22. Arthur #2
Water surged from the channels, not flooding the room but cutting across it in fast, precise lines that steered movement the way a handler steers an animal. The streams struck ankles and knees and knocked people off balance. The floor kept tilting.
I grabbed Artemis around the waist and pulled her into me before she could slide.
Her hands pressed against my chest. For one sharp moment, I felt the heat of her through fabric, and the memory of her mouth on mine flashed through me. I tightened my hold and turned my body to shield her.
Hadrian’s men tried to regroup, but the temple didn’t allow it.
Stone panels slid up from the floor in three places at once, rising like walls that had been waiting for the cue. The group was split into sections and had no time to adjust.
A handful of men were forced toward the left side of the chamber, where the floor angled sharper and the water ran faster. They fought to keep their footing. One managed to grab a groove in the stone, and another slammed into him, and both went down.
A narrow seam in the wall opened, positioned exactly where the water was pushing them. They vanished into it, one after another, dragged by momentum they could not correct.
The seam sealed behind them. The floor eased back to level as if nothing had happened. The water returned to its original flow.
A heavy silence descended over us.
Hadrian stood near the center platform with clan members who had managed to stay upright. A few others clung to the perimeter, shaken, breathing too fast, staring at the sealed wall as if they could argue it open.
Artemis’s head was still turned toward the channels. Her gaze tracked the patterns again, only faster now. She had watched the whole thing like she was already writing the rulebook.
I didn’t let go of her.
Hadrian looked around, irritation flashing across his face. “They were careless.”
Artemis made a small sound, sharp with disbelief.
I leaned down. “Tell me.”
Her reply came both aloud and in my mind, layered, because her concentration made her sloppy in the best way. “It moved them. It didn’t trap them like a pit. It redirected them.”
She swallowed. “These channels aren’t meant to move water away. They’re meant to move it through decisions. The floor responded to weight and placement. The room divided us on purpose.”
My stomach tightened.
I had spent my life in old places—temples, caves, archives, vaults. Traps were crude. This was not crude.
This was a complex system.
Hadrian finally turned his attention to her, expression sharpening with interest and contempt at the same time.
Artemis stiffened.
My hands tightened around her waist before I could stop myself. I shifted my grip so my fingers rested on the edge of her coat, restraint the only thing separating me from losing control.
Hadrian’s gaze dipped to my hands. His smile widened.
I wanted to tear his throat out.
I wanted to take Artemis and leave this place and never let her be looked at like that again.
Instead, I forced myself to breathe steadily and think like an alpha who still had a plan.
We moved forward again, slower now.
The antechamber narrowed into two corridors. One was broad and almost welcoming. The other was narrower and lined with symbols carved so densely the stone looked dark with ink.
Hadrian pointed at the broad corridor. “That way.”
Artemis’s head snapped toward the narrow path.
She leaned toward it like her whole body had become a compass of its own. “No,” she said quietly. “That one.”
Hadrian laughed. “Because it has scribbles on the walls.”
“They’re not scribbles,” she snapped. “They’re instructions.”
Hadrian did not care.
He waved two of his men forward. “Go.”
They hesitated, but they obeyed, walking into the broad corridor. Nothing happened for three steps.
Then the stone beneath them gave way.
A clean seam split down the center of the floor and dropped out from under their feet. They fell without time to scream, arms flailing.
The corridor sealed again as if swallowing them had been the entire purpose of its design.
Artemis closed her eyes once, fast, like she was counting to keep from saying something she would regret.
Hadrian’s face went rigid.
“Fine,” he snapped. “We do it your way.”
I leaned close to Artemis and directed my thoughts to her. “You were right. We need to use your knowledge strategically to get out of this. Even if it means they don't.”
Her thought brushed mine, brief and sharp. “I know.”
“You knew that would happen?”
A nod.
My girl was savage. It shouldn't have made me smile. It also made me ache again, because I did not know how to keep her safe from a temple that judged footsteps and a cousin who judged weakness.
We entered the narrow corridor.
The symbols were everywhere, cut deep and clean.
Some were familiar to me in fragments, echoes from old draconic texts, references that had never had context.
Others were completely foreign. Atlantean, I realized, not because I could read it, but because it felt like it belonged to a world that had been lost on purpose.
Artemis studied them as we walked, head tilted slightly, lips moving as if she was translating without sound.
“Tell me what you see,” I murmured.
She spoke softly, fast, as if her brain couldn’t slow down enough for my benefit. “It’s procedural. Step patterns. Timing. It’s telling you where to place weight. It’s guiding you through.”
My unease deepened. A temple that guided you through was a temple that decided who deserved to reach the end.
Hadrian walked behind us now, forced into restraint by necessity. I could feel his irritation like heat on my back.
The corridor opened into another chamber.
This one was smaller than the antechamber, but still vast. A mechanism dominated the center, built from interlocking stone rings and inlaid metal that wasn’t tarnished. Water ran beneath it in a circular channel, and the glow was stronger here, brighter, almost alive.
Hadrian’s remaining men spread out again, more carefully this time.
One of them, a broad-shouldered man with a hard stare, stepped toward the mechanism and reached for it.
Artemis’s head snapped up as if to stop him, but I grabbed her hand to quiet her. As callous as it was, the more men Hadrian lost, the higher our chance of survival. And if it was them or Artemis… I’d choose Artemis every damn time.
His hand closed around a lever etched with Atlantean markings.
The chamber responded.
The water’s glow brightened until the channel looked like a ring of light. The stone rings began to rotate, slowly at first, then faster, gears grinding with a sound that vibrated through my teeth.
The floor under the man’s boots shifted.
Sliding.
A section of stone moved sideways like a puzzle piece being rearranged. The man stumbled, caught himself, then realized too late that the floor beneath him had become a moving platform headed toward a narrow opening in the wall.
He tried to jump back.
The platform moved faster, delivering him into the opening with perfect efficiency. Stone sealed behind him.
Another man lunged forward to help and stepped onto a different tile. The mechanism rotated again, and the floor moved under him too.
Two openings now. Two sealed doors. Two disappearances in seconds.
Hadrian shouted a command that meant nothing to the temple.
I held Artemis tighter, pulling her fully behind me. My mind raced through the pattern. The mechanism reacted to force.
Artemis spoke without looking at me. “It’s filtering.”
"What?" I asked.
“It’s filtering who’s allowed to reach it. Whatever this place is…it’s sentient.”
Hadrian’s footsteps approached, slower now. He had stopped treating this as a simple obstacle. He was watching, waiting, letting others trigger consequences first.
Artemis’s gaze stayed on the mechanism, but her thought reached me, controlled and steady. “Arthur. This place responds to intent.”
I swallowed hard.
Hadrian’s voice came from behind us, amused again, but edged now. “Keep going.”
My arm brushed Artemis’s side through her coat. That small contact steadied me. She was mine to protect, even if I had no right to claim her. If she was taken, I was going with her.
“Stay with me,” I sent.
Her answer came back like a hand closing around mine. “I’m here.”
I stepped forward into the chamber, eyes on the floor, mind on the symbols, body angled to shield her.
And whatever waited deeper in Atlantis, I promised myself one thing with absolute clarity.
Hadrian would not take her from me.
If the temple demanded a price, it would not be her.