Chapter 21

Van brought Margot to a freaking tomb. Not exactly dream-date material.

They stood shoulder to shoulder at the entrance to the Crypta Neapolitana. Behind them was a dazzling riviera. The kind of sight Margot expected to see on vintage postcards at the bottom of a hat box, all rough-edged and stamped with faded ink. Buildings with painted stucco walls in pastel yellows and citrus oranges, adorned with copper, were offset by the too-green leaves of the pines and palms.

Ahead? The Crypta Neapolitana was a tunnel, long and winding, where shadows slicked the walls and ivy crept through the crevices. According to Van, it would take them to the Tomb of Virgil. But that wasn’t their biggest issue right now.

“You mean you want us to go through . . . there. The miles-long tunnel through the mountain that is”—she gestured toward a white-and-red striped lever like the kind that blocked train tracks and an empty visitor’s center kiosk—“Clearly super open for guests.”

“It takes us straight to the tomb. No other way there.”

He shoved his hands in his pockets, hands she knew were turning to stone from the inside out, and something in Margot’s chest twinged. If she didn’t do something, soon the swirling stone would encase him, closing him off from her forever, just as she’d started to discover what was underneath his cold exterior.

“You do know that you had been allegedly crushed to death in an unsafe ruin, right?” Margot asked.

Van sighed. “You do know that didn’t actually happen, right?”

Glad to see he was back to his ordinarily persnickety self.

They ducked beneath the barrier and plunged into the ancient tunnel. Margot curled her arms around herself. Even though the air was still summertime sticky in the shade, she couldn’t shake the shiver from her skin.

“Any funny business I should worry about this time? Trapdoors? Snake pits? Mudslides? Do I have to fistfight the ghost of Virgil?” She’d meant for it to sound light, but shadows clawed at every word.

“This trial is a bit different than the first three. More of a test, less of a task.” He circled his neck. The strands of marble that stretched toward his ear groaned with the movement. Weren’t they getting closer? Why wasn’t the stone retreating? “Also, Virgil isn’t actually there.”

“What, did his bones just get up and walk out?”

“He was cremated. And then his ashes were lost in the Middle Ages. So, it’s basically just a big stone room.”

Margot eyed him. “How’d you learn all this stuff anyway?”

“All what stuff?” Van asked. He stared straight ahead, toward the pinprick light at the other side steadily growing larger.

“Like what happened in the Middle Ages to Virgil’s ashes, and everything about the Vase. I don’t reckon you read it all in the papers during your Newsies era.”

Van tugged at the collar of his shirt, fingers grazing over the seam where skin met stone. “Honestly, I . . . didn’t know much until I met Atlas. He taught me everything I know.”

“Oh, god,” Margot said. “Sorry, I didn’t know. I never would have brought him up.”

“I know.” Something crossed his face—a flurry of emotions, faint as fresh snow—and then he said, “He underestimated me, Atlas did. Loved to remind me that I was a grifter he picked up off Fifty-Eighth. But I was a quick learner, and even if I had to work twice as hard to convince him I was worth my salt, I wasn’t going back empty-handed.”

Margot’s ribs squeezed too tightly around her chest. She knew the feeling. Knew what it was like to have people peer down their noses at her, scrutinizing her every move. Every snide remark Astrid made had wormed under Margot’s skin, eating her away like dry rot. It found the weak joists and threatened to tear down the very foundations of Margot.

And now she was here, in a mess of her own creation, about to lose the one person who finally seemed to understand her to some dumb freaking Roman curse. Thanks a lot, Venus.

“Van, I—” The words clogged her throat. How was she supposed to say sorry for something this big? It was her fault he was here in the first place, and her job to save him.

But her engines were running low on coal. She hated to admit that all her false bravado had lost its shine. She wanted to believe she could pass some silly test. That whatever it took to heal Van, she’d do it, even if she had to do it alone.

Could she? Or had everyone been right to underestimate her?

Van slowed to a stop in front of a stone staircase mostly overgrown with weeds. Above, carved into the cliffside, a doorway watched like an open eye. It reminded Margot of a cartoon supervillain’s lair, which wasn’t exactly the place she wanted to parade inside unprepared.

She could be brave for him. She had to be.

“Ladies first,” she insisted as she took the first step up the staircase.

“Margot, wait,” Van said, struggling to catch up with her. “I’ll find this one. It’s a bit tricky.”

“Tricky,” she echoed with a laugh that didn’t quite land. “After the week we’ve had, I think I can handle tricky.”

If anything, her pace accelerated. She’d been prodded forward with a hot iron of fear. Frankly, she wasn’t sure if it was her own, or if she’d borrowed Van’s and carried it like it was hers. The more he slowed, the faster she ran.

At the top, Margot could see the white-painted houses dotting the Naples hillsides. The roads were veins, connected to the heart of the vibrant city. A short metal fence encircled the historic area, as if to protect it from overly curious onlookers or amateur gravediggers. It was going to take a lot more than that to deter her.

Shirking off the strap of her tote bag, Margot planted her hands on the fence. She kicked a leg up, hooking it around the top, and then launched herself over. This time, she landed on her feet.

Ahead, a statue wept over a stone bench, carved in swaths of pleated drapery, and beyond that, the mouth of the cave opened wide. The statue shifted her head and batted open milk-white eyes. A jolt of energy surged through Margot. Living marble meant the shard had to be close.

“It’s here,” Van said. He snatched Margot’s bag off the ground as he reached the landing. “I can feel it.”

Still, he struggled to heave himself over the fence. His hands clawed through the grates, but his feet kept slipping off, heavy as boulders.

“What do I do?” Margot asked, gravitating forward.

“Wait for me,” Van grunted. He tumbled over the top of the fence and landed hard against the earth. As he tried to lift himself upright, his limbs creaked and moaned, the magic not yet seeping through his bones.

The statue watched their every move. Her ivy-wreathed plaque read The Mourning of Virgil, and when she raised her hand, the movement lifted a pedestal out of the earth at the back of the tomb.

Margot squinted. Was she imagining it, or was the shard just . . . sitting there? Could it really be that easy? So much for being tricky.

A magnetic pull dragged her toward the tomb despite the well of emotion already bubbling up. She wouldn’t cry. She would not cry. Not now. Now, all she needed to do was grab the Vase shard and turn Van back to normal.

An eerie chill lingered inside the cave’s walls, and the whole thing smelled like sage smoke and ash. Thankfully, Van had been right about the whole cremation thing. The tomb was blessedly devoid of ivory bones.

It didn’t stop another shiver from slithering across her skin. For all her phases, grave robber never really made the list. She just needed to think happy thoughts. Like the silver glisten of pride she’d see in her dad’s eyes when she FaceTimed him with the Vase—whole and real and not some foolish girl’s daydream.

Margot paced along the wide perimeter of the room. Something had been written on the walls, singed into the stone in a way that left a permanent soot stain. Her fingers trailed the shape of the letters, familiar enough to be recognizable but not forming any words she knew.

“Whatever you do, don’t go—”

Van’s sentence was cut off with a deafening crash.

“—inside.”

All the light in the tomb vanished in a single instant, plunging Margot into a pool of black. Panic zipped up her throat, tightening until she could barely inhale.

Her body moved without her permission. Hands scraped against the rough walls, desperate for purchase. Her pulse thudded in her ears, her throat, her belly.

“It’s all right,” Van said on the other side of the rock enclosure. Was he shouting? Each syllable was hoarse, rubbed raw. “You hear me? It’s going to be fine.”

Which was precisely the kind of thing you told someone midcrisis where the being fine part was still vastly uncertain.

It was a dark so deep, her eyes could hardly adjust to it. Margot searched in the shadows for the shard’s gilded gleam, letting its presence guide her deeper into the tomb. She’d seen where it rose, centered at the far end of the cave. All she had to do was get there.

Maybe the trial was about . . . echolocation? Using the feel of the earth to see rather than ordinary sight? Hadn’t Van said something about Cupid meeting Psyche in the dark?

Her toes hit the pedestal first. Margot felt around, scaling up the column to its flat surface until finally her hand wrapped around the shard.

The walls of the tomb rattled, awakening.

“Van!” she shouted. “What’s going on out there?”

“The walls, they’re . . .”

She heard it, then. The sound of friction. Limestone against sunbaked earth. The walls of the tomb were moving—toward her. Something told her it wasn’t rearranging for better feng shui. The trial of Terra had begun.

Ragged, she asked, “What do I have to do?”

“You took Latin in school, right?” Van asked.

“No. I haven’t.” Now was not the time to dissect the irregularity of her electives.

A curse slipped past his lips, hushed enough that she assumed he hadn’t meant for her to hear it beyond the stone wall. “I thought everyone took Latin.”

“Did you take Latin?” she asked.

No reply.

Her head drooped toward her chest. “You can’t be serious.”

“Don’t sound so disappointed.” She could hear the downturn of his lips.

“As the one about to be freshly squeezed, I withhold the right to sound disappointed.”

He huffed. “I tried to tell you to let me handle it.”

“A lot of good that would have done.” Margot’s laugh was desert dry. She kept her palm firm against the shifting limestone, but it did little to slow to its movement inward. Already, she could touch both walls with her hands outstretched, and her elbows were beginning to hinge. “I take it Atlas completed this task, too.”

His silence was enough of an answer.

“Is that how he survived?” she asked. “He knew Latin?”

“Margot, breathe.” His voice sounded like a staticky television, cutting in and out. “We’ll figure it out.”

But she couldn’t breathe. Her mutinous lungs had their own agenda, and that agenda apparently only involved hyperventilating. Neither of them knew Latin, and if that was critical to the success of this mission, how was she expected to survive this? If it hadn’t already been pitch-black in the tomb, she was certain darkness would have tunneled her vision.

Van’s words came again, sounding more solid than they had before. Like he’d found his footing again. “Count back from one hundred. Actual one hundred this time.”

“One hundred, ninety-nine, ninety-eight—” The walls inched closer. Not figuratively. Literally. If she didn’t pull it together soon, she was going to be crushed. “It’s not working.”

“You can do this, Margot. You have to believe in yourself.”

“I can’t. I can’t.”

“I believe in you.” His voice was quieter, gentler.

The words glided over her skin, a balm for the rasped edge of her nerves. Margot would have squared her shoulders if it weren’t for the walls’ unforgiving advance.

The room grew smaller, pressing in on every side. The grate of stone against stone filled the air, but she barely heard it over the labored sound of her lungs trying to remember how to breathe. She was running out of time.

Every time she tried to formulate a plan her thoughts fizzled out. Rational problem solving had been replaced with vats of adrenaline. Think, think, think . . .

“Van! My phone!”

“What?” He returned, sounding farther and farther away.

“The flashlight! It’s in my bag. Somewhere south of the mini pretzels and east of Relics of the Heart.”

She imagined Van on the outside, rustling through the contents of her tote. What felt like eons passed, everything silent except for the steady narrowing of stones. Margot shifted sideways, making as much room for herself as possible.

Finally, he hollered back, “Now what?”

“Press the screen with your finger, and when it lights up, swipe up. It’ll ask for my password, which is—”

“Are these buttons? But it’s flat.”

This was worse than trying to show her grandma how to text.

“The password, Van. It’s nine-two-six-four. Just tap each number.”

A sound, something like wonder and confusion, filtered in through the wall. “Now what?”

The walls cinched tighter. Margot fought to keep her words level. “There’s something written on the walls in here. I have a translation app we can use to decipher it.”

“What’s an app?”

She was never going to make it out alive.

“Look for the little red square that says Global Dictionary underneath it and then tap it. Is it on the screen now?”

“Yes?”

“I’m going to spell the words. You just type what I say.”

Her hands found the grooves on the far wall, and she traced the shape of the first letter with her fingertips. As she inched around the room, words began to take shape.

“I think I’ve got it,” Van said when she reached the last letter. “Quiesce. Praebe te fidelem aut redde quod non est tuum.”

Then, a little, tinny robot voice responded, “Be still. Prove to be loyal or return what is not yours.”

“That’s it?” Margot shrieked. “Loyalty?”

Her palms flattened against the walls, pushing as if she had the strength to stop them. When that didn’t work, she heaved a shoulder with all her weight behind it. Wedged a foot against the opposite wall. Pushed, pushed, pushed. Nothing helped.

No way could she just stand here. Be still. How was she supposed to sit here and accept that she was mere moments from being rolled as flat as sugar-cookie dough? The walls were far enough apart that she could still take a full breath, but only barely.

She clutched the shard tighter, hard enough she wondered if she’d drawn blood. “If I put the shard back, do you think they’d stop? Return what is not yours?”

“It said or return what is not yours. If you do that, I don’t think you’ll get another chance. Atlas walked in the tomb, and then he walked out with the shard. Wouldn’t tell me what happened inside, but I’m guessing it had something to do with . . .”

Losing his shit but trying to be really tough about it? Because that’s what Margot was about to do. Her eyes clamped shut, but it wasn’t like it made it any darker. It just felt like the right thing to do before getting squished to death. You know, so they wouldn’t pop out or whatever.

“It’ll be okay, Margot,” he said. “I’m right here.”

Her words from earlier sounded unnatural on his tongue, but she had to admit that they loosened the knot of dread that had clumped in her chest. Even if she wasn’t sure she believed him.

Van sounded distant, just a whisper, when he said, “Think about why you’re here.”

Being still was not Margot’s forte. Her legs itched to run. To toss the shard on the pedestal and be done with this trial—with this whole stupid quest—once and for all. But she couldn’t, wouldn’t. She knew what was at stake, everything she’d lose if she threw in the towel early.

Limestone bit into her shoulders. She squirmed, flattening herself between the two stones, giving her chest just enough space to rise and fall. The sour tang of fear coated her mouth, and no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t swallow it down. She pinched her eyelids closed even harder. Imagining Van on the other side of the wall against her back was the only thing keeping her pounding heart from cracking her ribs right open.

Then. Suddenly.

The walls ground to a halt. She opened her eyes. Light seared through the cave’s entrance in blinding contrast to the dark. The walls had stopped moving on either side of the pedestal, leaving only a narrow chase through the cave. Her palms felt along the walls as she pulled herself forward. Even as she fought toward the light, tar-black fear stuck to the corners of her mind.

Van’s arms found her the moment she stepped out of the tomb. Hot, fat tears spilled down her cheeks. She was alive, but she could still feel the pressure of the walls against her shoulders, their crushing weight around her.

“You’re okay,” he said, pulling her against his chest. She barely registered his lips as they pressed against her hairline, warm and soft. “You’re okay, kid.”

The shard’s clay had heated against her palms. When she pulled her hand up, the gold was nearly molten, an amber so deep she could have swam in it. But when she looked closer, her heart seized.

Her fingers trailed over the Latin inscription, pausing on the last word. Lapideum.