Completely. I let out a long breath. All right. Then I reached for my knife. But I'm doing it.
I pulled out a small sharp blade and took her hand as carefully as I could. Ready? Ready. I made the tiniest cut at the tip of her finger. A single red drop appeared.
Seiya walked toward the stone door and pressed her bleeding fingertip against the symbol carved at its center. The stone seemed to drink the blood. For several seconds, nothing happened. Then a deep grinding sound rolled through the cavern. It sounded like enormous stones shifting somewhere beneath the earth.
The door began to move slowly, heavily. Stone scraped against stone until a narrow opening appeared. Behind it stretched a dark tunnel, long, tight, unknown. "The second trail," Seiya whispered. We looked at one another.
"Do we go in?" she asked. "We go in together." I took her hand. Then we crossed the threshold. We had no idea what waited beyond that door. Maybe the treasure, maybe death.
But whatever waited for us, we would face it side by side. Together, always together. Because Seiya was no longer simply a woman carrying a map across her back. She was my partner, the woman I loved, and I was willing to do whatever it took to stay beside her, even if that meant walking straight into the unknown. The tunnel stretched on for what felt like forever.
It was damp, narrow, and so dark it seemed to swallow every trace of light. I walked in front, holding a crude torch we had fashioned from dry branches we found inside the cavern. Seiya followed close behind, one hand resting on my shoulder so we wouldn't lose each other in the darkness. "How much farther?" she asked. "I don't know." I raised the torch slightly.
But this tunnel has to end somewhere. We kept going. Minutes blurred together. Maybe hours. Then suddenly something appeared ahead of us.
A faint glow. Light. There was light at the end of the tunnel. We ran toward it. Moments later, we stepped out into a hidden valley completely surrounded by mountains.
From the outside, no man would ever have guessed such a place existed. And there, standing in the center of the valley, was an ancient stone structure. Small, weathered, almost like a forgotten temple. Seiya stared at it. "There," she whispered.
Her voice was barely audible. "The treasure is inside." We ran toward the stone building. Its doorway stood wide open, almost as if it had been waiting for us for generations. We stepped it inside and what we saw stopped us cold. Gold was everywhere.
Piles of coins covered the floor. Heavy bars were stacked against the walls. There were jewels, precious stones, and old wooden chests overflowing with riches beyond anything I had ever imagined. Everywhere I looked, treasure glittered beneath the thin shafts of sunlight spilling through cracks in the roof. "Good Lord," I whispered.