Page 33 of A Hunt Bound in Blood
I raised my arm and flexed my biceps. “I can help with one.”
She glanced away, but I hadn’t missed how her gaze had homed in on the muscles. “Thank you for your assistance. I don’t excel in that particular area.”
I considered her heavy pack and the way she’d flipped that shifter but didn’t express my doubts aloud. She was happy to keep her secrets, and I was happy to do something more on this mission than stand by and add ornamentation. Especially if another spike pit was about to open beneath us.
“All right, then. What am I lifting and where am I putting it?”
Again, that bottom lip disappeared between her teeth, and a groan caught in my throat. I would not be bested by a human. Whatever fascination had gripped me, I would overcome it.
“I suspect it has something to do with this section of rock here.” She trailed her fingers over a faint line I hadn’t noticed from a distance. “This seam goes all the way around the text, and there looks to be a button here?” Her fingertips passed over a circular ridge, but she was smart enough not to apply pressure. “There has to be more than just moving it. Move quick, think quick.” She puffed out a breath. “I suspect the next part of the clue is hidden under the rock, and once we move it, we won’t have a lot of time to figure things out.”
I looked from her to the rock. “What a bastard. He was an earth mage, wasn’t he.” Not a question, a statement. Earth mages and their fucking engineering.
“He was.” Glory released a sharp laugh, and I tasted the nervousness beneath it. I understood. That fucking mage had proved there was nothing he wasn’t willing to do to keep his amulet safe, including killing anyone not clever enough to solve his riddles. A person driven by reason and rationality would consider that a good excuse to call off this hunt and go home. Why should we sacrifice ourselves for the sake of some princess unlucky enough to get cursed?
But Glory didn’t seem like the type to give up just because something might kill her, and fortunately for her, neither was I. The potential for danger and life-threatening theatrics only made me all the more eager to dive in and see what came next. After all, how could you beat a spike pit?
“The only way we’ll know is to get moving.” I widened my stance and braced myself to take on the heavy weight. “Press that button and go.”
Glory hesitated only a moment. Her pulse fluttered in her throat and her fingers trembled, but she pushed the button and stepped to the side as the rock slid away from the wall. I took her place and caught the stone. Although it wasn’t a large boulder, maybe the width of my chest, the weight of it nearly dropped me. I shifted my feet to distribute the load better but almost released the stone and ran when I caught sight of what lay behind it. A small glass vial filled with a yellowish liquid rested at the bottom of the divot where the boulder had been. I only knew one liquid that colour. Had used it myself on a few rare occasions during particularly stubborn hunts.
It was a powerful, fragile explosive agent created by mixing a few dangerous potions.
Above it, a small, heavy-looking marble rolled down a grooved incline straight for the vial. Little pegs were stretched across the groove to slow the marble’s progress, but with every second, a peg pulled back. If that marble cracked the vial and exposed the potion to the air, I could imagine what the results would be: a very loud, very big, very lethal boom.
“Uh, mage? You better read fast.”
Glory ducked back in, and her eyes widened when she saw what the stone had revealed. I readied myself to shake her out of a panic, but any flicker of fear hardened into resolve as she took in the situation.
“Can we remove the vial?” she asked, leaning in.
“I wouldn’t try. Not in a rush, anyway. If the glass breaks, the explosive would do more damage than your magic.”
The stone in my arms grew heavier, and sweat dripped down my neck.
Glory focused on the text inscribed in the bared stone. “‘The stone must be measured, the stone must be weighed. If marble meets vial, the failure’s debt will be paid.’”
The man’s poems were going to be the death of me. Literally, if we didn’t solve the riddle. But although I struggled to parse through the words, trying to read the message between the lines, the answer escaped me.
My legs trembled under my burden, and I gritted my teeth as Glory rushed to assess everything around us.
“Measured, measured, measured,” she muttered. “Come on, Glory. Piece it together.”
I kept my eye on the rolling marble. Five more pegs had retracted, and only twenty remained. Another bead of sweat dripped down my forehead.
The boulder was too heavy to focus on anything else, and I doubted I’d be able to pick it up again if I set it down somewhere I wasn’t supposed to. Fucking enchantments. If the mage were here now, I would drop this rock on his head.
Glory scanned the wall, her gaze darting left and right, the furrow between her brows deepening. If it weren’t for those minor shifts in her features, I might have thought she wasn’t fazed at all by the ticking clock. Her shoulders remained loose, and her hands hung relaxed at her sides. I admired her levelheadedness under pressure, but I would have appreciated a bit more speed.
More pegs had retracted, and I didn’t let myself count how many were left.
“Glory…”
She waved a hand at me. “I know, I know.”
I almost laughed at her dismissal, except I was getting closer and closer to releasing the boulder, grabbing her, and speeding as far as I could away from that vial.
“It has to be a scale,” she murmured. “There’s no room for a scale back where the rock was, and there are no other open spaces in the wall. So…” Her eyes lit up. “‘Bramble and stone’! It’s not just the stone that has to be lifted.”