“What does it say?” I asked, stepping behind Lana to read over her shoulder as I secured my hair into a bun atop my head.
My eyes flitted across the page once. Then twice. Lana’s fingers trembled as she read aloud:
“‘Atop a hill lies a cabin on a cliff,
Surrounded by jagged peaks frozen stiff.
For survival to be earned, it must be unlocked
Or you will find yourself plunging down to the rocks.’”
She looked at me with concern. “What is this?” she breathed. “A riddle?”
I shook my head. “No. It’s an instruction.”
As if on cue, a tile not three feet away from us began shaking. It quivered with the force of a mini earthquake, vibrating and fissuring, tiny cracks spiraling across its surface. I watched in horror as more pieces began chipping off, a cold draft billowing in through the fractures in its surface.
I wasn’t surprised when I peered through the cracks to find snowcapped summits yawning for miles beneath.
“There’s a key hidden somewhere in the room,” I muttered, my eyes spinning around the sparse space I thought I had thoroughly analyzed. “There has to be, to unlock the door.”
“Shit,” Lana said as the next tile began to split.
Shit was right. The Mortal Trials had begun. Whether we liked it or not, the only way out now was through.
The entire room stretched and groaned, like a beast waking from slumber.
“We have to move quick.” Lana crouched before the wooden chest, her fingers running the lengths of its compartments, up and down, searching for the key.
I tested the floor in front of me gingerly, the toe of my boot tapping once before I hopped onto the next tile, until I made it back to the beds. Around me, other tiles shivered, but I couldn’t focus on them. Not when the key could be buried beneath our sheets and the floor might give way at any second. I started at my bed first, wrenching the cream duvet off in a flourish and shaking it. Nothing fell.
The sheet stretched taut over the mattress was plain cotton, and I knew without checking that the key was not underneath. I pulled it off anyway, running my hands across the divots in the mattress. Even if the key was miraculously stored within, I would not have a tool to cut it open anyway.
Lana huffed her abject frustration behind me. She leaped across an open patch of the floor, which revealed more snowy peaks and dark rocks jutting out in menacing, bone-splintering angles.
“We’re going to die in here,” she muttered, ripping off her own bedcovers.
I didn’t waste any precious seconds to respond. I pulled the mattress off the bedframe, not caring where it landed, my eyes scanning the iron frame. Still no key.
I dropped to my hands and feet just as the tile beneath my right hand began to shake. I had seconds. Seconds to stay alive. I stuck my head beneath the frame, my left hand extending to sweep the surface of the floor. And then it gave out.
My right hand fell straight through, the tile dropping with it. I keeled forward face first, my body crashing into the shuddering surface as my entire arm sank into the air. I floundered, terror gripping me with icy tentacles. My heart hammered against my ribcage as I shoved myself up and away from the broken tile with my other hand, yanking myself back.
My sleeve got stuck on a ragged edge of floor that had not yet fallen. I pulled violently, desperately wanting away from the plunging drop below, and the material tore. The jagged tile scraped painfully along my wrist as the sleeve tore off and a cool breeze stole it from view.
“Lirah, your arm.” Lana stood poised with her mattress, her gaze on my wrist. Scarlet blood oozed through the gash, dripping onto what remained of the floor.
“Don’t worry about it,” I said, pushing the pain into a lock box to deal with later. “Keep looking.”
Lana tossed her mattress aside, her voice wobbling as she said, “There’s nothing here. It’s pointless.”
“Keep trying.” I gritted my teeth, eyes flicking around the room in search. The wooden chest had been camouflaged earlier. Maybe the key was hiding in plain sight? Several tiles had broken free near the wall, and I took a running jump to clear the empty space, stumbling as I landed. I ran my hands across the eggshell surface, ignoring the twinge in my forearm and my ribs as I moved.
Wait – my ribs?
My fingertips faltered on the walls and then they were running the length of my torso, because there was definitely something digging into my ribcage. I had thought it was the impact of falling onto the floor and the boning of the cuirass stabbing into me, but…
My fingers felt for the slits in the boning, the ones I had thought might be good for storage.