Page 11 of Us in Ruins

The grip on her phone turned slippery. Why hadn’t she remembered to charge it before she ditched the hotel? The last thing she needed was to get trapped under the ground and not be able to play Candy Crush as she slowly starved to death.

The stairwell flattened out, and Margot snapped back to her senses. The air was chilled, too cold despite the balmy evening above ground. When she looked up, she stood before Venus herself.

Or, at least, the fresco was life-size and almost completely intact. Periwinkle blues, pastel greens, and baby pinks swirled together to paint the goddess. Sea-foam clothed her, and she balanced a gilded vase in her palms. A Mona Lisa smile crooked her mouth up, and her eyes were closed, lashes skimming the tops of her cheeks.

When Margot turned, slivers of glass crunched beneath her step. An oil lamp. Her breath hitched in her chest. Had that been Van’s? She tried to imagine his path, following his hidden footsteps. Her measly flashlight beam barely carved away the temple’s darkness as Margot’s soles tap-tapped against the stone floors, echoing in the empty chamber as she treaded deeper.

So, yeah. Astrid could absolutely eat shorts. Margot totally found a top secret ancient temple. That surely secured her membership card to the Very Serious Archaeologist club.

The pillars (Doric? Ionic? She had no idea.) stretched endlessly overhead. Even craning her neck back, she couldn’t find the ceiling through the shadows. How deep had she gone? This temple was cavernous, devoid of any of the light and life it may have housed all those centuries ago. If she spoke at anything above a whisper, she felt certain her own voice would reply.

The farther she strode into the nave, the sweeter the air smelled. Like a department store perfume counter, the fragrance was inescapable—nectar and sea salt, incense and amber. It dragged her forward, feet moving down the hall as if of their own volition. At the other end of the temple, there was an empty marble pedestal protruding from a wall of sediment, not unlike museum displays or sacrificial altars.

Surrounding the altar in a semicircle stood five marble guardians. Chiseled and massive, the men towered over her. They clutched bows in their fists, fletches of arrows sheathed across their backs. Margot closed the space between her and the nearest statue. His face was expectedly stoic. Lips pinched into a flat line, a prominent Roman nose halving his features in perfect symmetry, hooded lids at half-mast, both scrutinizing and disinterested.

A shiver trailed down Margot’s spine. A little too lifelike.

This close, the marble was flecked with deep red, spreading through the fingertips like veins. Margot followed the trail of maroon toward the statue’s chest, where an orb of bloodstained red dripped, right where a heart would have been. The jet lag must have been getting to her because it almost looked like the crimson patch was churning like a tide, ebbing and flowing, pulsing, beating.

She rubbed her eyes. Totally imagining it.

This one’s pedestal read Ignis, and he aimed an arrow, one eye winking closed to find an imaginary bull’s-eye. Marble flames licked up his forearms. Next to him stood Aura, windswept and searching with a hand over his brow. Then, Aqua, surrounded by rising tides, and Terra, with climbing greenery carved in surprising detail twisting around the guardian’s bare feet, twining up his armor-clad calves.

The last guardian, Mors, was enough to give Margot nightmares for the rest of her life. While the other guardians were men, Mors was just a skeleton, pierced through the chest with a marble arrow.

A shudder ran the length of her spine. “Yikes. That had to hurt.”

Pacing back to the pedestal, she tried to ignore the way it felt like their empty stone eyes followed her. Margot couldn’t shake the spear of cold fear that dug under her ribs. Her denim jacket wasn’t nearly enough to keep it out.

She trailed her fingers along the altar. The smooth surface was cool beneath her hand, like everything down here, untouched by summer’s heat. She wrapped a fist around the shard in her pocket, and the clay warmed in her fingers. Like it belonged here, and it knew it.

As she lifted it toward the altar, something creaked behind her.

“Holy—” A figure in the corner of Margot’s vision made her soul try to leap from her body.

The shard slipped out of her fingers but she couldn’t turn to see if it shattered, didn’t even hear the impact. On instinct, Margot raised her arms to protect her face like she’d learned during her brief tae kwon do stint in middle school—yes, another phase. Right between telling everyone she wanted to become a veterinarian and learning to play electric bass guitar to join a punk band called Tight Jeans.

Adrenaline—hot, insistent—pounded through every inch of her body as she whirled around, eyes unsteady as she fought to find the shadow. Her flashlight beam did a ridiculously bad job of lighting up the temple.

Her pulse slowed when she realized the shape in her periphery was not a secret serial killer but just another statue. Because apparently five wasn’t enough. Thanks for the heart palpitations, Venus.

Margot scooped up the shard, slipping it back into the inside pocket of her jacket, and followed a path of painted tiles toward where the statue posed, solitary and shadowed. On each stone, a flower had been rendered in breathtaking detail, a white myrtle bloom, wreathed in gold. They were too beautiful to walk on. Hopscotching would suffice.

The closer she got to the statue, the more the painted flowers wilted. First, the colors seeped from the blooms. Then, the petals shriveled. One fell, then another. The stems bowed their heads as if praying. The flowers had died by the time Margot reached the feet of the statue.

But this statue... wore boots.

There was no mistaking that the marble had been masterfully worked. Each fold of stone replicated cobbled leather. The stone shoelaces had aglets, for god’s sake. She could trace the ridged cotton of socks where they vanished beneath the rough hem of well-worn trousers.

One hand was half-tucked inside a pocket, and the other outstretched for something long gone. The statue even wore a watch. The sculptor had carved delicate numbers into the analog face, hands that pointed to 11:36.

It didn’t make sense. Every bit of this was anachronistic. Sure, the Romans had invented loads of life-changing things. Indoor plumbing. Paved roads. Carbonara. But they definitely didn’t have Rolexes.

Margot followed the trail of marble sleeves to the straps of suspenders, up a marble neck with a vein jutting out along the column, to a marble face that had her staggering backward. The sharp line of his chin, the crooked bridge of his nose, the way his mouth tilted like he knew a secret. Recognizable even in the nave-cold stone.

Van Keane?

It couldn’t be. No one would have dragged a slab of marble into this forgotten temple just to chisel out a memorial to Van. But... every eyelash, every dimple had been lovingly carved. His mouth turned downward, lips parted just so. A crack in the stone split diagonally from his brow bone, over the bend in his nose, and down to his chin.

---