I looked at Kaelen. He met my gaze, and in the dim light, I saw the same terrifying realization mirrored in his gold eyes. We both knew the cost.
She isn't strong enough yet,I projected to him, keeping the thought tight and shielded so Aria wouldn't wake.If we do this now, we kill her.
She has to be,Kaelen replied, his mental voice grim and sharp as a blade.Because something else just woke up.
I frowned, sniffing the air, every muscle in my body tensing. The ozone smell of the Sentinel was gone, replaced by the damp rot of the cave. But beneath that there was something else. A scent that hadn't been there ten minutes ago.
It smelled like salt water. Like vast, crushing depths where the sun never reached. Like pressure.
I looked at the black pool in the center of the cavern. The surface was perfectly still, glassy and reflective, mirroring the jagged ceiling above.
But the smell was coming from the water.
And deep, deep down in the ink-black depths something moved.
EIGHT
Aria
The transition from sleep to waking was usually a slow ascent, drifting up from dark waters. This time, it was a collision.
One moment I was floating in a dreamless void, anchored only by the solid, furnace-hot weight of Flynn’s chest against my back and his arm banded like iron across my ribs. The next, his muscles locked rigid, turning him from a pillow into a statue.
"Don't move," Flynn whispered.
His voice was barely a breath, a vibration against the shell of my ear that sent a shiver straight down my spine, but the playfulness that had colored his tone earlier was gone. This was the Wolf. This was the predator who had scented something that made even his hackles rise.
I froze, blinking my eyes open. The cavern was dim, lit only by the bioluminescent moss clinging to the ceiling like reluctant stars and the faint, dying glow of the few embers Kaelen had managed to coax from damp wood. The air had changed. The stagnant, earthy rot of the underground was gone, swallowed by a thick, cloying scent that burned my nostrils.
Brine. Deep, pressurized salt water. The smell of the ocean floor where sunlight goes to die.
"Flynn?" I breathed, my hand tightening on his forearm.
"Quiet," he hissed. "Something is in the pool."
I looked toward the center of the cavern. The black water, which had been glassy and silent when I fell asleep, was trembling. Ripples radiated outward from the center, lapping against the stone shore with a wet, rhythmic slapping sound that echoed too loudly in the silence.
Thane was already on his feet, a silent shadow near the tunnel entrance, his makeshift club raised. Kaelen stood by the water’s edge, his hand on the hilt of the stolen sword, the golden fire in his eyes narrowed into dangerous slits. Elias was gone. No, he was above, crouched on a ledge of obsidian, blending into the darkness like a copper wraith.
The water bulged.
It didn't splash. It rose, displacing liquid with a thick, viscous sucking sound. A shape broke the surface, slick and black, reflecting the moss-light with an oily sheen.
At first, I thought it was a rock, pushed up by some geological spasm. Then the rock opened three sets of eyes.
They burned with a pale, radioactive green light, illuminating a face, if it could be called that, composed of chitinous plates and wet, exposed muscle. It looked like a crab stripped of its shell, fused with the nightmare of a squid. It was massive, easily the size of a carriage, and it pulled itself onto the rocky bank with too many limbs, claws clicking against the stone like knitting needles.
"Scavenger," Kaelen spat, the word dripping with disgust and recognition.
The creature froze. Its triad of eyes swiveled independently, scanning the cavern before locking onto Kaelen.
Subject Alpha-One,a voice rasped.
It didn't speak the words; it projected them, a mental scrape of barnacles against a ship's hull that made my head throb. It sounded wet, gurgling, as if the speaker were drowning.
Subject Beta-Four. Subject Gamma-Nine. Subject Delta-Seven.It ticked them off, its gaze flicking to Flynn, Thane, and Elias.Inventory located.
I felt Flynn’s heart hammer against my back, a frantic, aggressive rhythm. "It’s a Skal," he growled low in his throat. "Poseidon’s lapdogs. They clean up the messes the High Seat doesn't want to touch."
