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I soften my voice. “You have to let go.”
“I can’t,” he grits out. “This is mine. My city. My duty.”
“You’re going to kill yourself.”
The boulder slides an inch, and he roars with the effort of holding it still. His whole body is strung taut, so rigid it could be carved from stone.
“I can do this.”It’s not bravado speaking. He believes it with the desperation of someone who has no choice but to believe. His muscles tremble like a plucked sitar string. He’s going to die like this. He’swillingto die like this.
Gold blooms at his fingertips, like ink spreading across his skin, forming lines that streak across his hands, up his wrists. The lines surgeup his arms, disappearing down into his clothes, slashing up across his neck, curling across his face. The Regia’s mark.
Hope rises in me—has he done it? Has he found it?
But the gold is mottled with Storm-black. It wisps into cloud and reforms. This isn’t a real ikonmark, but something from Dalca’s mind, from his fears. I reach out to touch his arm, as gingerly as I can manage. His skin jerks under my fingers, as if he aborted a flinch. He’s burning up.
He makes a sound like a sob.
“Dalca, you have to let it fall.”
“I won’t be the one who fails.”
I swallow, understanding. Dalca sees his place in line amongst the Regias of old, amongst their golden death masks. He’s the last in an unbroken chain—and this is the pressure he bears.
“This isn’t real.”
“If I let this go, what chance does the real thing have?”
“It’s a test. You have to let go. You need to go down there, into the pyramid.” I say, pointing. “I’ll go with you.”
Dalca doesn’t say a thing. His fingers slide, his grip made slippery with blood and fear. He blinks away sweat and tears, his eyes wide with emotion.
“Do you trust me?”
“I don’t know,” he answers.
Slowly enough that he sees it coming, I lower my hands over his eyes. I whisper to him. “It’s okay. It’s not real. We’ll protect the real one. I’m with you.”
He swallows.
I widen my stance, bracing myself as best I can.
“Come toward me. Let it fall.”
He shifts his weight and lets go, his back hitting my chest. Dalca collapses into my arms, and I lower us to the plateau. He cries out as the boulder tilts, then plummets, thudding down the side of the pyramid, breaking apart with each thud, until nothing’s left but a thousand shattered pieces that hang in the air like glittering dust.
Dalca takes a shaky breath and pulls himself together. He peers over the edge of the opening, into the dark.
I hold out my hand, and he takes it. He lowers himself down, squeezing my hand once before letting go, and I follow after him. A dozen steps into the depths—far enough to see that there’s no reprieve from the dark and just far enough to start having second thoughts—the stairs vanish under our feet.
We fall.
