Page 64 of A Promise of Peridot
“The treasure... It’s... it’s all here.”
Fedrik dropped to a crouch beside Griffin to inspect the narrow passage.
There was almost nothing across the continent I could want to do less than this, but... if the blade was in there, it would call to me.
Kane’s eyes fell to mine, my intention clearly plain across my face. “You can’t. It’s too tight.”
“I’m the only one the blade will speak to,” I said quietly, Fedrik out of earshot.
“Fine,” Kane said, a muscle in his jaw jumping. “I’m right behind you.”
But we both knew none of the men could fit.
Only me.
In my own little tomb.
I knelt and squeezed past Fedrik and Griffin, my elbows andknees scuffing against the dirt and dust. My head swam with the earthy stench: clay and mildew and decay. My heart beat like a drum in my ears, my brow beading with sweat. So tight. So narrow. And all submerged in stark, pitch-blackness. I was shaking now, not from the cold but from the fear. I nearly gagged on it. This would be the single most miserable way to die, trapped in here, left to suffocate.
No, no, do not think like that.
I scraped and slinked, but the tunnel was only constricting the deeper I crawled, and we were so far under the ground, and air was escaping me. With each heave, I lodged myself farther, and farther still—until I turned with the angle of the stone and saw where the tunnel would deposit me. Hurrying my elbows against the floor, I clawed and crawled and slid through to the other side, landing in a room where everything was glimmering.
A sparkling room, lit with candles—and laden with gilded treasure.
“Arwen,” Mari said, overcome.
My eyes squinted to adjust to the glow. To take it all in.
Stacks and stacks of copper and silver and gold coin. Life-sized marble statues of virile men and women cloaked in gauzy bedsheets. Bejeweled tiaras and serpentine scepters. Jade votives and ages-old scrolls now petal-thin. Fierce, glinting weaponry. Beads and vases and crowns.
So much my eyes could barely devour the small, overflowing room. They swept up to the ancient wrought-iron candelabra implanted in the stone of the ceiling. The light that flickered there—enchanted pillar candles that had probably been lit for centuries.
“Arwen?”Kane’s voice called through the tunnel.
“Yes,” I called. “The treasure—it’s here.”
“The blade?”
I drank in the four walls shrouded and bloated and filled to the very brim with riches, my eyes assaulted by the flickering glow and sparkle. I pored over every inch. None of the longswords, daggers, or scimitars had a hilt with all nine stones. No song that sang only to me. No blade.
“I don’t think it’s here,” I called. I heard Kane curse. “But I’ll keep looking.”
“There is so much history in here,” Mari said, voice soft. Awed. “Stories and scrolls and books from eras and eras ago... I could weep. Am I weeping?”
“Just don’t touch anything,” I murmured, my eyes greedily gobbling up an entire wall of resplendent, glittering bejeweled spears.
Despite Azurine being the most lavish place I’d ever visited, and everything in that palace—even the little golden soap dishes adorned with fine pearl latticework—likely worth more than my whole home back in Abbington, nothing,nothingI’d seen there could compare to the wonders that filled this room.
“Oh, my Stones,” Mari whispered.
I whirled. “You found it?”
“It’s the ledger... just like Niclas said. With all the names in it...”
Before I could caution her against it, Mari reached her hand out and closed it around the book’s dust-flecked leather, and every candle in the room winked out.
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