The metal plates just missed her, slamming into the deck from which she’d hung only seconds before.
Shaking, eyes stinging from sweat and oil, Rielle fumbled with the lock to the child’s cage. The near-miss with the flying plates had thrown her; she could hardly see, hardly think.
The child screamed at her, sobbing, “Hurry! Please, hurry!”
“I’m trying!” she snapped and then saw the reason for his terror: His cage was shrinking.
In seconds, he would be crushed.
If she got out of here alive, she would tear the Archon’s flesh from his bones and relish his every dying scream.
She thrust her palm against the lock with a furious cry. Raw power sizzled up her arm and out of her body, knocking the child off his feet and shattering the lock. The metal scraps of it went flying.
She wrested open the door. “Come on!”
The child flung himself at her and wrapped his arms around her neck.
Overhead, the crowd burst into wild cheers. Beneath the din, Rielle heard a metallic creak and looked up. A small door in the cage’s roof was opening. Two metalmasters crouched there, holding their arms out for the boy.
Two more. Rielle shoved him out to safety, not waiting to hear the door shut. The nearest child was wailing for her clear at the other end of the maze.
Between them was a series of shifting corridors made of crashing metal blocks the size of Rielle’s body, spears that thrust out at random, stairs that twisted and transformed without pause, paths that twirled on their axes like roasting spits over a fire—too many moving parts to keep track of. Watching them, she felt utterly dwarfed; the thought of saying her prayers, steadying her breathing, felt ludicrous, inadequate.
She’d be crushed. She lacked the control to slip through such a cruelly designed maze. If only she had more time to think. She squinted through the wild glinting chaos, her hands shaking.
Don’t risk it, came Corien’s voice—tense now and unamused. You are powerful, but you’re not immortal.
I could be, Rielle responded. And that shocked her, made her straighten and blink in surprise. She hadn’t meant to say such a thing; the very idea was preposterous. And yet the words had surged up through her body, automatic and instinctive.
Yes, Corien answered pensively. You could be, I think.
Rielle shook herself, silencing him. That was a conversation for later.
She wasn’t, after all, immortal today.
The platform beneath her shifted. She took a deep breath, dashed forward just as the platform jerked and gave way. She looked back, frantic.
Eyes front, Rielle!
Corien’s voice made Rielle whirl just in time. A gigantic metal pendulum swung her way. She flung out her arm. Gears shrieked; a thud sounded, as of a hammer hitting an anvil. The pendulum, now warped and dented, ground to a stop.
Rielle raced on, dodging spears that whistled fast toward her. The path ahead shifted, tossing her off her feet and down a narrow tunnel made of mesh. She landed in a heap, bit down hard on her tongue. Tasting blood, dizzy, she peered through the mesh of the tunnel. It was one of many—a rotating knot of tunnel-shaped cages, long and thin. She crawled, seeking an exit, as the knot of tunnels spun ever faster. They knotted and unknotted like a mass of wriggling snakes. A patch of mesh ahead of her peeled open, creating an exit. She scrambled for it, but wasn’t fast enough; the mesh sewed itself shut in the space of a blink. She screamed in rage, nearly slammed her hands against it, stopped herself.
Think, Rielle. If you shatter this trap, you’ll fall—and to where?
Eyes shut, struggling to force her mind clear, she found the path she needed. She saw the maze arrange itself, orderly, so that the writhing nest of tunnels trapping her would unfurl and grow still. She saw a path leading out of her tunnel and down to a set of sturdy stairs that would lead her to the second caged child.
The image unfurled in her mind’s eye like a map, golden-edged and glimmering, and when she opened her eyes once more, a sea of miniscule brilliant grains winked beneath the shifting veil of the physical world.
Then the world remade itself as she instructed.
Power shot out from her fingers to slither down the mesh of her cage. She felt its progress as a slithering heat under her skin, felt the rough metal beneath the reaching tendrils of her power as if her own hands were touching it. Her eyes drifted shut with pleasure. The knots in her body loosened, then vanished. A shuddering liquid heat cascaded down her limbs, pooled in her belly, shivered down her thighs.
The maze around her shifted, groaning as if in protest. The metalmasters above were fighting for control.