It looked similar to the symbols Enrique had discovered on the dead girls’ mouths. Zofia pressed the record function on her moth-shaped Mnemo bug. Enrique still hadn’t cracked the code. Maybe this could help. In her other hand, Zofia drew out a pendant, Forged to detect the presence of a Tezcat door within a fifty feet radius. The pendant lit up slowly, and Zofia’s pulse kicked up.

There was a Tezcat presence inside the grotto. Where did it lead? Outside? Or somewhere else entirely? Zofia eyed the leviathan’s throat. It might even be farther inside the leviathan. She was about to take another step when someone shrieked: “What the hell are you doing?”

Enrique ran toward her, nearly skidding on the ice. Zofia paused. She’d thought Enrique was in the library. Instead, he ducked his head beneath the leviathan’s jaws, grasping her by the shoulders and tugging her out until she stumbled and fell against his chest.

“Wait!” she cried out.

The Tezcat pendant in her hand went flying, skidding across the ice and landing with a metallic chime against one of the three shields on the far wall.

Enrique’s brown eyes looked hectic, and sweat sheened his face. He was—as Laila would say—“in a state.”

“Are you all right?” asked Zofia.

Enrique stared at her. “Am I all right? Zofia, you nearly got swallowed up by that … that thing—” he said, flailing a hand at the leviathan. “Wh-what were you doing?”

Zofia crossed her arms. “Testing a theory.”

“A theory of what?”

“A theory that there is a Tezcat portal presence within the grotto. The leviathan does not stay on the ice for more than an hour, thus it was the highest priority to explore. After that, I was going to test the three metal shield plates on the back wall,” she said. “The leviathan deserves further examination. There appeared to be stairs inside it, and I plan to see where they lead.”

“I think not,” retorted Enrique. “If there were stairs to hell, would you venture down those?”

“It depends on what was inside hell, and if I needed it.”

At that moment, Enrique’s expression became unreadable. Zofia searched his features, feeling that same pulse of awareness that now followed when she looked at him too long.

“You’re something else, Phoenix,” said Enrique.

Her stomach fell. “Something bad.”

Enrique’s face warred between a scowl and a smile, and she could not decipher it.

“Something … brave,” he said finally.

Brave?

“But that’s not always a good thing,” he rushed to say. His eyes darted to the leviathan, and he shuddered. “That thing is terrifying.”

Zofia disagreed, but she understood. “Why are you here?”

Enrique sighed. “I can’t crack those symbols. I’m sure it’s a coded alphabet of some kind, but I thought perhaps leaving the library for a change might give me a burst of divine inspiration.”

Zofia lifted the Mnemo bug: “I found more of those symbols inside the leviathan’s mouth.”

“You did?” asked Enrique. He glanced at the leviathan and back, then stood straighter. His brows pressed down and he pursed his lips. Zofia recognized it as the expression he assumed when he was about to do something he didn’t want. “Can I see it—”

Just then, a huff of steam escaped through the leviathan’s gills, and Enrique jumped back with a squeak.

“And my sense of self-preservation reasserts itself once more,” he said, crossing himself. “Please tell me you recorded the symbols? And, hold on … wait.” Enrique paused, staring at something just over her shoulder. “What’s that?”

Zofia followed his gaze. On the ice lay the Tezcat pendant. Only now, instead of its dim glow, it had turned brighter, like a beacon. Which was something it only did in the direct presence of a Tezcat portal. She turned from Enrique, walking toward the pendant and the three shields still covered in ice.

“Zofia,” hissed Enrique. “The leviathan is right there! Get away from it!”

She ignored him, walked past the leviathan—but not before patting its jaw and hearing a muted whimper from Enrique—and headed to the wall of ice. The three shields in the wall had a radius of at least ten feet each. Ropes of thick ice splattered across the front, but she could see a pattern under it: the metal beneath was not smooth. Zofia bent to pick up the Tezcat pendant, still glowing brightly before the first shield. Enrique’s boots crunched on the ice as he joined her.

“Once you get that pendant, can we leave? We’ll tell the others to join us after that creature disappears in the water,” he said. He had his shoulders hunched up around his ears. A pattern of fear. When he looked once more at the metal shields, his shoulders dropped and he frowned. “There’s something written under here. Or drawn? I … I can’t tell.”

“You can go because you are frightened,” said Zofia. “I’ll stay.”

Enrique groaned, glancing at the shield and then the leviathan before letting out a sigh.

“I am frightened,” he said quietly. “It’s a constant state of being I have yet to make peace with.” The corner of his mouth tipped up in a smile. “Perhaps constant exposure will help.”

“You’re not leaving?” asked Zofia.

Enrique squared his shoulders. “No.”

She liked that Enrique could say he was scared and still be brave. It made her want to be brave too. When she considered this, an unfamiliar warmth curled through her belly.

Enrique tilted his head. “Hello? Phoenix?”

Zofia shook herself, then turned her attention back to the glowing phosphorous pendant in her hand.

“My inventions haven’t been wrong before,” she said. “If this is glowing before that shield, then it’s a Tezcat. In fact—”

She crossed the length of the wall, passing each of the three shields as she held up the pendant. Not once did the glow fade.

“All three of these shields are separate Tezcats,” said Enrique, his jaw falling open slightly.

“What do you think is behind it?” asked Zofia. “The treasure?”

Enrique made a face. “I don’t know … why would it be behind a portal? That would mean it wasn’t actually in the room but somewhere else, and after all the symbols and the girls … something about that doesn’t seem … appropriate. Maybe the symbols on the metal will tell us more, but we need to melt the ice. Perhaps I can ask the matriarch for one of her heat fans or … oh. Well. I suppose that works too.”

Zofia had pocketed the phosphorous pendant and reached for a heat-radiating locket from her necklace. She slapped it onto the shield. The ice glowed orange. With a sound like a faucet slammed to full blast, melted ice puddled to the floor. Zofia repeated this method with the two other shields, until they revealed a set of images engraved in the metal.

Enrique stared at her. “Don’t take this the wrong way … but you strike me as dangerously flammable.”

Zofia considered this. “Thank you.”

“Why not,” said Enrique, before turning his attention to the Tezcat door.

The circumference was entirely smooth, with no hint of a hinge or anything that might be twisted or pinched to open it and reveal what lay behind the shields. A grooved design stretched across the metal. When Zofia touched it, a familiar buzzing gathered at the edge of her thoughts, signaling the piece was Forged.