She smiled, sated. Nice try.
Just as Rielle had envisioned, the tunnel that trapped her unfolded, docile. Its opening came to rest on a wide platform leading to a set of stairs. She crawled out, stood for a moment to catch her breath. She felt shot full of energy, as if awakening from the best sleep of her life.
She turned her gaze up to the crowd, to the two mountain peaks above that, to the sun beyond.
She bowed low, with an indolent flourish of her hands.
The crowd exploded into cheers, so loud that even from the depth of the pit, Rielle’s ears rang from the noise.
Grinning, she bounded up the stairs to the second child’s cage. This one was a girl, pale and thin-limbed, her eyes large and dark in her hollow-cheeked face. Peeking out from under a mop of tangled brown hair, she sobbed uncontrollably.
Rielle touched her hand to the cage’s lock, felt the euphoric power from a few moments before seep into the metal like a drug.
With a quiet sizzle, the lock collapsed, melted, and dripped silver to the stairs.
Rielle gazed down at the girl, her eyes heavy-lidded.
“It’s all right,” she said, breathless. “I’m here to save you.”
The girl gaped up at her. “Are you the Sun Queen, my lady?”
Rielle held out a hand to her. “I will be soon.”
The girl jumped up from her hiding spot and barreled into Rielle’s open arms.
But then, with a great, heaving groan, the entire cage rocked beneath them. Rielle swayed, tightened her grip on the child.
A ripple of horrified shouts sounded from the crowd above.
“My lady,” whispered the child. She raised a shaking hand to point into the maze below them. “It’s falling down.”
She was right. Rielle stared, her terror climbing fast as the cage began to move—from the far, bottom corner and the near, top corner. Swiftly it collapsed, folding in on itself. The horrible grinding racket sounded like all the axes in the world clashing against one another.
And the third child still stood trapped far below.
Above, the creak of a door. Rielle shoved the girl toward it without thinking. “Climb!”
The child clung to her. “You’ll die! Come with me, please!”
Rielle caught the child’s face in one hand. “Do you really think that I, the Sun Queen, will let such a puny cage be the end of me?”
With a tremulous smile, the girl shook her head.
Rielle returned her smile and pushed her up a long, skinny ladder to the waiting metalmasters. Once they had the child in hand, the floor beneath Rielle gave way.
The fall choked away her scream. She dropped fifty feet and slammed onto one of several rotating poles. They spun out from a center mechanism like spokes of a carriage wheel. She clung to the pole that had broken her fall. She could hardly breathe; her stomach felt bruised from the impact.
But suddenly, even through her exhaustion, Rielle had an idea.
She closed her eyes. I can do this.
Corien answered firmly: You can.
She let go of the pole, dropping onto a metal plate that had been whizzing through the air only seconds before. At the slam of Rielle’s boots, the plate stopped, frozen in midair.
She threw up her hands, felt the simmering hot energy flowing between her and those spinning poles, and made them fly.
They spun out in all directions, so fast any one of them could have cut a man clean in half. Rielle twisted her wrists sharply in the air. The poles slammed to a stop, wedging themselves into the four corners of the cage.
The cage shuddered, its collapse halted. Every piece of metal trembled in place, creaking awfully.
That wouldn’t hold for long.
Rielle raced through the air, summoning metal plates from the walls as she ran. They flew to her from the floor, the staircases, the labyrinthine paths crisscrossing the cube. She flung each plate before her, stepped lightly on it, pushed off, and moved on.
Corien let out an admiring laugh. Marvelous, Rielle. Stunning.
Pride bloomed in Rielle’s chest. With each step on her floating metal path, she felt power gather at her feet. When she landed next to the third child’s cage, it blew apart at her touch, leaving the child standing, shivering, in its ruins.
“Come here.” Rielle shook her hand impatiently. Every inch of her skin tingled. Distantly, she felt the screaming ache of her muscles. “It’s almost over.”
“How did you do that?” the child asked, gaping. “You were flying.”
A series of colossal, metallic crashes exploded around them. Rielle looked up to see the poles wedged in their corners giving way.
But the cage did not continue its collapse.