wouldn’t let them all die. The game would be over.
Maybe that was how Persey could shut this down? By just refusing to play along. Could she call the bluff?
“Persey, come on.” She felt Kevin’s hand on her arm, spinning her around. His face was pink and slick with perspiration, but other than a physical reaction to the heat, he looked completely and utterly calm, like he wasn’t precariously balanced on a thin wooden platform poised to fall at any moment into a raging inferno. “We have to keep going.”
“Do we?”
Kevin sighed. “You don’t know what’s going to happen if that clock runs out. Maybe we all die.”
The coolness in his voice made her stomach clench up again. Maybe we all die. She saw Neela over Kevin’s shoulder, frantically waving her arms. Persey might have been willing to risk her own life, but she certainly wasn’t going to put Neela’s on the line if she could help it.
She took Kevin’s outstretched hand without a word and allowed him to escort her back the way they came. The platforms didn’t block their path, and the bridge of marble held steady until just after Persey set foot back on the dais. Almost instantly the section that had anchored the marble over the fire pit dropped away, taking the bridge with it.
“I guess we know which way we’re supposed to go,” Riot said, watching the marble tumble down into the flames.
“One minute.”
“Let’s get this over with.” Wes climbed up to the open chute, and before anyone else could protest, he’d swung both of his legs over the side, crossed his hands over his chest, and disappeared into the darkness.
Mackenzie followed with uncharacteristic silence. Her bow lips were pressed together as she climbed over the altar, her brows knitted low over her eyes. She did not like the fact that Kevin had come to Persey’s rescue.
Riot and Neela went next, leaving just Persey and Kevin as the clock ticked dangerously low. He still held her hand, refusing to let go.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” she asked.
Kevin’s smile was grim. “Can’t be worse than in here, right?”
Persey felt her face go cold as the image of Shaun’s paralyzed body dropping into the flames flashed through her mind. “No. No, it can’t.”
“You’re going to be okay,” Kevin said, giving her hand a squeeze. “I promise.”
Persey seriously doubted it.
Persey had expected the slide to feel warm as it passed through or at least near the raging furnace below them, but as she zoomed down the smooth, curved surface, the metal beneath her felt cool to the touch. She could no longer hear the roar of the flames or smell the acrid smoke that had filled the Cavethedral, but though her sense of direction was all turned around in the total darkness, she was pretty sure she’d made a sharp right about ten feet down, so perhaps the chute was actually carrying them away from the furnace altogether.
The end of the slide came abruptly. One moment the exit was a dot of light in the distance, and then, suddenly, it was a gaping hole Persey was shot through like a bullet leaving the muzzle of a gun.
She felt herself free-fall, arms flailing as she attempted to find something to grab on to. She half expected to have her fall broken by a concrete floor, which would have busted her arm, shattered her leg, or cracked open her skull, depending on which way she fell, but instead, after just a second or two airborne, her body collapsed onto a soft, cushiony surface.
Persey felt the layers of airy fabric closing in around her as they absorbed the impact of her fall, and she had just processed the fact that she’d landed on some kind of giant pillow, when she heard a voice cry out above her.
“Cowabunga!”
Kevin. Who was about to land right on her head.
She curled up into a ball, thrusting her arms over her face to protect herself, and felt the impact of Kevin’s weight just inches from her left ear. The pillowy cushion pushed up beneath her, like a water bed shifting its mass when someone else sat down on it, and as she was propelled upward on the swell, she tumbled backward and landed right on him.
“Oof,” Kevin grunted as her knee accidentally impacted with his chest.
She rolled away as walls of the cushion rose up around them, and Persey finally realized that they’d landed on a giant air mattress, the kind used by stuntpeople