Page 15 of Us in Ruins

Peering up at him, Margot wanted to shout. To tell him he was wrong about her—to prove herself to him and everyone else who thought she couldn’t do this. In that precise moment, when Margot felt like she could 1,000 percent handle anything thrown her way, certain that she, too, could survive just fine on her own, an arrow zinged between their noses.

With a crack, the marble projectile embedded into the wall.

Margot paled. Slowly, she pivoted toward the statues standing sentry around the altar. Ignis’s bowstring still vibrated.

The guardians were alive.

6

The five guardians nocked new arrows, each aimed at Margot’s chest. Every muscle in her body seized. Van, however, wasted no time transforming into an action movie hero. He slid between Mors and Terra, swiping an arrow from the quiver strapped to Terra’s back. Wielding the sharp edge of the arrowhead like a knife, he sliced through Ignis’s bowstring.

Margot was too busy last quarter taking astronomy and trying out for the rowing team to take Dr. Hunt’s class, but she was pretty sure fighting living statues wasn’t taught in Classical Archaeology.

“You should move,” Van instructed.

Right. Right.

Margot ducked right as the bowmen released, dust filtering over her head as their arrows slammed together. Her hands and knees pressed against the chilled stone floors as she scuttled out of the cross fire.

The guardians swiveled on their stands, tracing her every stride. It was unnerving to watch a statue move, as they moved with a gravity, slower and heavier than humans, but they only twisted in place, their feet glued to the spot.

“At least they can’t—” Margot began.

Aqua was the first off his pedestal. His cloak of waves moved with him as he took booming, marble-heavy steps.

She gulped. “Never mind.”

The rest of the guardians followed, treading forward. Toward her. Their footsteps slammed into the ground. Each pounding movement rattled the temple’s foundation, like the whole thing might just crumble.

Along the temple walls, Van touched the bulb of his torch to a ledge circling the first floor. A trail of fire snaked around the perimeter, blooming with orange firelight that sheared through the shadows.

Unfortunately, all the extra light only made it that much easier to see the guardians hunting Margot.

Fight and flight screamed equally loudly in her head. Flight: run toward the staircase at the far end and dig her way out if she had to, never looking back and never wondering what might have been. Fight: prove to Van that she wasn’t some foolish girl in over her head and convince him to work with her to find the missing shards.

“You should have never come down here,” Van called from across the hall. He swapped his torch for the chisel and trowel he had sheathed at his hip, wielding them like twin blades.

Fight, it was.

Maybe Van had the right idea. If she destroyed the guardians’ weapons, they’d be, like, at least a little easier to escape. All she needed to do was what he’d done.

Everywhere Margot ran, the guardians shifted toward her. She jumped, stretching all her fingers, and snatched one of the fletchings in Aura’s quiver. The statue spun on its heels, slow for a human—but significantly faster than any statue should have ever moved, which, as far as Margot was concerned, was not at all. Unfortunately, their arrows didn’t seem to be constrained by the same sluggishness.

The pale face, so close to her own, caught Margot off guard, and she fumbled, tripping over her heels. Her stolen arrow skittered over the ground, just out of reach. She crab-crawled away from Aura just as he reached for another arrow behind his head, sending her scooting backward until she was pressed flat against the wall. This was not going according to plan.

Aura took aim, his marble bowstring stretching with unnatural elasticity. Behind him, Van sprinted and slid, carving his chisel down the guardian’s back. The dull blade wasn’t enough to do any lasting damage, but just enough to make it so Margot wasn’t tragically impaled.

“What are you doing?” Van asked her. He managed to somehow seem completely unflustered by the fact they were being attacked by sentient statues, like this was just a regular day’s work for him.

“Trying to not get killed by these giant, evil Cupids,” she said. The duh was silent.

Van shook his head, almost imperceptibly. Margot knew what disappointment looked like. He didn’t offer her a hand up or anything. “Try harder.”

He didn’t wait for a response—he dashed toward the front of the nave and left Margot scrambling to catch up. Seriously, how long were his legs? Her feet slammed with every step, the stone jarring every joint.

Mors veered into her path, and Margot screeched to a halt. The skeleton’s eyeless skull craned down at her, and bringing a hand to his chest, he pulled the arrow out of his pulsing red heart.

She had to do something, or she wasn’t going to survive long enough to do anything ever again.