Odelia ignores my dismay and steps on the opposite side,sweeping her arm up to flatten her feet on the stone.
It dips an impossible fraction.
Then locks.
Bubbles surge around us and she looks at me with an earth-shattering smile as a low gear-shifting rumble vibrates through the water. My heart stutters. Not only is this woman violently beautiful, and a badass with a weapon, she’s also ridiculously smart, and I’m glad she insisted on joining me down here, because I could not have done this without her.
The temple still trembles as we approach, stone dust clouding the water.
The way in yawns before us.
Odi squeals with delight, spinning to throw her arms around my neck. I hesitate from the shock of her display of sudden affection, but then I give in and crush her to my chest, being mindful not to disturb her sea stone bubble.
After a few seconds, she pulls back, her face slightly flushed. I smile, and gesture towards the doorway. “After you.”
It’s dark when we enter. The only light is the soft glow of the sea stone. The room isn’t overly large, but big enough that I can be fully upright without hitting my head on the ceiling. The walls are smooth stone, yet void of carvings, or windows. Nothing saysI’m the key, come get me.There is only a tunnel to my left, leading downwards.
Odi hovers at the dark entrance, her voice hesitant. “I think if we’re going to find the key, it’s going to be down there.”
I nod. “Want to take bets on what else is waiting along with it?”
She gives me a look, ignoring my answering grin. Then we slip into the tunnel, the walls narrowing as we push deeper, the sea pressing heavier with every stroke. The glow of Odi’s sea stone casts a pale shimmer across the rock, catching on the weeds that sway with the current.
I gesture to a stretch of long, ribboned fronds drifting like banners. “Blue kelp,” I tell her. “It only flowers once a year. My father cut one of its blossoms the day he asked my mother to be his queen.”
Mother had told me the story countless times in my younger years. The memory ghosts through me, sharp and bittersweet, but I push it down.
Before Odi has a chance to ask another question I point at a cluster of sea plants—pale stalks with sharp, twisting ends. “That one’s poison,” I chuckle. “Only if you’re fool enough to eat it. Otto would do good with it though.”
Her eyes flick towards me, a faint grin tugging on her lips.
The end of the tunnel appears, spilling us into a vast hollow, and for a moment I forget to move. Odi is frozen at my side, both of us struck by awe at the vision in front of us.
Walls of coral rise around us in great ribs of colour. Bending and twisting like the wildflowers that grow in fields on land. Crimson fans stretch wide, waving at us with the flowing current. Pale fingers of branching coral glow faintly, tipped in gold and violet. Anemones pulse as schools of tiny silver fish dart through them like stars.
Light blooms everywhere, spilling from the living creatures themselves. Soft blues, fierce greens, threads of white that curl like wispy clouds on a summer's day. I don’t know where to look first.
Above us, loops of rainbow fish turn as one, their scales catching the glow in bright flashes, a ceiling of shifting stars. Odi hovers beside me, her mouth open in awe as the mound of coral in front of us seems to rise and fall with breath. Peach, aqua, pink and purple clusters of coral grow from the mound like flowers of the sea. Some change colour with every throb of their heartbeat. Lemon yellow coral sways, their fronds falling like grass in a hidden meadow. This cavern is alive. It’s a world breathing beneath the world.
“What is this place?” she whispers, driftingtowards it.
I flick my tail, keeping my distance so she doesn’t feel like I’m hovering. We circle around the hump of coral in the centre of the space once. And yet there is no obvious place that the key might be.
“If I were a key, where would I hide?” I ponder.
Odi drifts closer, fingers reaching for a spray of lemon coral. Her hand hovers, then lightly brushes the edge of the yellow blossom.
Then the coral blinks.
An eye. Slitted, golden, opening where no eye should be.
Odi jerks back with a sharp gasp, colliding with my chest. Instincts take over, and I wrap my arms around her, ready to shield her as the cavern shudders with a low, thrumming vibration that rolls through the water.
“Odi—”
“I’m sorry, alright?” She throws over her shoulder.
The coral mound unfolds, shifting. What I thought were branches, peel back, scale by scale until the shape uncoils. An ocean dragon—woven of coral and sea itself—stretches up to the cavern ceiling. Long tendrils of her body ripple with light, fins like flags float around her. Then there’s her teeth. Glinting like crystal daggers as she opens her mouth.
