23. Artemis
ARTEMIS
The moment we crossed fully into the inner corridor of the temple, my brain lit up so hard it was almost painful.
Not in a bad way. In the way it always did when something unfolded in front of me and invited me to understand it.
I had to fight the urge to smile.
Every stone had intention pressed into it. Every surface asked a question and waited eagerly for the wrong answer.
The corridor stretched longer than one would think, tall enough that the ceiling vanished into shadow. The floor was divided into three distinct sections, each one tiled differently, each one patterned with Greek words, symbols, and shapes that were just close enough to familiar to be misleading.
This was a test.
Hadrian stopped a few paces back, clearly unimpressed. “Even a hatchling could see the floor is trapped,” he said. “Fly.”
One of his remaining men shifted instantly, wings snapping open.
“No… this is going to go badly,” I thought toward Arthur at the same time he tensed beside me.
The dragon launched into the air.
The ceiling moved. It was subtle at first, a wrongness more than a sound. My body registered the shift before my brain caught up. Then stone teeth unfolded from above, jagged and brutal, slamming down in a single, unified motion.
Arthur moved at the same time I did.
His arm came around me, pulling me back against his chest as he pivoted us out of the line of impact. The world narrowed to pressure and motion and the solid reality of him in front of me.
The spikes hit.
The sound was immense. Stone meeting stone. Tile shattering. Bone giving way with a final, horrible crack. The impact reverberated through the corridor and up my legs, through my teeth, through everything.
One moment the dragon was there, wings spread, arrogant and alive. The next, there was only ruin.
Arthur’s grip tightened, his stance widening as if he expected the ceiling to come for us next. I could feel the frantic beat of his heart under my palm.
I was shaking.
A suffocating silence rushed in, pressing on my ears, making me aware of every breath I took. Dust drifted down in pale curtains. Broken tile lay scattered at our feet.
Arthur didn’t let go right away.
He tilted his head slightly, just enough to check on me without drawing attention to it. His voice was low, meant for me alone. “Are you hurt?”
I swallowed. My mouth felt dry, but my mind was still sharp, still running patterns. “No,” I said. “I’m okay.”
He exhaled slowly.
I forced myself to catalog what had happened instead of flinching away from it, because this place seemed to punish panic.
But for that suspended moment, wrapped in Arthur’s arms with stone dust settling around us, all I could think was how fast he’d moved.
To save me.
My pulse hammered, but my mind stayed crystal clear. Fear did that to me sometimes. It stripped away everything unnecessary and left only what mattered.
Hadrian frowned and motioned another forward. This one stayed on the ground and in his human form. He walked across the tiles.
The walls answered immediately.
Glass arrows fired in a precise grid, punching through skin and muscle with surgical efficiency. He barely had time to register what was happening before he collapsed.
Two dead, seconds apart.
My stomach twisted, but my mind kept moving.
“It was built for Atlanteans.”
Arthur nodded and watched me.
“There has to be a way someone who lived here would understand this without dying,” I continued. “Which means the clues aren’t hidden. They’re obvious. We’re just not looking at them correctly.”
Arthur’s attention snapped to the first section, and mine followed immediately.
Hadrian gave a short, humorless laugh.
“By all means,” he said, gesturing toward the corridor with exaggerated courtesy. “Demonstrate.”
One of his men shifted uneasily, but Hadrian didn’t look at them. His gaze stayed on Arthur and me.
Arthur moved closer to my side. I felt the subtle shift of his attention settle fully on me, the way it always did when I slipped into problem-solving mode. He was letting me process. Or “cook” as the interns would say.
That trust grounded me more than any deep breath could have.
The floor there was a mosaic of tiles, each etched with a different word or symbol. Some were obvious. Some were deceptively simple. I tracked the spacing between them, the way the grout lines aligned just a little too perfectly.
The murals loomed over us, worn by time but still precise. A warlord in distinctive armor, his stance wide and commanding. A towering pile of gold, stacked so high it bent the perspective of the stone. A jagged bolt of lightning striking the ground, splitting it cleanly in two.
“Power,” Arthur murmured in my mind.
Yes, I replied instantly.
I crouched slightly, studying the tiles closer. Several bore symbols that echoed the murals, but only one repeated the same triad. The others mixed concepts. Greed. Violence.
One tile near the edge caught my attention for all the wrong reasons. Its symbol was similar, but the carving was deeper, like it had been etched later.
Before I could stop myself, I picked up a loose shard of broken stone and flicked it across the floor.
The shard hit that tile.
Glass arrows fired from the wall in a precise, lethal grid, slicing the air where a body would have been. They retracted just as quickly, leaving the tile unmarred and the message unmistakable.
I exhaled slowly. “That one’s wrong.”
Arthur nodded once.
He stepped back, gauging the distance. The jump to the power tile wasn’t small. He met my gaze briefly, something unspoken passing between us, then inhaled and leapt.
His boots struck the tile marked with the power symbol. He bent his knees on impact to keep his balance.
Nothing happened.
My chest loosened, relief rushing through me so fast it made my hands shake.
He turned toward me instinctively, one hand lifting before he seemed to realize there was nothing for me to grab.
“I’ll catch you,” he promised.
My pulse spiked.
The distance wasn’t enormous, but it wasn’t forgiving either. A misstep meant arrows. Or worse. I backed up half a pace, gauging the jump, forcing my legs to stop shaking.
I ran.
The floor dropped away beneath my feet, and for one terrifying second, I was airborne with nothing but faith and momentum carrying me forward. My stomach lurched hard enough that I was sure I’d misjudged it.
Arthur caught me around the waist as my boots hit stone, absorbing the impact with his own body, his grip firm enough to keep me upright without crushing me. The tile held. No sound. No movement. Just solid stone beneath us.
I let out a breath.
His hands lingered for a beat longer than necessary, like he was confirming I was real and safe before easing back.
We didn’t look at each other right away.
But the air between us felt charged, tight with adrenaline and trust and the knowledge that I had jumped because I believed he would be there.
And he had been.
“By all means,” Hadrian said, gesturing toward the next section of the corridor. “Don’t stop now. I’d hate to lose our most… enlightening guide.”
The words were polite. The implication was not.
The second section waited.
The murals were more emotive. A dragon in flight, wings spread wide. Chains breaking apart. A funeral scene where a figure rose upward, arms lifted, light carved into the stone above them.
“That one,” Arthur thought. “Freedom.”
“Yes. The absence of restraint. The rest are depicting shackles.”
The tiles reflected that tension. Some showed broken symbols, incomplete circles. Others depicted doors half-open. I tested another unsafe tile with a shard.
The arrows answered immediately.
Arthur adjusted, scanning again.
He jumped first to the freedom tile. Nothing happened when he landed.
“Are you seeing this?” Hadrian said behind us. He didn’t sound impressed so much as intent. “Watch their feet. Follow along on their exact tiles.”
One of his remaining men swallowed audibly.
Arthur looked back at me, not rushing me, just there. Waiting. Ready to catch me.
I ran.
The distance vanished under my feet, the drop beneath me yawning wide for a heartbeat that stretched too long. My breath locked in my chest until my boots struck the same tile and held.
I didn’t look back.
By the time we reached the third section, my nerves were singing. Fear and exhilaration tangled together so tightly I couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began.
This one felt… communal.
Two hands clasped together. A village scene carved in layers. An ancient world map with currents drawn like veins, continents connected by flow instead of borders.
Unity.
This time I didn’t hesitate. “That one,” I said, pointing to the circular symbol at the center.
Arthur didn’t argue. He jumped.
The tile accepted him.
I followed, heart pounding, landing beside him as the corridor behind us sealed with a final, echoing sound.
For a split second, I laughed. It slipped out before I could stop it, sharp and breathless and alive.
Arthur looked at me, then he laughed along with me.
We had solved it together.
Hadrian’s remaining men followed, carefully, stepping only where we had indicated. Two of them left.
Fear and exhilaration tangled together inside me, impossible to separate. I was terrified. I was alive. I was doing exactly what I had always dreamed of doing, even when I’d convinced myself I didn’t deserve it.
I turned toward Arthur without thinking, my entire nervous system buzzing.
“This place rewards understanding,” I said softly.
His gaze stayed on me, like the danger around us was secondary to the fact that I was here and unharmed.
“Then we keep understanding it,” he said. “And we get the hell out alive.”