Obsidian and Stars (Ivory and Bone #2)(51)

“Go!” I snap. “All of you—get out before the water rises.”

And they go. I can’t see them—the quake has broken this room away from the passageway—but I hear them moving, shuffling along the stone, the sound fading as they draw farther away.

But Kol doesn’t move, and neither do I. Instead he lunges forward from where he sits, splashing his hands into the water and clawing at the floor.

My arms and his legs are already submerged—hidden under dark water—but I don’t need to see them to know. The pressure of the rock digging into my wrists tells me. The way Kol frantically claws at the ground beneath the water tells me.

The shifting rock has pinned us both in place.

And the water is rising fast.





TWENTY


The sun reflects off the moving surface, throwing a rippling pattern of gold against the walls. Interwoven lines of light shimmer and glow like a golden spiderweb. I crane my neck and twist in place, both hands wedged tight between rocks that fell with such force, they feel like they have always been here.

Like they will never move again.

The ceiling overhead is broken open to the ground, and above it, a clear blue sky. Tall grass clings to a strip of dirt that hangs into the gap above our heads, like a torn hide in the roof of a hut.

This same gap that lets in the sky lets in the creek. Water splashes over the lip, filling our room of stone.

I lie facedown, my weight on my wrists and elbows, as cold water creeps up to my chest and over my shoulders. I struggle, trying to stay calm. Trying and failing as I thrash harder and faster in the deepening water.

But nothing moves. The more the water rises, the heavier the weight against my wrists. The surface licks at my chin, and Kol calls out my name. “Mya!”

I glance up and I see his face has gone the gray of ash left in the hearth long after the flame has burned away. His eyes are red and sunken, his cheeks gaunt. I’ve never seen so much fear on his face. Fear for me, because even though he is caught just as firmly as I am, his head is much higher above the surface.

For now, at least. Who knows how long it will take for the water to be over my head and threatening his?

“Can you get your legs under you?”

“I’m trying,” I say, but the words are drowned out by the gurgling of the water and the breath that wheezes out of me. “I can’t get a foothold.” I gulp in a few more quick breaths and my head swims like I’m on a rocking boat out on the sea.

I need to stay calm. I need to think.

My right hand is pinned beneath my left, and I can straighten and stretch the fingers of that hand. I do, and beneath the rock, space opens up at the ends of my fingertips. They wiggle, pressed on by swirling water, but nothing else. Despite the voice in my head screaming at me to pull my wrists up, I fight against my instincts and push them deeper into the rocks.

And something gives. My right arm slides forward, and I splash through the surface, landing on my elbow. My face plunges under the water.

Don’t panic, I tell myself. Remember who you are. You are Olen’s daughter. You are Chev’s sister. The Olen High Elder. You are in control.

And my heart, pounding like a burial drum, calms just a bit. I slide my arm forward again, sliding even farther into the rising flood. My shoulders submerge, and I think I hear Kol’s voice shout my name again, but I can’t be sure.

My eyes open into murky blackness, but through the blackness I see Kol’s legs. I see his hands. He reaches beyond the rocks that hold his ankles firm, stretching his open hands toward me, trying to pull me up.

His fingers graze my left forearm. He comes closer, stirring the water, and his fingers wrap around my sleeve. He grabs hold and he pulls.

My right wrist twists between the rocks, and something gives. A stone shifts; another slides down to take its place.

And a small space opens. My wrists gain some freedom of motion and I know this is it. The best chance I’ll get. Maybe the only chance I’ll get.

I pull and Kol pulls, and I twist and he twists, and my wrists slide out from the rocks. I fly up and out of the water and gasp. My chest burns, even as it aches with cold. But I am free.

Kol lets out a sound, something like a cry of pain, but when I turn my gaze to his face, he’s smiling. The sound comes again. This time it’s clearly a cry of joy, so sharp and strong I feel it push against me; I feel it pierce my skin. It cuts through my red and bleeding arms, flowing into my veins.

His smile softens. He leans back against the wall of rock behind him, half sitting, half lying, and he smiles at me the way he did the day we became betrothed—the day he placed the honey in my hands. The look in his eyes is like pure sunlight, though at this point there is no sunlight left in our little room. The gap above our heads no longer lets in a piece of the sky, a vent to the air. Water fills the gap now, pouring in at every angle, from every side. It spills along the walls and splashes onto Kol’s head as he leans against rock.

The top of his head is not far from the gap where the water pours in. Maybe just the width of two hands separates him from the way out.

Yet how can that matter? It might as well be the width of a thousand hands; Kol is pinned so firmly to the floor. The only way to get him out is to free him, the way we freed me.

I return his smile. I want to say something—I can think of so many things I want to say—but I won’t say them now. Save them for later, I tell myself. There will be plenty of time after today.