I draw in a deep breath and let it out as a flat hum—soft at first, then rolling out of my chest, curling through the water likesmoke. I keep the brunt of it from Odi as the sound blooms, echoes bouncing off the cave walls until it’s a melody—low, haunting, threaded with something older than I am.
The fish still. Jaws shut. One by one, they melt back into the depths, vanishing as if they’d never been. They know to whom they threaten with their wicked teeth, and they know what will come of them if they take a single bite.
The water’s quiet again. My voice fades with it. And all I’m left with is the pounding of Odi’s heart against my back, and the weight of what I just let her hear.
“What in all eight seas was that?” she breaths. The words are warm on my ear, sending a shiver down my neck.
I turn to glance at her over my shoulder. “You’re welcome.”
We make it to the other side of the pool in one piece. Odi clambers up the bank and onto drier ground as I shift back. When I join her, she’s still looking at me like I’ve grown a third head.
My shoulders lift and fall with ease. “It’s really nothing, shall we keep moving?”
She shakes her head in disbelief, and I can’t stop the smile tugging at my lips as we enter the eerily quiet tunnel. The glow of the pool fades behind us. Odi sticks to my side as I guide us both through the dark.
The tunnel ends abruptly, my boots kicking loose stones across the ground.
“What is it?” Odi hisses, blinking into the dark.
I reach out, running my hands over the surface in front of me. “It’s a doorway, butit's sealed shut.”
“Alright, all of this is getting really old. I just want to get out of here,” she groans, lacing her hands through the knotted mess on her head.
“There’s a lever.”
She folds her arms across her chest, popping her hip. “So pull it.”
“What if it’s a trap?” I say, not entirely mocking her concern from earlier.
Odi searches for me in the dark, her face pale in the absence of light. Fatigue has bruised the skin below her eyes and siphoned the pink of her plush lips. “Can’t be any worse than what we’ve already been through.”
I can feel the fight leaving her as easily I can sense the shifting of the evening tides. She’s coldly logical, always three steps ahead, but the exhaustion is seeping in. I know battle-trained royals that would have let the water take them by now. But we've gone too far for her to give up.
“You’ll have to make the choice, Odi.” I speak softly, letting words settle.
She sighs as she shrugs, exhaustion rippling off her in waves. “Well there’s no going back now. So pull the lever, Rune.”
I grit my teeth and wrap my fingers around the cold metal. “Here we go.”
The lever groans as I force it down, and the door shudders open with a deep, grinding scrape. We step inside—just a few cautious paces—and before I can blink, the slab behind us slams shut with a sound like a coffin lid.
Then I hear it.
A low rush at first, like distant rain. Then faster, louder—the hiss and surge of water forcing its way in. It pours from the seams in the walls, icy and relentless, rising around our boots, our knees—faster than ever before.
“Rune—”
“I know.”
It’s already climbing higher.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. And another for good measure.
“Fuck,” I mutter under my breath.
From somewhere the water is pouring in faster and faster, but around my feet I can feel the tug of the current pulling the opposite way. There is a drain open somewhere. I can sense it. I just need to shift, grab Odi, and swim.
The water is to our waists now, salty, cold, and climbing quickly. Beside me, Odi’s breaths come sharp and shallow. “It’s—it’s too fast,” she stammers, voice fracturing as the roaring around us closes in. “We’re not getting out of here, Rune. We’re going to drown.I’mgoing to drown.”
