breathed out.
It looked like obsidian, but there were threads of gold running through it, and in the center of it was a crescent moon outlined in blood-red. I dug with my fingers until I could lift up the flat piece of obsidian-like stone. It was oddly heavy in my hands despite its relatively small size and fit neatly inside my two hands cupped together.
“I found something!” I raced back over to Vail and carefully handed it over to him.
I had to stand on my tippy-toes, and he had to get on his stomach and reach down to get it. In the back of my mind, I realized that this meant getting out of here was not going to be fun, but I was way too excited about finding something to care all that much.
“It still contains magic,” Vail murmured where he knelt over the grate. “I can feel it.”
“This must have been part of the ritual,” I said. “Roth and Rynn were right in their speculation!”
“We still don’t know if this is why the wraiths are targeting the outposts,” Vail retorted flatly.
I rolled my eyes. He was such a downer.
“Let me see if I can find more.” I hurried back over to where I’d found the first piece and started moving the dirt around.
Soon, I discovered two more segments, each with a lunar symbol on them. We now had three parts of this strange obsidian stone that corresponded to our three species.
This had to be something. I didn’t know what yet, but I was excited to get this back to Roth so we could start figuring it out.
After spending another ten minutes looking around, I was satisfied that there wasn’t anything else here to find, so I went back over to the opening where Vail waited patiently above. Apparently, me finding something was enough to buy a little bit of goodwill from him.
“I think that’s it,” I said, peering up with a frown at the door.
There must have been stairs or a ladder down here at one point, but now there was nothing to help me close the distance.
It’d been a stretch to just pass the pieces I’d found back to Vail. How the hell were we going to do this?
As I was trying to figure this out, Vail moved so that he was squatting over the opening, bent over so that one hand was braced on the other side, and reached down with his other hand. Even with him crouching as low as he could, it was still a good two feet between me and that hand.
“You’ll have to jump,” he said.
“Sure, no problem,” I said wryly. “Are you sure you can hold my weight with one hand?”
In my head, I pictured myself performing a magnificent leap and latching onto his hand, only for him to slam forward into the metal grate and knock himself out, leaving me trapped down here and him bleeding up top with a head wound. I really hated my overly active imagination sometimes.
“I’ll be fine. Concern yourself with making the jump,” he said gruffly.
“Okay, but if this goes poorly, it’s not my fault,” I grumbled and then backed up a few paces before running forward and jumping up… and missing by at least half a foot.
“Samara, you’re a damn Moroi. This jump should be nothing,” Vail said in an annoyed tone. “You should be training more.”
“If it was nighttime, I could make this jump no problem,” I said, moving back further this time to give myself even more of a running start.
“You shouldn’t be dependent on the extra power you get during the night,” he said disapprovingly.
“I’m not one of your rangers, Vail,” I reminded him.
“Thank the moon for that,” he muttered.
I scowled up at him. “Ready?”