Stars of Fortune (The Guardians Trilogy, #1)(55)

She struggled with her breathing—still too fast, but better—and gave Bran’s hand a light squeeze to let him know she was all right.

And finally let herself see the world around her.

The colors, so deep and rich in the coral, the waving plants, the boldly darting fish. So much more than what she’d experienced in the very rudimentary snorkeling she’d done when she’d talked herself into a winter vacation in Aruba some years before.

This time, she wasn’t just looking down at the world—like peering through a glass window. She was part of it.

With Bran she swam along the reef, gestured with wonder when she spotted a pumpkin-colored starfish clinging to a rock. She saw another, and a deep red sponge, and watched a lobster scramble across the sandy bottom as if late for an appointment.

When she saw the mouth of the cave, the panic wanted to rise again. Then Riley streaked by her, glanced back with a quick wave before spearing straight toward the dark, shallow mouth ahead.

Doyle speared through the water after her, might have cut straight into the cave but Riley blocked him.

Waiting for her, she realized, the four of them, with Annika swimming a circle around the other three. She kicked her feet, sent herself forward with Bran beside her.

The six went into the cave, two by two, where the light hung murky. Here, the world was a shadowy green and what lived in it came as shadowed blurs. The blurs became a long, sinuous eel, a pair of octopi with undulating tentacles. The wavering plants hid things, she imagined, that could sting and bite.

She heard the beat of her heart in her own head as she swam through the eerie green light of the tunnel.

It opened, reminding her of the land cave she thought of as Nerezza’s. She looked up, almost expecting to see bats swimming and swooping. Instead she saw light, trees, and stared in wonder at the open ceiling between worlds.

Another octopus, uninterested in them, flowed across the bottom of the cave while a school of silvery fish speared away as one as she reached out a hand to touch. She forgot fear as she explored the madly artistic shapes of coral, the living sponges, the oddly fluid movement of a starfish that left its perch when disturbed.

She thought of the painting she could do if she kept all this in her head long enough to sketch it. She forgot her fears, and for a time the true purpose, in the thrill of exploration.

It surprised her when Riley tapped her shoulder, pointed at her watch, then the tunnel. With a reluctance she hadn’t anticipated, she swam out again with the others.

When she surfaced, the bright flash of sun, the taste of air, the feel of it on her skin disoriented her. She pulled herself up, then stood, mask in her hand, staring at the water. Knowing what lived in it.

“You’re a natural.” Riley gave her a light punch on the shoulder before sitting to take off her flippers. “Up for another?”

“Yes.”

“I think we stick with one or two more, easy ones, today. You didn’t get any sense when we were down there?”

“Sense? Oh. No. No, but I wasn’t thinking about the stars, not once we got going. I should have—”

“I think the pull might come more naturally if you’re relaxed.” Bran handed her a bottle of water. “If all of us are. You enjoyed it.”

“You were right. Thirty minutes went by so fast, and wasn’t nearly enough.”

“You kept trim.” Sawyer grabbed a can of Coke from the cooler and, at Riley’s nod, tossed it to her, got another for himself. “Not everybody who knows how to swim translates it for diving—not right away. This one?” He pulled another Coke out, handed it to Annika. “She’s a freaking fish.”

“It’s fun to swim with friends.”

“The chances of finding what we’re after in the other two caves you’ve got down here are zilch.” Doyle broke out a water for himself.

“That’s how we cross them off the list, and give Sasha some practice.”

“I wish you wouldn’t hold back on my account. I’ll do okay.”

“Yeah, most likely. But what you have to consider is that’s not your environment down there, and you’re only alive down there because you have equipment that makes it possible. If we run into trouble while we’re under, the way we did in the cave up here? Getting out of it’s going to take some experience.”

She turned to Doyle then, shoved a hand over her water-slick hair. “Am I wrong?”

“No.” He drank deep from the bottle. “No, you’re not wrong. And it’s not like we don’t have time,” he said to Sasha.

“But you’re ready to get it done.”

“I’m long past ready.” He shook his head, drank again before he turned toward the wheelhouse. “But there’s time.”

* * *

They dived twice more, and Sasha felt more comfortable each time. But she had to admit, to herself at least, the idea of coming up against a dark god while twenty or thirty feet underwater caused considerable anxiety.

Pain, she remembered. Her dreams had been painted with pain and blood and battle. But she could recall none about drowning.

Maybe that was a good sign.

They headed back in to have the tanks refilled, and by popular vote grabbed lunch in the village. They ate on the sidewalk, keeping the conversation about the dives, rather than their underlying purpose.