Delving Beneath the Surface

Chapter 14

"Are you tellin' me you've been draggin' these kids into the mines with you?" Marlon's face had gone red, a vein visibly pulsing at his temple. Verona stared at it, fearing that it might actually burst this go around. "What were you thinkin'?"

Her pants clung to her legs, still dripping wet with icy water though she could feel the denim starting to freeze. Sebastian held her hand, tracing the rise and fall of her knuckles. His face betrayed nothing – the perfect canvas of indifference. He had honed it into an art form, probably after years of being chewed out by Demetrius. Sam and Haley sat on her other side with their heads hung in shame.

"You know how dangerous the mines are," Marlon continued without even drawing breath. In fact, she swore he hadn't breathed once since he found them. "Those tunnels ain't for the faint of heart and you took three innocent civilians with you – into the old mineshaft too. I thought you were smarter than that, girl."

Haley clucked her tongue. "Did you just call her—"

Verona placed a hand on her knee, shaking her head. He had every right to call her stupid. That's exactly what she was. Wandering around the old mineshaft by herself was dumb enough, but she also put her friends at risk. She should have been smarter. This quest to find the artifacts had been a fool's errand. A dream that would never come true.

"Do you know how long you three have been missin'?"

Sam shrugged. "A couple of days?"

"A coupla days? I swear to Yoba above," Marlon pinched the bridge of his nose, breathing deep, "Boy, if you had been gone that long without food and water, we would be excavatin' your bodies from those tunnels. You've been gone a little over twenty hours."

Haley's head snapped up. "It's only been that long?"

Marlon failed to realize time passed differently underground. Seconds felt like minutes, minutes felt like hours, hours like days. She could have easily believed they were down there for a day or two, but in truth, they hadn't even been gone a full day. She struggled to wrap her head around that realization.

"You're lucky Linus saw y'all go in. When you didn't come back at sundown, he came and told me. I've been campin' out the entrance all night. I was about to gather a crew to go in after you. What if more people got hurt because of your carelessness?" His expression hardened as he turned back to her. She lowered her gaze, unwilling to look him in the eye. "Their families have been worried sick. What do you have to say for yourself?"

"Stop blaming Verona," Sebastian snapped. His grip on her hand tightened, shaking with rage. "I offered to go down with her. Then it was my idea to get more people down there with us. I thought there would safety in numbers. If you're going to blame anyone – blame me."

This was her fault.

"It wasn't just her choice. We all agreed to go down there," Sam piped in, "Hell, man, blame me. I was the one who thought it was a good idea to cross a lava pool."

Her fault.

"Blame me," Haley cut in, "If I hadn't suggested going back to the old cave system, we would have never gotten trapped in the side of a ravine."

Verona willed the ground to swallow her whole. Her friends kept jumping to her defense, but they failed to realize none of this would have happened without her. They needed to realize – like Marlon did – that this whole situation was her fault.

"And we made it out because of her." Haley leveled Marlon with a hard look that normally had people doubling back, but not Marlon. He met her gaze with unwavering resolve. She bared her teeth and snapped, "We would have died down there if she hadn't dug us out."