I don’t think he’s truly worried about me. It must be part of his programming to imitate live beings, so the clients he’s assigned to don’t get the heebie jeebies. It’s certainly working. Most of the time. He could do better, if one were to ask me. I’ll make sure to mention it when Yasmin Bayard asks for feedback.
“As ready as I’ll ever be,” I answer.
I reach out for the door handle but hesitate.
Damn it.
When all my friends told me not to study psychology because it barely has a future, I ignored them. Seriously, who needs friends who don’t support your dreams? Not me. When everyone said I should just find a job – any job – and give up my fanciful dreams of treating patients with Dark Triad qualities, I dropped those friendships fast. Good riddance to bad advice.
Everyone says Dark Triad people are beyond helping, that they don’t want help anyway. But the truth is many of them do want help. They’re just dangerous, difficult, and the system isn’t there for them. Nobody wants to touch patients who scare them.
I do.
So yeah, track record of stubbornness and never giving up. Here I am, about to walk into death traps because I won’t quit.
Typical.
I push the door and it swings open, groaning on old hinges. I exchange a glance with Castien. His glowing silver eyes meet mine. We step inside together, at exactly the same time.
The door bangs closed behind us.
Water starts pouring from vents high in the stone walls, and within a minute, it’s already ankle-deep and rising.
I take in the room. The chamber has a high ceiling, maybe twenty feet above us. The stone walls are slick with moisture and centuries of damage. Four large vents sit near the ceiling, two on each side, gushing freezing seawater. The trap door sits in thecenter of the floor, circular, maybe four feet across. The room is bare otherwise.
We walk to the middle of the room and kneel around the trap door.
It’s made of iron, green with corrosion and age, and set flush into the stone floor. Six concentric bronze rings circle the edge, each one nested inside the next like a giant combination lock. The rings are two inches wide and can rotate independently. Raised symbols cover them: family crests, alchemical marks, Latin phrases, dates, animals, and sketches of weapons. The symbols are worn but visible.
A recessed circular panel sits in the center of the trap door, about the size of a dinner plate. Seven small circular indentations are carved into the panel in a pattern. They form the shape of a constellation.
I point at the rings.
“These need to align. Specific symbols have to line up across all six rings to create the pattern.” Then I point at the center panel. “Once they’re aligned correctly, blood goes into these holes. That releases the internal bolts.”
The rings are too stiff for me to turn alone. Centuries of corrosion have locked them tight, but Castien has the strength to force them. The sequence matters. Wrong alignment means nothing happens. Correct alignment plus blood at the end releases the mechanism.
I studied the family records and memorized the symbol patterns, however, the exact configuration changes each time thanks to ancient magic woven all through these caves. The symbols stay the same, but their positions on the rings shift. I have to figure out the current configuration by trial and error, but the fact that I succeeded once gives me confidence.
The water reaches our knees now, and the cold soaks through my pants. We haven’t even started. Is it me, or is the room flooding faster than the previous two times I tried this?
Right. To work. Focus, Jessa.
I study the outermost ring and trace the symbols with my finger.
“This one. The Holloway crest needs to line up with the anchor on the next ring.”
Castien grips the outer ring with both hands and forces it to turn. The metal groans before it gives.
“Three notches clockwise. Stop.”
He stops at my command, and I check the alignment. The Holloways’ lion crest now points at the anchor on the second ring.
“Good.”
The flood reaches our waists now. Well, my waist. Castien’s ridiculous height means the water doesn’t affect him yet. It won’t affect him at all, not even when the chamber floods completely.
“Second ring, four notches counterclockwise,” I say. “The alchemical symbol for gold needs to line up with... Wait.” I hesitate, second-guessing myself. The rising seawater distracts me, and the cold makes it hard to think. “Actually, two notches. Just two.”
