This is wrong,my instinct says.This is dangerous. Don’t pull it. . .
I inhale, wrap my fingers around the lever, and yank back as hard as I can.
The lever sticks for a moment but relents when I throw my body into it. The wood groans and slams toward me, moving only a hand’s width, but enough that something deep beneath the stone floor grumbles and grates. Heat licks my boots, eats into my legs, crawling higher in a sudden eruption of warmth that makes my entire body throb with warning.
The floor cracks.
I whip to my right, where Ceridwen leans over me, confusion wrinkling her face.
“Move!” I cry as the grumbling in the floor and the waves of heat intensify, darting out to open in a chasm just beside me—right where Ceridwen is standing.
I fling myself at her, knocking her and the lantern back as the stone floor drops between the shelves. A small opening, barely two arm lengths wide, but deep, and as Ceridwen trips onto the solid part of the floor, the lantern clanging along next to her, I plummet into the fall that would have swallowed her up.
“Meira!” she shouts as Garrigan bellows, “My queen!”
My fingers catch on the edge of the newly formed pit, taking all my weight as I slam to a halt against the side of the hole. Rock grates against my face, misshapen stones dig into my stomach, but otherwise, I’m unharmed. Shaken like a boulder down a landslide, but unharmed.
Ceridwen grabs my wrists. “Are you okay? Hang on—”
But I don’t move into her assistance. This pit opened up when I pulled the lever, which means it’s related to the key or the Order. Or it’s just a mean Summerian trick hidden in a vat of their wine.
Nerves flaring, I cast a glance over my shoulder. Below me, about two heights down, light flickers up from the bottom of the pit in the form of a fire ring.Did the lever activate this too? Why?
The rest of the sides of the pit are rock, jagged and cut quickly, leaving large chunks poking out. Nothing else is unusual, no other flames or markings, and I drop my eyes back to the fire ring.
There, in the center of the flames, something glints in the light.
“Wait,” I call up to Ceridwen and now Garrigan, who both have bent to their knees to help pull me out. They hold, and in their brief spurt of pausing, I release the rock wall. The unexpected tug of my weight makes them lose their grip on me and I drop, collapsing in a burst of grimy dust at the edge of the fire ring.
“My queen!” Garrigan’s voice twists with panic and he shuffles toward Ceridwen. “Do you have a rope? A ladder? Something?”
Ceridwen grunts. “Sorry, Summer doesn’t have a lot of climbing gear in ourwine cellar.”
“Then get some!”
“Calm down, Winterian, she’s fine!” But Ceridwen’s voice fades as she talks—she must be moving toward a storage area, or back up to get what Garrigan demands.
“Hold on, my queen,” he calls down to me.
“I’m okay.” I take a tentative step toward the middle of the fire ring. I didn’t exactly expect the floor to drop out the first time, and I’m not about to be caught unaware again. But the jagged stone floor holds, the fire adding light and waves of heat that encourage more sweat to bead down myface as I bend toward the object in the middle of the ring.
It’s a key. Old and iron, as long as my hand, with latticework swirling at its top to encase a seal—a beam of light hitting a mountaintop. The Order’s symbol.
I drop back, disbelief draining any emotions from my body.
I actually found it.
“Look out!” Ceridwen’s voice precedes the smack of a rope on the stone floor just next to me.
A chain snakes out from the key’s latticework. I grab the chain, shove the key into my pocket, and scramble for the rope, breath trapped against the possibility of any more surprises. But nothing happens again, like the key wanted me to take it, like the pit was waiting for someone to pull that lever and reveal all its secrets.
And maybe it was.
By the time I reach the cellar’s floor, Garrigan is positively gray with worry. He takes my elbow and guides me to my feet, his mouth opening in another question of any injuries—
When a rumbling reverberates beneath our feet.
I spin. The pit is gone.
