I clatter up the staircase, keeping pressed to the wall because the other side is a sheer drop to the field.
Shouldn’t we have had to sign a waiver to do this?
The top stair hangs precariously over the cube’s platform. I stop before it, watching the cube spit several rounds of projectiles around the field, hitting things at random.
Thio’s across from me, creeping through what looks like the first floor of an abandoned house, clutching at least three boxes. He’s grabbing as many as he finds, too.
The cube spits at him, and I dive for the top step, snatchingthe iron component box and flinging myself backward as the cube gurgles and fires at me. This chunk hits the step and sprays into my hair, but I miss the worst of it by hurling my body halfway down the stairs in a cumbersome topple.
The crowd makes a noise—a cheer? A gasp? It’s hard to tell.
My heart’s already thumping with the running and ducking, but it lurches painfully as I catch my breath against the staircase wall.
Anxiety still prickles across my skin, makes me want to dig at my forearms.
I need to get the copper wire. Thio said it was on my side.
Go.
Focus on that.
I scan the area from my elevated place on the stairs. A few more boulders are scattered around the staircase, more walls, a concrete sphere—ah, there. A box is wedged next to the sphere, and I can see the symbol on it for copper.
Movement out of the corner of my eye turns out to be Thio, nearly back to our wall.
I curse but clutch the boxes and clatter the rest of the way down the stairs to make a run for the sphere.
Halfway there, a downrightfrigidprojectile lobs onto my side, sending me careening to my knees with a yelp.
Shivering, I scrape it off and army-crawl my way to the sphere, grab the copper box, and haul ass back to the main wall, cover be damned.
Thio’s already there.
Which means he has a front-row seat for the chunk of cube that hits me in the back.
I wheeze but stagger to safety behind the wall next to him, where he’s wearing that way too smug, way too satisfied grin I hate. Used to hate. Not sure I ever did hate.
“I win,” he says.
My answering smile is only a little exasperated as I dump my armful of boxes between us, into the pile he’s already made with his. “Well, I like making you come apart in my mouth. Who’s the real winner here?”
His cheeks are already red with exertion, but he bites one of his lip rings, and I don’t want to be here. Don’t want to be doing this challenge or using a lot of energy to not think about so many things. I want to be in the back of Thio’s car or in my kitchen—no, I want to be in a bed because we haven’t had that since the first night, after the club. I want a bed and a locked door and I want him naked and spread out for me.
That becomes the bright light in my tunnel, the only thing I see: getting out of here.
I tear through the boxes. “Diamond, copper wire, iron?”
Thio follows suit. “Yeah. I grabbed chalk and sulfur, too—the chalk will be good. If I can draw a teleportation circle, I can get the coordinates of the location more exact. Do you—Sebastian?”
The boxes are wood. No clasps. The lid just pops up.
I’ve got the iron one open.
It’s empty.
The copper wire box had its component in it. I check the herb box I grabbed—it’s full of vials stuffed with various herbs.
But the iron box.
