Page 165 of A Tribute of Fire

“You did it!” I told her. She’d spent the entire day coming up with the formulation, inspired by my goose request.

Her eyes shone brightly as we ran toward the treasury. “I don’t know how long it will last. I was afraid of overdosing them, so I probably underdid it. We have to hurry.”

I supposed some part of me assumed that if we got past the guards at the front door, we would see the vault immediately.

Instead there were three doors along each wall.

“False doors,” Ahyana said. “Our father told us about this. The builders of the great pyramids deliberately created false doors to deceive and lead thieves away from the real door. The fake ones will lead to certain death.”

“Which one do we pick?” Io breathed.

Suri confidently walked up to the third door on the right wall and put her hand against it. I trusted her instincts. I took the key over and fitted it into the lock. It felt a bit rusty and stuck a little but eventually it turned. Was that a good sign or a bad one? I pushed the door in and held my breath.

I’d read so many stories in my grandmother’s book about monsters that would lie in wait in places like this, about traps that could end our lives. A rock slab sliding out from a hidden shelf above that wouldcrush us. A floor that would give way when pressure was applied to it, impaling us on stakes below.

I took a few tentative steps forward, holding my breath.

Nothing happened.

A few more. Still safe.

“Hurry,” Io reminded me.

Believing in my sister, I ventured farther into the hallway.

“Stay back. Wait until I make sure it’s safe,” I told them. If a trap was sprung, it would happen only to me. I held my breath as I traveled the darkened length of the hall. It almost felt like the stones in the walls around me were breathing and somehow getting closer together. As if they were going to close in on me.

After a sharp turn to the left, I found myself in the vault. The room was massive, with riches piled all the way to the ceiling. I saw ornate golden breastplates, steel swords with golden and bronze hilts, gilded furniture, helmets encrusted with gems and polished to a bright sheen. Vases of all sizes covered in various precious metals.

Multiple wooden tables were absolutely laden with jewelry—earrings, necklaces, crowns, bracelets, rings, shoulder pins, brooches. Piles and piles of gold and silver coins. Loose gems scattered throughout.

“There’s too much.” There was no way I could look through all of this. Even with all my sisters here, we had seconds, not hours.

Some part of my brain had fantasized that there would be a stone pedestal with the eye placed on a silk pillow, easy to find, waiting for me.

Suri had followed me into the vault first. I turned to her. “I’m looking for something called the eye of the goddess. It isn’t an ordinary gem. It will have power. Like what we feel in the dirt.”

She nodded.

Io came in after, followed by Zalira and Ahyana. She took one look around and gasped. “No one touch anything!”

“Why?” I asked.

“Do you not smell that? Everything here has been coated in fire dragon’s blood.”

“And?”

“It’s poison!” she said. “We can’t even be in this room for very long. We shouldn’t be breathing it in. If I had known, I could have brought a remedy.” Then she cursed in a very un-Io-like fashion.

That was bad but workable. When Suri found the eye I would make sure to use my cloak to grab it.

Suri walked the length and width of the room, back and forth. Two times. Three. She came back to me, looking defeated while shaking her head.

Bile rose in my throat, my stomach clenched, my hands started to shake.

“No. It has to be here.” I began looking and quickly realized that not a single gem in this room was green. Every other color of the rainbow was represented, but not green.

The eye wasn’t here.

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