Page 86 of Us in Ruins
Please, please, her heart begged, heavy in her ribs. Come back to me.
It did nothing. Van was gone.
How could the goddess of love do this to her?
“Are you happy now?” she asked the empty temple, hoarse. Hopefully her voice lifted straight to Olympus. She wanted Venus to hear her. “Because I totally don’t get it. I did everything you asked. Everything!”
Margot might not have received the Pliny Junior Scholastic Award of Linguistic Achievement in Latin, but she understood the inscription. Some part of her knew the Vase would never have granted her Venus’s mystical power. The only way to be revered and adored forever was to be carved by a sculptor’s hand. Frozen in marble to be admired from afar—distant and lifeless. A blank canvas for everyone to paint upon, forcing yourself to become what they wanted to see.
But to be loved—to let yourself be known, every soft, scared part of you? It couldn’t be defined by a cinematic moment or a picturesque snapshot—it required flesh and blood, scars and blemishes. A once-broken nose and an unbalanced dimple. A broken heart, healed again.
The Vase, sparkling and whole, floated back down to the altar. As if that could replace the boy she’d turned her back on to rebuild it. On the far side of the temple, an archway lifted. Light shone from within, reflecting streaks of gold across the temple walls. Treasure. Margot barely registered it. The sight twisted a blade of guilt in her stomach.
“Take your treasure! I don’t want it,” she screamed.
Margot was hardly a girl anymore. She was a storm, forty-seven different emotions all hurtling into each other. They writhed around Margot’s torso with hurricane-force winds. Her ears burned, her blood boiling. A cry ripped up her throat.
She didn’t think, just moved. The Vase was in her hands, the clay now cooled. Distantly, Margot heard the treasure room door slam shut beneath the howl of heartbreak in her ears. Who cared? The amphora hummed with enclosed magic—magic that was supposed to fix things for Margot, not make them worse.
With a single downward pike, she shattered the Vase against the stone floors.
30
In the aftermath, the temple was deathly silent.
What had she done?
Margot fell to her knees. She couldn’t cry anymore, and her throat had gone hoarse with rage. She’d been hollowed out, emptied entirely. A husk of who she was supposed to be.
The door to the treasure was gone. It had mercilessly closed, booming as it hit the floor. She’d be sealed into the temple—into her own mausoleum.
A cold sweat whipped across Margot’s forehead. The bitter aftertaste of an emotional outbreak clogged her mouth. She couldn’t swallow it down. Behind her, Van was still as stone as he had been. She’d ruined her only chance for escape—the chance he’d given up everything for her to have—because she’d been too emotional.
Margot plucked one of the pieces off the ground—the shards had fractured, five turning into fifty. This one had the remnants of the word aeternus stamped into it. Ridiculing her. The filigreed gold shimmered.
No, the whole fragment shimmered. Faint yellow at first, then brighter until nearly molten.
She dropped the shard as it burned, hissing against her palm. It clanged against the floor, an edge chipping off. Next to it, another sliver of clay gleamed. One by one, the shards ignited until the floor glowed; each speck of dust was a map of stars against a night-black sky.
Then, a piercing light strobed through the dark temple.
Beaming out from one of the shards, a stripe of gold slashed the shadows. Another lanced out from a second chipped piece. And another, another, another. Light filled the room until everything was saturated. Margot nearly had to cover her eyes as warmth poured into every corner, daylight yellow.
One sharp spear aimed straight at the broad plane of Van’s chest. The beam sank into his marble shell. Margot lurched, her body reacting on sheer instinct, throwing herself in front of the beam, but it was too late.
And then the light was gone. A wind rushed through the temple, surprisingly brisk in contrast. It whipped through the torch flames, and shadows swelled again across the ceiling. When the gust settled, the room grew dim, only a single ribbon of light remaining.
The glimmering strand wrapped around the mosaic’s tiles, winding through the delicate paintings, the flowers blooming and then wilting, until it traced up Van’s legs. Margot stepped closer to him as the drop of sunlight expanded. Rivers of gold flowed through his marble casing and etched into the grooves.
A hopeful thrum rang through Margot like the first note of a symphony as the gilded cord wove around Van’s chest, arms, hands. The air shifted again, sweet smelling—like sandalwood and cypress and saltwater foam.
The marble cracked, tectonic plates shifting over Van’s skin. And then shattered.
Like breaking off a plaster cast, stone crumbled to the floor. A stark white mask gave way to the suntanned, freckled expanse of Van’s face. Margot grasped at his hand, and his cold marble palm grew warm in hers. His eyes blinked open. Alive, alive, alive.
“Margot?” Van asked, dazed as if he’d stepped out of a dream.
She sprung onto her tiptoes, her arms latching around his neck. Her lips found his.