When The Moon Hides Her Crown
Instead, he jumped back to the balcony.
I heard him take the stairs, each step pounding faster, harder, closer.
“Damn it,” I hissed, forcing myself upward. I was taking a short cut so there was no way I could let him reach the crown first!
The air around me grew hotter, humming with strange energy as I pulled myself over the ledge and rolled onto the twelfth floor.
And there it was.
The crown.
It stood on a raised platform at the center of the vast hall, glowing like molten honey, its gold surface pulsing with light. The floor beneath it shimmered like liquid glass, bending the reflection of everything around it.