The lift dropped so sharply, so suddenly, that Seven clutched the side of the cage for support, her stomach going up into her throat. At first, the speed was dizzying and terrifying. But as it dropped, and dropped, and dropped, she finally let go of her death grip on the side of the cage and almost felt…bored. She checked the lift counter several times, but the floors went by with such speed that it was impossible to read the chintzy digits tucked within. As it was, she was pretty sure she’d been standing there at least ten minutes with no end in sight.

  How deep is this section of the mines that we’re still dropping? She thought, half-panicked, half-numb with fear at this point. The lift rattled with more force the deeper they traveled, and the pitiful lantern attached to the ceiling swung with such force that it winked in and out, its amber glow plunging her into darkness with each rattle of the lift. She’d been deep in the mines before—when she’d been reassigned mid-shift, for one—but she wasn’t sure there was anything this deep.

  Guess I’ll find out soon enough, she thought, her mouth going dry. One way or another. But she’d survived her trial. In a way, she’d survived exile. She would find a way to survive this too—she had to.

  Finally, the lantern winked out, and the lift shuddered to a halt. The door rattled open, and Seven stepped blindly into darkness so complete that she couldn’t see her own hands.

  In her first week at LMC, she’d experienced plenty of dark places—the mines were filled with them—but this was different. In the upper levels, there was always some distant light: that of another miner nearby; a series of lanterns strung along a well-trafficked core hallway; cracks in the ceiling in some of the higher levels letting sunlight spill through to bathe the rocky ground in the dappled shadows of distant trees.

  Here, though, the darkness was complete; it pressed in on her like a living, breathing thing, shadow given form as it mingled with the mist of the caverns, sidling up her arms. She knew it was just her mind playing tricks on her, but something in it felt alive. Only the faint red glow of something nestled in the cracks of the earth broke through the darkness, but Seven couldn’t make out what, exactly, it was.

  She sniffed at the cold, moist air, fishing for her lantern on her pack. As soon as the smell hit her nose, she choked. The mines had never smelled good, exactly, but something metallic and rotten played on the breeze, with an underlying sweetness that made her stomach turn.

  Now breathing through her mouth to avoid the smell, she fiddled with the lantern attached to her bag, her fingers shaking. Light bloomed into the cavern just as the lift clanged behind her, starting its ascent.

  It was all she could do not to leap for the bottom of it and try to cling to it desperately all the way to the top. Because what she saw in front of her wasn’t a cave. It wasn’t the mundane, barren, boring mining passages of the upper levels. It barely seemed real at all.

  It almost looks…like a dungeon, she realized, fear pricking at the back of her neck.

  Her light barely pierced the darkness, but in the rare places where it touched the walls, she had a hard time figuring out what, exactly, she was looking at. The place was frigid but for boiling pools of magma, set into chasms that lit the cavern in strange little striations, faintly burning glows of orange and red that did little to illuminate the rest of the passages further back.

  Seven took a few tentative steps forward, careful to stay balanced on the crackling rock path that led to the lift. There was plenty of room to move—the chamber ahead was large—but that room ended ahead in several tunnels and a gothic-style cathedral carved into the rock. This one had far more substance than the one in the upper levels had, complete with doors, windows, and a clear path inside.

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  Whatever it was, it wasn’t a mining tunnel. Or if it was, certainly no one with any sense would bother mining down here at all. Of course, Seven hadn’t been sent to mine—she’d been sent to die.

  “The brochure really undersold the charm,” Pocket chimed in, his orange glow matching some of the nearby lava. “No one mentioned the bed-and-breakfast.”

  “No kidding,” Seven said, too stunned to joke. She’d meant to survive this—to come back to the upper levels with her middle finger held high again—but she was just as likely to slip into a pool of magma and die. She wasn’t an adventurer. She had none of her siblings’ power, or their ability with weaponry. She wasn’t even a miner—she was a princess for Thirteen’s sake. And one with nothing but a spelunker dice, she thought bitterly. Sure, she had her Luck, but how far would that take her? A good set of dice would have made the passages ahead easy, but how far would she get with powers she could barely control?

  She glanced at her boots and swore. The stone beneath them trembled faintly, a subtle vibration that made it hard to differentiate from the lava head. Was something erupting nearby? Surely the ground wasn’t supposed to move of its own accord.

  “Maybe it gets better deeper inside,” she whispered, taking a few tentative steps forward. She stepped over veins of magma that webbed across the rock, hissing as it met the cool air of the cavern. Every few seconds, a blast of hot air surged up from the depths of the earth, and Seven flinched, now careful to avoid the deeper cracks as she crept forward.

  Pocket let out a strange little moan of complaint, and she swore she saw his little stubby hands trying to wring together.

  “Don’t start,” she snapped. “We’ll be fine.”

  “But—“

  “You said you were immortal.”

  “I’ve never confirmed it,” he hissed. “Maybe my entire life is a lie. Maybe it was an elaborate ruse to get my mattress from me.”

  “If you could stop talking about the mattress, that would be great,” Seven replied. “I’ve got a little more on my plate than a mattress at this point.”

  She forced herself forward, one halting step at a time. She could hardly remain at the entrance; even without using her spelunker dice, she could tell that no ore remained in that direction, and besides that, there had to be something safer up ahead. Somewhere she could get her bearings, or at least a place to collect her thoughts. She’d found, long ago, that the answer to just about any problem was better solved by pushing forward to the next bet—no matter the cost.

  Each chasm she hopped over was small, but as she moved toward the cathedral cut into the rock wall, the cracks widened into a canyon of sorts—one massive enough that she couldn’t even see the bottom. Seven peered over the edge and swore at the river of lava below. Of course Rook had sent her here—it wasn’t just possible, but probable that there was no ore in this cursed place at all.

  She hesitated at the supposed ‘bridge’ that LMC had installed. It was impressive, frankly, that they’d bothered installing one at all. And the one they had installed was half-melted and looked like they’d put it there just to spite the safety inspector. If this place had ever been inspected at all. She sincerely doubted it.

  “Well, it’s only partially melted at least,” Pocket pointed out. “Should be safe enough.”

  “What, are you a safety inspector now?”

  “One of my many talents.”

  Sighing, Seven lifted her booted foot over the first rung of the bridge, praying it would hold. Luck above, she might be the first in the royal family to be thrown into an active volcano. She couldn’t help but wonder if that was some sort of ritual and huffed a bitter laugh as she stepped. It wasn’t really funny, exactly, but it was better than hysteria, she supposed. And certainly she’d read plenty of stories about princesses being sacrificed to some fire god or another.

  She set her boot down. The bridge swayed beneath her weight, groaning and creaking, and Seven held onto the too-hot handles with gloved hands, gritting her teeth together. The metal groaned, a deep, rending sound that no bridge should ever make.

  Her pickaxe chimed.

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