“A minute?” I guessed. “A minute and a half?”
“Forty-five seconds, then,” Jelan said. “When I touch your arm, we turn back, no arguing. Daziel, I trust you’ll make your own call.”
He nodded. The three of us looked at each other, then, on Jelan’s count, inhaled as deeply as possible and dove underwater.
I swam as fast as I could, following Daziel’s dimly glowing form. The water stung my eyes, cold and unpleasant, and almost immediately my lungs started to burn. I kept going.
Jelan touched my arm. Time to go back. I knew I should turn, knew it was the right thing to do, but Daziel was still swimming, and then I saw his body change directions, angling up. I pointed, giving Jelan a pleading look. She frowned but nodded.
We swam onward. My whole chest hurt. Maybe I couldn’t hold my breath a full minute and a half—why had I said I could? I was going to need to suck in air any second, but I would only breathe in water; I would drown myself—
And then we were rising too, like Daziel had, but there was still more water. I’d made a horrible mistake. I had thought him rising meant he’d left the tunnel and entered air, but he hadn’t; he’d entered more water, and I needed to breathe; I desperately needed to breathe; I was going to drown—
A wrist grasped my arm and pulled me upward. I broke the surface, gasping, Jelan beside me, Daziel holding on to both of us. The three of us kicked and panted, barely staying afloat, until Daziel jerked his head forward. “There’s a beach.”
We set out for it, throwing our bodies upon soft black sand. Daziel flung up a hand, and white-silver light slid through the cave like moonlight, illuminating everything with a cold glimmer.
We’d surfaced inside an unnervingly massive cave even larger than the one we’d left behind. If that had been a ballroom, this was a stadium, capable of housing thousands of people. Water pooled near the tunnel we’d swum through, but the rest of the massive space was filled with black, glittering sand. When I looked up, it was like we were inside a geode. Jagged iridescent gemstones covered the sides and roof.
“Neshem crystals,” Jelan breathed.
For a moment, I stared, too stunned to look away. Then Daziel made a noise low in his throat.
I followed his gaze. There, in the center of the cave, half-sunk in black sand, was a giant, almost-translucent hull. It was half the length of my aunt’s house and, even partially covered, taller than me.
Stumbling to our feet, we jogged closer until we reached where the egg curved into the sand. It was cerulean blue, like a robin’s egg or cheerful shutters or the sea under certain slants of light. Daziel crouched down next to it, reaching out, but stopped short of touching it.
I came up right behind him, peering at the hull’s surface. Cracks sidled around the edges, disappearing into the sand.
“An egg,” I breathed.
Jelan stared at it, then shook herself. “I should go back. Tell the others we haven’t drowned.”
We hugged, and then she strode back across the sand and dove smoothly into the water. Daziel and I continued examining the egg. A pulsing light ran through it, and I thought I could almost hear something, like a melody just far enough away you thought it might be your imagination. I turned my head, so close my ear almost touched the hull.
A giant rumbling ripped through the room.
I yelped, jumping away from the egg. It was, to my horror, trembling. Daziel grabbed my arm and yanked me even farther back, and we scrambled across the black sands.
“It’s ready to hatch,” he said.
“Now?” I echoed, a mix of horror and exasperation twisting through me. “I don’t know if now is the best time.”
“Maybe it could tell the old Ziz was dying,” Daziel said. “Maybe it knows it has to be born now.”
A great tearingboomripped through the cavern, and the world gave an unsettling lurch. It wasn’t like when we’d been on the island’s surface and everything shook. Here, the movement was greater because—as was instantly clear—it came from the egg itself, rocking back and forth. As it did, the sand around it shifted, pouring into the nooks opened up as the egg moved, creating instant quicksand.
Daziel was sucked into one. Screaming, I grabbed his arm, leaning backward, but my weight wasn’t enough to do anything. His legs were trapped, the sand pulling him down suffocatingly, and the sand was up to his chest, pulling me in too, thick and raspy against my arm—
I pulled on him with all my might, and he popped free. His wings ripped out, those great webs of shadow, and he grabbed me, lifting off the shifting sands. He soared upward, cradling me against his chest.
“Wow,” I said after a moment, after my heartbeat calmed enough that I could stop clutching him like I was in danger of plummeting to my death. “This is kind of freaky.”
“In a hot way?” he said hopefully.
I laughed. I couldn’t believe I could laugh in this moment, farunder the river, floating in the air above an egg containing one of the three Great Beasts. But I laughed and I laughed until the sand stopped shifting, and Daziel floated to the ground and set me there. He took my face in his hands, looking concerned. “Are you okay?”
“Probably not,” I admitted.
