I place a palm against it and push. Nothing. Not even a budge. So I pull back and then ram my shoulder into it. The pain is minimal but existent. I don’t bother to try again, but instead turn to Odi.
“What did the riddle say again?”
She runs her hands over the door. “Balance the scales, Feather to stone, Heavier still, the guilt-sown bone.”
We circle the structure, trailing our hands along the barnacle-crusted stone, searching for any kind of weakness. I follow behind her, trying to keep my focus trained on finding a way in, and not . . .other things. “And you don’t know what that means?”
“Feather to stone. . . it has to do with weight.” She stops mid swim, twisting around to face me. Her braid takes a few seconds to catch up, floating around her like a coiling snake. “What are the chances there are actual scales here waiting for us?”
I follow her gaze as she sweeps her attention over the overgrown sea bed. There’s no telling how much she can see in the half-light. “I’ll look.”
She nods and we drift lower, sand shifting beneath my tail and her kicks. I lead us farther down the sloped stone, my attention glued to the ground below me. Something catches the corner of my eye—flat slabs, half-buried, their edges too perfect to be natural. I dip to sweep away the silt with my hand. A plate of stone. Another opposite it, resting lower, like an uneven pair.
I hear the sharp intake of Odi’s breath. “This has to be it.”
I look back at the silhouette of the temple above. “So we balance them?” I murmur. “It seems too easy.”
She drifts closer, eyes narrowing on the plates, her body moving with the water like she belongs here. I let myself watch her for a moment. Down at the bottom of the ocean—wrapped in the very fears she hasn’t dared name. She’s steady. Her fingers trace the stone with care, sure and unshaking. Her breath stays even, the bubble around her face rippling only when the current stirs it.
She’s at one with the ocean, like the animal in her is one with the land.
It’s a breathtaking sight.
Brown eyes search me out, bright with challenge. “You think we just press them?”
I drift over the taller plate and coil my tail around, applying as much pressure as I can. The stone sinks slightly, but it’s more reluctant to move than I expect.
Odi grips my bicep, tugging me out of the way. “Let me try.”
She clambers on, flapping her arms in an upward motion to keep as much of her weight on the plate that she can. It does even less. We’re too buoyant to make a difference.
“We’re missing something,” I say, glancing around for some sort of clue.
Odi runs her fingers over the edges of the lower plate, and a few bubbles stream out from a hidden seam. I’m hopeful for a second, watching the door, but it remains steadfast.
She looks deflated, her shoulders dropping as she returns back to the stones. “What if we try standing on the lower one?”
I nod, and we take turns. Each time the plate moves, then it resets. The siren statues flanking us seem to sneer, their blank eyes watching us fail.
“We’ll have to find something heavier,” she hisses. “How long do I have with this sea stone?”
“All up, an hour. I’d say we have about forty minutes left,” I answer, distracted by the leaning figures higher up. She stops, turning to follow my attention. There’s something about them. Something that’s different than the others we’ve seen.
“They aren’t attached,” she says.
She’s right. The last statues were secured to stone, crumbling, but holding fast. Any self-respecting sea dweller would realise the clue for what it was. Underwater structureshave to withstand the ocean. There isn’t even a plant pot that would be unsecured in Nareth.
We move as one, working together to lift the least decayed statues we can find. First, we place one on the higher scale. It depresses, sending thesecond scale too far up, so we haul another statue, and for some reason it sinks the second scale flush with the ground.
We hover side by side, chests heaving. Odi’s brow furrows, and I long to reach out and brush the creases of worry from her face. We’re running out of time.
Then she looks up at me like it’s the simplest thing in the world. “The guilt-sown bone. We have to be on the scales.”
I’m already shaking my head, glad the water can sap the heat from my skin. “We’ve already tried.”
“It’s balance,” she insists. “Not just the weight.Together. At the same time.”
There’s so much certainty on her face that I step onto the scale, wrapping my tail around the statue for balance. My stomach dips as the slab shifts with a thunk, rattling below me before settling only a bit lower than before. It’s nearly even with the other now, but still a hairsbreadth off.
