Click.
He froze. “Well, shit.”
Click click click.The sounds grew louder, deeper, running beneath the chamber, gears winding, mechanisms beingtriggered. The floor began to shake, the soft jingle of coins as the piles of gold rattled and spilled into the cracks between tiles. Soon the tiles themselves were becoming unmoored, falling away as easily as the treasure.
Silver dashed back towards the entrance tunnel, diving for the doorway as all but the last steps of the floor crumbled away. He caught himself on the edge, his legs dangling off the edge.
Nettle zipped after him, catching hold of his sleeve just as one of his hands slipped.
She knew she could never hope to lift him, but she didn’t know what else to do but try. Her hands burned as the fabric of his sleeve yanked through her hands. Squeezing her eyes shut, her wings worked furiously. Every muscle screamed, but she couldn’t stop.
“Nettle!” Silver exclaimed, causing her to look up.
The roots from the ceiling, the ones that had been bare and dry and craggley, were suddenly a vivid green– no, something else had sprouted from them. A thick tangled mass of little oval leaves on crisscrossing stems, peppered with little waxy white berries.
When Nettle saw them growing down to her, aided by the coppery sparkles of her magic, she nearly let go of his sleeve.
“For the love of– don’t stop now,” Silver growled. He grabbed a fistful of the hanging plants. Some branches snapped, but most of them held. He let go of the ledge and grabbed another handful of the mistletoe growing down to meet him.
Nettle clutched his sleeve as he hefted himself onto the ledge, back into the gauntlet.
A thousand apologies on the tip of her tongue along with worries that he’d gotten hurt, she flitted to his side as he laid on the tunnel floor and caught his breath.
“My pixie protector,” Silver grinned between heavy inhales. Nettle blinked. She hadn’t been prepared for that.
After several more breaths, Silver propped himself up on his elbows, glancing at the massive fissure in the ground. “I doubt ‘sorry’ covers all that. But also, who rigs an entire cavern to collapse?”
“You’re sorry? I risked your life for nothing,” she said, her throat growing tight with tears.
“You also saved me. We’ll call it even.”
“We’re not even. You’ve saved me many times already. The centipede, t-the toadbird at the b-bar would have eaten me in one gulp if you hadn’t stopped it–”
Even as she listed them, her voice started to falter with emotion.
“Needing a little help isn’t a sign that you can’t handle being out in the world. I brought the toadbird inside,” Silver reminded her. He glanced from the spring behind her, back to her. “Look, you’ve led us through the gauntlet. You’ve saved me from blunders I would have made without you here.”
Nettle didn’t answer. She wasn’t sure what response she could give but an unconvinced hum. She stared deep into the chasm numbly. The amethyst wall and the spring were buried under the rubble, as well as all the treasure.
“Did you at least get some gold out of it?”
“A few coins. A bit below my day rate,” Silver shrugged, “But it happens. Least it’s not less than what I started with.”
She closed her eyes, counting down the seconds until she felt Silver pinch the tips of her wings, pulling her up off the ground to perch on his chest. She couldn’t help but lay down on him as well, after all that chaos. His heart beat fast underneath her.
“You’ve got your glow,” he said, running his thumb absently along her knee to her hip.
Nettle looked down. She hadn’t even realized, she’d been so concerned with getting out of there alive, she hadn’t thought one bit about her glow.
It was there, flickering with the heart pounding thrill Silver kept bringing out in her.
5
Silver
Silver watched Nettle stare at her hands, the way her glow took over her whole being. She laughed, she shrieked in joy, her wings beating so rapidly they were a blur of glinting light behind her as she zipped around the chaos.
She was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. She was the pinkish gold hue of sunrise and sunset, she was a searing hot summer day bearing down against a cold, clear river. Every plant in the large, crumbling chamber seemed to turn and lift its leaves to face her, to sun themselves in her presence.
