He stares back at me coolly. “Condesa.”
“Right. Not important.”
Manuel squats in front of the wall, peering at the edge of the stone. “Looks like the door came up from the ground. There’s a gap here, and that’s why we didn’t hear it.”
“Walls don’t just rise without help.”
“I’m aware,” he says mildly. “There might be a lever or a pulley somewhere. Why don’t you search the opposite wall, and I’ll look over here?”
A reasonable suggestion. But it sits heavily at the back of my throat, difficult to swallow. “I don’t think whoever trapped us in here will have done us the courtesy of also providing the way out.”
He stands, his hands on his hips. “Would you prefer to do nothing?”
His tone is stubbornly calm—and I want to shake him. We’re trapped in a temple! We aren’t carrying a lot of food, and there’s not a morsel to be found in this chamber. I walk right up to him. He keeps utterly still, like one of the statues up on the pillars. “I’m scared.”
“There’s no reason to be just yet. We haven’t explored all of our options. I’ll tell you when it’s appropriate to panic.” He gently turns me around. “Go over there and see if you can find anything interesting.”
Sometimes he can be infuriatingly right. I look around the room, studying every corner and crevice. The carvings on the pillars depict suns and moons and flowers whose roots travel deep into the earth. As I walk the chamber, a round shadow ensnares my attention. Three of the walls have them—the only one that doesn’t is our former entrance.
“Manuel,” I call over my shoulder. “Ven aquí.”
He walks to me and together we analyze the dial. It’s a wheel made of smooth white marble, with three long dashes filled with gold and carved deep into the center of the stone. Manuel attempts to move the dial to the left and then to the right, but it won’t budge, no matter how much he tugs. I step away from him and examine the dial on the next wall. This one is also made of the same marble, but it has two dashes. The third wall has one dash.
Manuel attempts to turn the two remaining wheels, but neither one budges. He walks around all three pillars, his finger tapping his lip lightly, his head tilted back to examine the statues. I walk up to one of the pillars. The carvings are truly beautiful, deep fissures as wide as my hand, all working together to create a scene from nature.
We walk around the room several times. I discard idea after idea, each as impossible as the last. Manuel attempts to turn the wheels on the wall in a different order, but that doesn’t work. An hour might have gone by, maybe more. My stomach decides to loudly wake, growling impatiently, the sound reverberating in the small room and crashing in my ears. Exhaustion seeps into my bones. The shaft of sunlight turns silver. Night has fallen, and it’s Luna’s turn to reign. But her light barely illuminates the chamber; the corners are dark, shrouded in shadow. The only other light comes from Manuel’s softly glowing eyes. I have to lean close to the walls in order to study the feathery cracks, searching for some clue.
Finally I slump against a wall and slide down. “Manuel, come sit.”
He looks over at me from examining one of the dials. “What is it?”
“You need a break.”
“I do?”
I nod. “We’ve been on our feet all day.”
He walks around one of the pillars and gracefully sits next to me, making sure there’s a respectable distance between us. Of course. “If you’d like to panic now, I think it might be the time for it.”
“Are you panicking?”
“I might tomorrow.”
I glance over at him. “How much food do we have?”
He hesitates. “I have an emergency stash of nuts. That’s it.” He turns his head to face me. “You can have it all.”
It’s as if someone has doused me with frigid water. I sputter at his words, part disbelieving, part mad with panic that we might die here, slowly starving once hisemergencyreserve is all gone. “What are we going to do? How are we going to get out of this?” With each question, my voice rises. And for the first time, I notice how small this chamber is, how dark and forbidding.
We are in a tomb.
I sip the air and it tastes stale and wet. “What if they just leave us in here? Is there enough air for the both of us?”
“There’s a hole in the ceiling.”
“I can’t die in here! What about our people? The throne?” I struggle to my feet, but he reaches for me and places a firm hand on my shoulder, keeping me on the ground. He places one calloused palm on each of my cheeks, his dark gaze boring into mine.
“Look at me,” he whispers.
